Red hibiscus mead... bee swarm almost stopped me.

Hello all!

It is high time I got my next serious 5 gallon batch started. I was in the mood for a nice red melomel so here is what I came up with:

5 gallons

10lb orange blossom honey
1lb red and purple hibiscus flowers (Rose of Sharon hibiscus to be more exact from my own trees)
3.3lb raspberry purée
3tsp pectic enzyme
5tsp yeast nutrient
2.5tsp yeast energizer
5 camden tablets
Yeast (Lalvin RC-212)

I mixed up the honey cold with the water and mixed/aerated well. Added the raspberry and other powdered ingredients and mixed/aerated well again. All the flowers I have been picking myself. Ok now side story:

So the last two nights I have been going out to my trees and picking all the flowers that have closed up after freshly blooming that day. I made sure to pluck the flower and remove the green bulb at the ends so I just have the petals and the stamen with all the pollen. I placed them in ziplock bags and froze them. Today I came home from work needing to get one more batch of flowers before I made up the must and just out of curiosity I looked at my Rose of Sharon trees and they were SWARMED with bees. OMG Bees EVERYWHERE! So after some slow and careful inspecting I found a small swarm has set up shop right in the middle deep in between the trees. There was just this mass of bees all huddles around there queen I assume and tons of bees in the air. Here is a pic:



Now at the time I thought I was doomed to wait till the swarm went away. But as the Sun started to set they all calmed down and that is when I took this pic. Then a bright idea hit me. I was going to start bee keeping this year but due to a number of things I was not able to get everything ready in time to allow the local apiary to install a bee colony in my hive. So since I had a spare hive I thought what they hell lets see what happens. I posted my hive on some saw horses right in front of the swarm. They may not take it and even if they do it is so late in the season I don't know if the colony can get big enough to survive the winter. Worst case scenario I hope the queen takes to the hive and I will just tape it all up and relocate the bees out of the city on some of my families Indian land. So needles to say since the bees calmed down I was able to carefully pick the remaining flowers I needed and get to brewing. Now back to the brew!

The flowers went into a fine nylon straining bag and in they went into the must. I have the yeast in a small starter going and will pitch that tomorrow. Before pitching the yeast i will remove the flowers and squeeze the juices out also topping up with additional water if needed. Till then the flowers will just cold steep in the must and the crushed Camden should keep any wild yeasts and bacteria from taking hold. Only other thing I am holding off on is the pectic enzyme to pitch tomorrow morning and 1.5tsp of energizer which I will pitch a couple days after pitching yeast. The original gravity is at 1.074. I also plan to back sweeten with another couple pounds of orange blossom honey after fermentation ends and I stabilize the mead.

Thoughts? Concerns? Think I will have a hive of bees this year? ...

Sounds like it'll be awesome. Keep us posted!

When I was a kid, we had a swarm like that stop across the street for a few days. Not exactly a fun time.

The mead sound pretty good though. Interested to see how it turns out.

I would go out at night, cut the branch off and shake the bees into the hive. They may not stay but I would sure try.

Aropolis, you are a mead maker who has called bees to his house. Get out there and shake them all off into you hive, they wont sting when they are swarming, they have nothing to protect honeywise. If you feed them 1:1 syrup and get some pollen patties you might build them up enough to survive, probably not but what could it hurt to try and you can say you hived a swarm on your own, on your found on your own. WVMJ

Haha cool. I may just try and shake them into my hive then guys. If the queen plants her but in there then they should stay. I have friends at work that keep bees and as long as they can build up some comb they just suggested to keep a small plastic dish with sugar water in the hive all winter and if I can keep that topped up then they should be fine all winter. A boon to me is that rose of Sharon trees bloom well into fall and they bloom a lot so my bees will have a close source of polen to help them build well into the year as long as they can till first frost. Ill let you know how it goes both on the mead and bee front.

Hahaha that was fun!...

But I'll talk about the mead first. Note to self... Get a brew bucket! I did all this in a standard 5 gallon carboy like normal. Most meads and wines I have done in the past I leave all the ingredients in the primary and rack off them once primary is finished. To my understanding you do not want Rose of Sharon flowers or leaves left too long because the have thickening agents in them that jelly up liquid kind of like gravy. I saw this first hand while removing the nylon sack. It still only took 3-4 min but just took some man handling to get the bag out. The flowers had this sweet thickened goop all over it from those thickening agents and that pretty much made a nice lube to get this all out. I boiled the remaining flowers in a little water and used that to top up the carboy. I siphoned off about a liter of the must into a two liter I squeezed most of the air out of and stuck that in the fridge. I pitched my yeast starter I had going since yesterday and now we are off! Once fermentation dies down ill top up with the must from the fridge.

Now to the bees. I was surprised at how calm they all are. I was a little trepidacious because These are "wild bees". I don't know if these are a calmer Italian bee type or another that is more aggressive. It depends if these are a native Oklahoma swarm or if there is someone nearby with imported hive(s) of bees and these swarmed from that. But hell this was easy. I first removed a couple of frames from the hive. I used a small handsaw and cut the branch they where on and moved them over the hive and shook them right in. I was in the middle of getting the hive top back on and I looke at the rose of Sharon tree and I notice a new ball of bees huddled on a smaller branch now. I thought damn I must have missed the queen!! So I removed the top and just one frame this time and I was able to get right up close to the swarm of bees clumped together and carefully broke the small twig of a branch they were in and shook that into the hive. About a half hour later I see no swarms in the tree now here is to hoping I can keep them fed, happy and winter them up and with some luck I may have enough fresh backyard honey for a 5 gallon at the end of next summer!

Confession time! Man there were one or two times I just had to shut my eyes and stay still and just remind myself these bees are my friends. I did keep my cool and did not twice jerk or curse but man that instinctual urge to run screaming was all in me. Afterwards it was really fun.

Hope you enjoy the read. Comment if you have any tips, comments, or criticism.

If you keep hives that's a prime example why you should always be prepped to collect a free hive hive. Tons of beekeepers would kill to have the swarm come to them.

Yea as is I have two hive boxes prepped right now. I want to do a fancier hive top and make a little shingled roof to match the house but that is a project to come. I have no honey supers built right now but expect they will not be needed till next year. I think from here forward ill have a hive body and bottom built on hand for if I can catch a swarm. I can't keep more than one hive ..."legally" I think in my back yard in town but I have family that also want to bee keep and plenty of land I can move them to if I catch future swarms. Fun fun.

Small update here. Man this mead cleared quickly. I have taken no gravity readings yet but I imagin the gravity must be in the 1.000 range. You can see right through the bad boy. Ill rack off the lees and pulp soon. I picked up some raspberry Bacardi while on vacation recently. Think that will be good to top up after racking lol?!?

Oh and that small swarm you see in post one. Here is a pic of just one frame they are working on.



Looks promising on all accounts.

While I do like me some honey, the best bees/wasps/hornets are dead ones.... especially when talking about my yard. Time to get suited up and bust out the chems

Wasps/hornets... Yea go for it. BUT SAVE THE BEES!!! Many local beekeepers will take a swarm from your yard for free. That gives them one more hive possibly and more honey which could increase supply over demand if done enough and lower the god awful cost of honey we have. The more bees the merrier.

Awsome, glad it worked out for you. Hopefully next year they will provide you with enough honey to make a batch of wild bee mead!

That is what I want. A good show mead from my honey. Just honey, water and yeast.

Arpolis said:

Wasps/hornets... Yea go for it. BUT SAVE THE BEES!!! Many local beekeepers will take a swarm from your yard for free. That gives them one more hive possibly and more honey which could increase supply over demand if done enough and lower the god awful cost of honey we have. The more bees the merrier.

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Agreed. Honeybees are awesome! The honeybees in my garden are so busy & docile, I can actually pet them with my pinky finger as they work a blossom. They seem to have no interest in stinging at all. I can work in the garden & the only insects that bother me are the wasps; though I hate those freeloading grasshoppers.
Regards, GF.

They (the bee's) have a long way to go to get ready for winter. To get them ready feed them sugar water 1 part sugar to 1 part water (1to1) Do not let them run out of it. The hive would probably have a better chance of surviving if they were in a stack of 2, 5 frame nuc boxes if you have one.

It takes the thin mixture of sugar water or nectar to stimulate the queen to lay eggs (to make more bee's) and the workers to make wax.

About the time of your first killing frost switch the feed to 2 to 1 sugar water for them to build up stores for the winter. In this part of the country it takes 60 lb of honey for a hive to make it through the winter. You might want to talk to a local beekeeper about the amount you need.

You might make it but it will take lots of sugar to do it.

Yea I have been talking with lots of folks out at the beesource.com site about the hive and also talking with locals. I currently have them on a 1-1 ration sugar water. Ill keep that on till the frost since that is what you and many others suggest. Really population re-building is all I am focused on now. In the winter I can keep rem fed on a couple sugar boards. Basically you line a frame with hardware cloth and then a thin layer of newspaper and fill it with 12lb of cooked sugar. If cooked right it hardens into a board of sugar and a couple should last the whole winter. If I can just get them to build enough comb to get the population up in the next 6-8 weeks then I think I will be fine.

Those folks over at www.beesource.com really are the best. WVMJ

You are in a mead forum! Wvmj

butterpants said:

while i do like me some honey, the best bees/wasps/hornets are dead ones.... Especially when talking about my yard. Time to get suited up and bust out the chems

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I wanted to post this here in case anyone was following the thread for the sake of wanting to know about the hive. The Jedi sure felt this one today but within a 2 hour time span 98% of my entire hive crawled in the hive and died for some reason. Here are some pics. Warning beekeepers with weak stomachs don't look.



I did find the queen but she is not on her comb but rather running frantically all over the interior of the hive. I have no clue what happened. The last two days the whole hive was alive more than ever all outside going to all my Rose of Sharon trees and looking just super active and day over day really building comb. I looked at them all today and a lot were on the outside of the hive along all the cracks which is a little weird. Two hours later and just so many dead. After coming in and going back out I did find a single wasp going into the hive. I have no idea if a swarm of wasps did this but that was something.

Ok after talking through with some other people I think I found why they all died. Old age. The comb built is pretty small. There may only be a 100 or so bees hatched at any one time with as little comb that I have. Last Monday was the 6 week mark from when I captured the swarm. And worker bees live 4-6 weeks at most. So I think the original swarm died off. It is the only thing that makes a little sense. I need a thousand live young bees in order to keep them warm enough to live through the winter. With this drop in population I think they are doomed. I will get with my local large beekeeper and get a NUC this following May and give this another go next spring.

Can you put them in the garage or garden shed and keep it cold but not more than a degree or two below freezing?

Unfortunately, it's not just the temperature thing. A hive needs a good amount of bees in it to do lots of stuff, from tending to the brood and feeding the queen, to making wax for combs and guarding the hive. If there aren't enough bees, they colony is doomed.
However, you can take the queen and re-introduce her to another hive that may need a queen. Bummer about the hive though.

Too bad about the hive, I guess it was just too late in the season.

Really sucks about the hive but at least you were able to get good advice and experience so you will be even better prepared for the next one

I doubt that the cause of the hive death is age. Reasoning, you would see a gradual die off if the queen could not make start enough bee's to replenish the hive. I doubt that is the problem unless the queen has failed.

A good possibility is pesticide spraying of crops while blooming or a lawn care company spraying a yard nearby while something is blooming. Here in WV several years ago we had the Department of Natural Resources and highway departments, spray weeds on the roadside and stream banks while there was a nectar flow going from the goldenrod.

Man! I'm only thinking of making mead and I've never owned bees but that made me sad.

Can I ask why you went with RC-212? I don't know much about wine yeast. Just started making mead and have been using D-47. Just curious what the difference is.

Aropolis, your post is a little confusing. Are you saying that they were flying around and ok and within 2 hrs all died? You may have just been robbed out, that happens to small hives, all the bees you saw buzzing around were not your bees but robbers, when you opened the hive you saw the results of the fight your little colony put up against the robbers. The wasp was probably just scavenging. I lost a nuc yesterday just like this, I had the entrance blocked off but they were to weak and the other bees took every drop of honey. The important thing is that you got a taste for it. Make sure to put your nuc order in soon. WVMJ

It's a bee sting bee world out there.

WVMJ said:

Aropolis, your post is a little confusing. Are you saying that they were flying around and ok and within 2 hrs all died? You may have just been robbed out, that happens to small hives, all the bees you saw buzzing around were not your bees but robbers, when you opened the hive you saw the results of the fight your little colony put up against the robbers. The wasp was probably just scavenging. I lost a nuc yesterday just like this, I had the entrance blocked off but they were to weak and the other bees took every drop of honey. The important thing is that you got a taste for it. Make sure to put your nuc order in soon. WVMJ

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Well that makes some sense. I will say that there is not a drop of honey or pollen left that I know they had stored. Here is a pic before I noticed them dead.



Now I did see two bees attacking one in the after math. Hmmmmm never thought of robbers. Would they leave the queen though? I looked today and what few brood were left were all dead. Ants were in one comb and there was 1 queen and a small handful of bees walking around. You are right I do have a good taste and I have already talked with a NUC supplier and will have the order in and paid for in January.

Would they leave the queen though?

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Could workers be hardwired not to harm a queen? Maybe it's only queens who fight queens when they are fighting for supremacy. I was thinking that the queens close entourage might have had enough of her pheromones on them to protect them as well. Of course this is all speculation from a know nothing, hahahaha.

Now that you have posted the picture of the hive when you thought they were active, I retract my statement of pesticide kill!!
I agree with Mountaineer Jack. They were robbed out. The picture is of a hive that is being robbed out. That is a tough situation to overcome this late in the year.

Something to think about. It is tough to keep a top bar hive alive in some climates. If you have winters with long stretches (over a week) of below 50 degree weather, it will be difficult for the bee's to keep access to winter stores.

The bee cluster will not leave brood in the winter time, so they have to have warm enough weather to break cluster (50 degrees) to get access to honey and move it to the cluster area. I have actually seen hives die with honey stores within 1/2 inch of the dead cluster.

Consider getting a 8 frame or 10 frame standard hive.

kc_in_wv said:

Something to think about. It is tough to keep a top bar hive alive in some climates. If you have winters with long stretches (over a week) of below 50 degree weather, it will be difficult for the bee's to keep access to winter stores.

The bee cluster will not leave brood in the winter time, so they have to have warm enough weather to break cluster (50 degrees) to get access to honey and move it to the cluster area. I have actually seen hives die with honey stores within 1/2 inch of the dead cluster.

Consider getting a 8 frame or 10 frame standard hive.

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??? This is a 10 Fran Langstroth hive. If figured that was standard. My only difference is that it was foundationless frames.

I love the foundationless frames from Kellys, you never know what artwork the bees are going to create with them. One nuc I made up I was short a frame and left only 4 foundationless frames in there and then forgot to come back during the flow and add another. THose combs are so thick now that only the 4 will fit in the box, they can pull the honey comb much wider than you think. Some people say to start your foundationless in between some brood comb so the get the depth right and make it straight. But we just cut the comb out no matter what it looks like, do a crush and strain and then use our press on the wax to get the rest of the honey out. I would strongly suggest to get at least 2 hives and keep an extra nuc around to requeen with if needed. That way things will always be rolling along, if you loose one queen and you only have 1 hive you are pretty much screwed. The 2 and a half hives is a basic starter strategy, and if one hive is stronger you can use its resources to boost the other. WVMJ

I think that will be my plan. I am fencing off a section of yard with 6ft privacy fence with doors and all to meet city codes and all have room for 2-4 hives back there. The way I imagine it they will all be separated by privacy fence and all be about 15-20ft away from each other. And I do like the foundationless frames so far. All 3 combs started were all strait and really thick. I do thing I will have one hive box next year with foundation just to see how it goes.

You might as well get your library started on beekeeping. Its just like winemaking, beerbrewing or making mead or cider. A guy starts with his first kit, picks a few apples and squeezes them, makes a beer better than the stuff at the store, gets their first beehive. Next thing you know, the whole house is sticky, wife is pissed because she got stung by a bee on the doorknob because you got honey on it, your brown dog looks like a little bear and cant go with you to check the hives anymore, you have to put some combs in the freezer to kill the moths, you keep extra stuff around in case another swarm shows up - and then your whole garage is dedicated to brewing, or becomes a press pad, or starts to have 300 gallon fermentors in it, or you become the local honey house for your beekeeping group- and then you decide to turn pro, and then the fun really begins If you read any good bee books, most of those guys started out with a single hive and went nuts from there, just like starting with a single carboy, you always need more WVMJ

Arpolis said:

??? This is a 10 Fran Langstroth hive. If figured that was standard. My only difference is that it was foundationless frames.

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Sorry they way my computer loaded the picture it looks very long.

Ok I racked this finally to secondary. I added Camden and sorbate and here a several hours I will add 2 more cans of the 3.3 raspberry purée. I will see how that goes and when I rack again in a few months I will back sweeten to 1.02ish. Looks good! Smells a bit acidic but that is to be expected with raspberry. Wish the brew luck.