Bee Clean Up Crew

One of my favorite butterflies, painted ladies, join my honey bee clean up crew. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Bee Clean Up Crew

It’s been a busy fall at my apiary this year. Cold weather snuck in earlier than usual. The reconstruction of my deck, and the storage shed underneath, was behind due to delays in product shipment so I had my beekeeping equipment scattered through my garden. So what do I do? I decide to take on yet another overdue project, cleaning out my basement refrigerator.

When I started beekeeping 10 years ago, little did I know how much I would use a refrigerator. From freezing frames with small hive beetle larvae to setting creamed honey, I now consider a refrigerator a key tool in a beekeeper’s arsenal.

This particular refrigerator in the basement has also housed pots with spring bulbs for bulb gardens; bee protein patties as well as honey frames. In other words, the shelves have become quite sticky.

If you have ever tried to clean honey off any surface you know how challenging that can be. Honey is flower nectar dehydrated to 18%, making it very thick. When combined with exposure to cold, the sugar molecules transform into a creamy sticky gooey syrup. It’s crossed my mind to try to make a glue out of this some day.

My refrigerator shelves getting warmed by sunlight so bees can take up spilled honey. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Instead of tackling these myself, I decided to let the bees clean up the shelves. Waiting for a warm, fall day, I spread the refrigerator shelves on my retaining wall and waited. Once the honey bees found the honey, other pollinators joined them including fies and butterflies.

Honey bees seriously work these large globs of spilled honey. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Since they were quite busy working the honey, it was a good opportunity to get a close up look at how they work. I pulled a chair up close and observed the visitors, and the bees, working together to collect the honey to take back to their hives for winter food.

Once one bee finds a good spot to mine, the other worker bees join in, slowly wearing away to puddle of honey.

Flies join honey bees cleaning up spilled honey. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

So not all of the honey was gone. However, it was cleaned up enough to make my job much easier, and more importantly, less sticky.

The refrigerator is now ready for next year.

Charlotte