The Bee-Bottin' Bee Blog

Healthy Hive

2012-02-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

About five days ago, as I already mentioned in my previous post, I put a bunch of bee candy out in the hive. At that time the top of the cluster was just below the tops of the frames. The bees could be seen by looking down between the frames but there were no bees up on top of the frames. I added an empty medium super to provide space on top of the hive and placed the bee candy inside.

I have been wondering if the bees have started taking advantage of the bee candy or not so yesterday I went out, lifted the cover, and took the following pictures.

It looks like the bee candy tempted them enough to move up! Besides the bees seen here, there were bees busily moving up and down between the frames and a lot at the hive entrance moving dead bees out and taking off on cleansing flights. Georgia is looking good and healthy as we move toward spring. I think a split might be in her future.

Winter Feeding

2012-02-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been much going on with the beehive this winter. When I last checked in with the blog in the first part of December we were experiencing bitter cold temperatures. Since then, though, we have had a very mild winter with most days getting up above freezing.

It seems like a milder winter would be better for the bees, but that isn't necessarily so. As I have learned from another blog called "What Should I Be Doing With My Bees This Month?", warmer temperatures result in more active bees that require more honey to eat. And if it is warm enough for the queen to start laying, the bees will really consume a lot of honey in an effort to keep all that brood warm. It doesn't take much to draw the conclusion that milder winters could mean more bees starving in February and March if supplemental feed isn't added to the hives. The aforementioned blog is kept by an experienced beekeeper in Minnesota and offers a lot of good tips for beekeeping in northern and colder climates.

As our winter thus far has been fairly mild I have been getting concerned about how much honey might still be left in our beehive. Last week I made a batch of bee candy to put on top of the frames. I used the following recipe:

Add 5 parts sugar to 1 part water. Add 1/4 teaspoon of vinegar for every pound of sugar and bring the whole thing to a boil. Continue to boil until the mixture reaches 234 degrees and then boil for 3 minutes more without stirring. Turn off the heat and allow the mixture to cool while stirring with a whisk. I don't know how far to cool the mixture before pouring it out- I haven't figured that part out yet. (If you are pouring into molds it might not make much difference, but if you are pouring onto a sheet of waxed paper you don't want it to be too hot or it will spread out too thin. That is what happened to me this time.) You can either pour the hot mixture out onto a sheet of waxed paper with a towel underneath or you can pour into a mold such as a cereal bowl or small cake pan that has been lined with waxed paper. Spray the waxed paper with cooking spray to make it easier to remove the candy after it has cooled. A quick google search for "bee candy recipe" will give you a variety of recipes to choose from.

I made it out to the hive this afternoon to put the bee candy on the top of the frames.

You can see that the candy I poured out on a sheet of waxed paper ended up really thin and broke into several small pieces. I also poured some into two cereal bowls lined with waxed paper.

There were no bees on the top, but I could look down and see the top of the cluster just about an inch below the tops of the frames. The cluster is covering six frames. In the picture above, the cluster is covering the second frame from the top down to the third frame from the bottom. This seems like big cluster to me, but I don't know how far down into the hive the cluster extends. I could see a little way into the hive and I saw that the outer two frames on either end still have capped honey, but I don't know if that honey continues all the way down to the bottom of the frames or not.

In the following picture you can see the top of the cluster down between the frames.

I am hoping that the capped honey plus this bee candy will tide them over until the dandelions and willows start blooming in April.

The Jet Stream Is Dipping Low

2011-12-05T10:09:00.001-07:00

Brr... It is cold. We woke up to zero degrees Fahrenheit (that's negative 17.7 degrees Celsius) this morning! Here is what the jet stream looks like today:

No wonder is it so cold here in Wyoming, but it looks like North Dakota probably has it worse than us. I bet the bees are in a tight cluster today!

Honey Beats Dextromethorphan!

2011-11-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

I came across this article yesterday at the American Pharmacists Association's website. One more reason to support your local beekeeper.

I am not sure when this article was published by APhA, but the study they cite in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine was published in 2007.

Honey more effective than honey-flavored dextromethorphan for children's coughs

Key point: A study published in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that children who received a single dose of buckwheat honey 30 minutes before bedtime slept better and coughed less than those who received honey-flavored dextromethorphan or no treatment at all.

Finer points: The primary outcome measure of this partially double-blinded, randomized study was to compare parental satisfaction with a single nocturnal dose of buckwheat honey, honey-flavored dextromethorphan, or no treatment at all in children experiencing nocturnal coughing from an upper respiratory infection (URI). A total of 105 children aged 2 to 18 years with URI, nocturnal coughing, and duration of illness 7 days or less were enrolled in this study, which took place in a single, outpatient, general pediatric practice.

On the first night of the study, each child received no treatment. The next morning, parents answered five questions concerning cough frequency and severity, bothersome nature of cough, quality of child's sleep, and quality of parent's sleep. Survey responses were stratified using a seven-point Likert scale. On the second night, each child was randomized to receive a single syringe containing 2.5 mL, 5 mL, or 10 mL of buckwheat honey or honey-flavored dextromethorphan, or nothing. The syringes for all of the treatment groups were opaque and were placed in brown paper bags to ensure investigator blinding. The honey and dextromethorphan groups were blinded to patients and parents because the two products had similar consistency, texture, flavor, smell, and sweetness. Parents answered the same five questions the following morning.

Overall, parents rated honey as significantly better than dextromethorphan or no treatment for all five criteria (P < 0.001). Mild adverse events (e.g., hyperactivity, nervousness, insomnia) were significantly more common in children treated with honey than those treated with dextromethorphan or nothing (P = 0.04).

What you need to know: The recent FDA announcement that the Consumer Healthcare Products Association is voluntarily modifying the product labels of all OTC cough and cold medicines to state that the products should not be used in children under 4 years of age has left pharmacists with virtually no cough products to recommend for children in this age group. While additional research is needed to confirm the findings of this study, pharmacists should consider recommending honey as a symptomatic treatment for cough. Honey is safer than dextromethorphan in terms of abuse potential and possible serious adverse events (e.g., dystonia, anaphylaxis, psychosis, death). In addition, no published findings demonstrating the efficacy of dextromethorphan in children are available.

What your patients need to know: Tell parents that honey has been used as an alternative medicine since ancient times. Exactly why or how honey improves coughing is not known; it may be its viscosity or its antioxidant properties. Encourage parents to purchase only unfiltered, unheated, unprocessed honey and to never give honey to children under 1 year of age, because honey can contain botulism spores in its natural form.

Sources

Paul IM et al. Effect of honey, dextromethorphan, and no treatment on nocturnal cough and sleep quality for coughing children and their parents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161:1140–6.
FDA statement following CHPA's announcement on nonprescription over-the-counter cough and cold medicines in children. FDA. October 2008.
Balch P, Balch J. Prescription for nutritional health, 3rd edition. New York, NY: Avery Publishing; 2000.

The Seasons Are Changing

2011-11-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

It looks like winter is on its way! Yesterday we got our first snow of the year. It has snowed up on the mountains a few times already, but this was the first snow down here in town. It didn't snow a lot, just enough to cover the grass and ice up the windshield.

Here is a picture of the hive in the little bit of snow we did get.

Not much snow there, but it is chilly enough to keep the bees inside today.

This next picture was taken inside the feeder that I still have in place.

I think the bees must be clustered up in the top of the hive just under the left side of the feeder. It looks like the cluster is overflowing up into the feeder. If you look closely, though, you can see some of the bees lined up on the bottom with their heads pointing down- they are feeding on the sugar syrup. I hope it stays warm enough long enough for the bees to finish off this last batch of syrup. We are supposed to warm back up to about 50 degrees F (That's about 10 degrees Celsius) later this week.

The following are a few pictures of the Bighorn mountains which I took this morning. The Bighorns run north and south. We live just on the west side of the mountains so these pictures are looking east at the western slope. You should be able to click on the photos and see larger view.

I love the Bighorn mountains! I think they are one of the most beautiful places on earth and feel truly blessed to live where I do.

Fall Feeding... I Hope It's Not Too Late

2011-10-31T10:34:00.000-06:00

The seasons are definitely changing- the nights are chilly, leaves are covering the lawn, and I frequently have to scrape frost off the windshield in the morning. It has snowed a few times up in the Bighorn and Pryor mountains, but we have stayed snow free so far down here in the valley. In fact, my son and I were up in the Pryors a couple of days ago cutting our last load of wood for the winter as the snow was falling. It has been a beautiful fall, though. Without a real hard frost yet the leaves have all had a chance to turn and fall on their own. It seems like so often we get a cold spell in October that freezes the leaves before they have a chance to turn on their own.

The bees have been getting less and less active as the temps have gotten cooler. I'm sure they are clustering at night but do get out and about as the days warm up- we have been getting up into the 50's and 60's still here in town.

We are down to one hive going in to the winter. Virginia ended up with laying workers toward the end of the summer and finally died out. Georgia recovered nicely from her swarm last spring and has been healthy and strong coming in to fall.

Last year we extracted honey at the first of September and then tried to feed sugar syrup to prepare the hives for winter, but the bees ignored the sugar syrup completely- I couldn't get them to take any of it. There must have been plenty of nectar coming in during September and October because they had plenty of stores to get them through the winter. So this fall I figured they would have enough and didn't try feeding them. A while a go I hefted Georgia's hive and found that it was incredibly light. I don't know what the difference is between this year and last, but it appears that there must not have been much of a fall nectar flow this year.

Last week I prepared 2 gallons of sugar syrup mixed 1 1/2 parts sugar to 1 part water. I also added a little bit of Honey B Healthy. Honey B Healthy contains some essential oils that are supposed to help honeybees remain healthy and strong. I don't know if it really helps or not, but I have a bottle of it and figure it probably doesn't hurt. According to all the books I have seen, sugar syrup for fall feeding should be mixed in a 2:1 ratio, but I have not had much luck keeping that in solution- it keeps crystallizing on me. I bet the bees don't really care what the concentration is. Anyway, it took the bees just a couple of days to consume the first two gallons. I prepared a second batch a couple of days ago. Here is a photo of the bees in the feeder.

Sorry the bees do not show up very clearly. (You can see our leftover tomato plants in the background- time to get those cleaned up.) When I first got the feeder the bees' feet couldn't cling to the smooth surface of the plastic guard and bees drowned in the syrup by the dozens. I took a wire brush and scuffed up the inside of the guard creating tiny little grooves that the bees' feet could catch. Now very few bees drown, but it doesn't make for great pictures of bees feeding on the syrup.

I don't know how long it will be before it gets too cold and the bees stop taking the syrup, but I will feed them as long as they do. I hope they can get enough stored up to make it through the winter. I am already planning on supplemental feeding in the late winter/early spring.

This winter we will be ordering a replacement colony to take Virginia's place. I hope to get a Russian queen and compare them with the Italian mutts living in Georgia. I don't know what we will name the new colony of Russian honeybees. Maybe a nice Russian name like Sasha or Svetlana. Any suggestions?

Honey Harvest 2011

2011-09-18T21:59:00.000-06:00

This post is a little overdue- two weeks ago we harvested our honey. I actually pulled the supers off Georgia and extracted the honey a couple of days later. Virginia ended up with laying workers this summer and has now died out completely.

As I was removing the supers I removed each frame one at a time and removed the bees. The top couple of supers, which were the last ones to be put on, were full of capped honey- nearly every frame was 100% capped. The lower three supers had several frames that were full of uncapped nectar. I found it curious that the newest supers had more capped honey than the older ones. I had removed the queen excluder earlier in the summer because the bees kept sealing it off and blocking their own ability to move up into the supers. Consequently there was a little bit of brood up in the bottom super. I wonder if the fact that the brood chamber was sitting a little higher could explain why there was less capped honey down low. Anyway, by the time I switched out all the uncapped frames with capped frames I had 4 full supers.

This first photo shows uncapping a frame of honey with a heated uncapping knife.

As the hot knife removed the caps it frequently leaves a thin layer of wax over the tops of the cells. This next photo shows the scratcher that I used to very lightly remove that thin layer of wax.

You can also see the uncapping tank I devised to catch the honey that drained off of the caps.

In this next photo you can see the extractor we used and a filter over the five gallon bucket.

Filtering is the slowest step of the whole extracting process. Since it does go so slowly, we extracted most of the honey into buckets and filtered it after the fact. This last photo is of the unfiltered honey in a five gallon bucket.

In the end we extracted 133 pounds or about 11 gallons.

We let the caps drain for a couple of days and filtered that honey a little later. When it was all done we added about five pounds of honey to the total.

Now we have a bunch of beeswax that will need to be melted down and cleaned up. I don't know what we will do with the wax this year. Maybe we will try some candle making.

Uncapping Tank Design

2011-08-22T21:31:00.006-06:00

Here is the uncapping tank I designed and built this year. I designed one last year that had a few flaws- mainly that I had a difficult time removing the caps from the tank without dropping them down into the honey. Hopefully this years design will correct that problem.

I am no engineer nor did I try for great precision when I built this thing. I just kind of eyeballed the cuts- It's not the prettiest, but I think it will work.

First I have a photo of what the final product looks like.

I started with 2 identical plastic bins that nest one inside the other.

I took one of the bins and drilled holes down in the corners on the sides, cut a notch in the top and cut the bottom completely out.

I then shaped a piece of hardware cloth to the length and width of the floor of the bin. I formed loops and wired it all in place so two wooden dowels could slip in the ends.

The hardware cloth fits inside the plastic bin and dowels slip through the holes in the corners of the bin, through the hardware cloth loops, and out the holes on the other side. The dowels need to be long enough to extend a couple of inches beyond the sides of the bin.

I cut notches down in the sides of the top corners of the second bin as seen in the photo above.

The dowels extending out from the first bin fit down into the notches of the second bin.
Finally, a small piece of wood fits across the notches cut into the top of the first (top) bin. I used a 1X2.

The strip across the top is used as a rest for the frame you are uncapping. As the caps fall from the frame they land on top of the hardware cloth in the bottom of the top bin. The honey then drains through the harware cloth and into the bottom bin. When all the honey has drained, the top bin can be lifted off and the honey can be poured out of the bottom bin and through a filter.

I intended to install a honey gate in the bottom bin to make it easier to transfer the honey to other containers but I never got around to ordering one. If this design works out I will install one for next year.

Laying Workers

2011-08-21T12:48:00.002-06:00

It's for sure. We have laying workers. I have known this for the last week or so but have been to busy (read lazy) to post it all to the blog.

If you want to read about when I found the cells with multiple eggs you can find it here.

I have read about several different methods for getting rid of laying workers, all of which take time. The question now is- Do I have time to get rid of the laying workers and requeen the hive in time to get the population and stores built up and ready for winter? I don't really know, but it seems pretty late in the season to me. I have decided to cut my losses with this hive and start this hive over next spring.

I have moved all the honey supers form Virginia over to Georgia. Georgia swarmed early in the summer and took quite a while to start filling up her supers. She has a booming population now and with Virginia's supers she is stacked up with 5 supers total.

Before Virginia lost her queen she was well on her way to filling at least 4 supers with honey. Last year (our second with the bees) we also had queen problems in both hives and extracted a total of 6 supers. Just think how much honey we could extract if we could just get a good year without any swarms or supercedures or laying workers!

Since Virginia will die out this fall and winter anyway, I am removing the deep frames from the hive to harvest what honey I can. In the empty space left in the deep hive bodies I am hoping that the remaining workers will try to rebuild the comb with fresh wax. That will just give me more wax to harvest before winter. We will see how that goes.

So now we are just waiting for Virginia to finish capping her honey. We plan on extracting the honey in early September. Last year I designed and built an uncapping tank. It worked but had some design flaws. This year I have modified the designed and built another that I think will work a little better. That will be the subject of the next blog post.

I Don't Know!!

2011-08-03T16:12:00.005-06:00

I wish I could figure these bees out. Just when I think I know what is going on I am perplexed by a whole new set of circumstances. Let me start from the beginning.

As we all know, Virginia had been queenless for a while and I had ordered a new Russian hybrid queen from the Walter T Kelley company in Tennessee. While the hive was to be queenless I removed the queen excluder just to make sure there was nothing to hinder the workers from putting honey away in the supers. Walter T Kelley couldn't ship the queen right away due to the heat wave occurring in the Midwest at the time. They shipped her off to me last week and she arrived on Friday.

I went out to introduce the new queen on Saturday morning at about 10:00. The day was just beginning to warm up and the temp was in the low to mid 80's. Here is a photo of the Russian hybrid queen and 5 attendants.

I rigged up some wire and part of a coat hanger with which to hang the cage in the hive. Sorry you can't see the bees very well. The queen should stay in her cage for a while so the rest of the hive can get used to her scent. If she is released too soon she will be killed.

Anyway, I set the queen cage off to the side in the grass while I got into the hive. Virginia was stacked up with 4 supers. The top super was still empty, the next was about 50% filled with nectar, and in the next one I saw the following three photos. (I hope you can click on the photos and get a closer view. Sometimes Blogger works that way with my photos and sometimes it doesn't.)

Multiple eggs in the cells! Two things are wrong with this. First of all there was no queen. I know this because there had been no eggs or brood for quite some time and I did not see any queen cells in the hive before she went queenleess. Second of all there are multiple eggs in the cells. I saw some cells with up to 5 eggs in them. To me this looks like the work of laying workers: my worst nightmare come true. (If you are unfamiliar with laying workers click here for a quick explanation) Laying workers are very difficult to get rid of, and this late in the summer I don't know if there would be time to rescue the hive even if I were able to get rid of the blasted things. In any case, once you have laying worker(s) it does no good to introduce a new queen because all the bees think they have a laying queen and will kill the new queen as soon as she is released.

I finished looking through the hive and found no eggs in the deep hive bodies which were nearly full of honey. I then put the hive back together and picked up the new queen wondering what I would do with her now. As it turned out I didn't need to wonder at all. As the sun heated up overhead it baked the queen and her attendants- they were all dead in the cage! What a day! I was really bummed out about the prognosis of the hive. I did not realize that I had become emotionally attached, not to the individual bees but to the hive as one single organism.

I convinced myself that there might be a little bit of hope left. If I had missed a queen cell before Virginia went queenless and she had just started to lay, she might be laying multiple eggs in a cell before she gets her laying legs under her. That did actually happen when Georgia superceded last year. Is it possible? Yes- but I think chances are pretty slim.

Today I got back into the hives. I figured that if there could be a new queen in Virginia then I needed to make sure she was down in the deep hive bodies so the honey supers don't get turned into the brood nest. I went through each super frame by frame and brushed every bee down into the top deep hive body and reassembled the supers. I looked for eggs and brood also and found that about 50% of the cells with eggs had multiple eggs and about 50% had single eggs. Only a few of the larva that had hatched were being capped- most were drone cells (indicative of laying workers) but a couple looked like workers. So maybe a queen?

Now see if you can follow my logic for what I did next. A) Virginia has a relatively small population of bees since bees have been dying but have not been replaced since there has not been a queen. B) Virginia had tons of space with 4 supers and relatively few bees. C) Georgia's population has been growing as she has been queen-right since her swarm early in the summer but has much less space with only 3 supers. D) If Virginia does not have a queen but does have laying workers then drone brood will continue to muck up the frames of honey that are being stored in her supers since laying workers can move up and down through the queen excluder.

So here is what I did. I removed a couple deep frames of honey in the upper deep hive body and replaced them with frames of empty comb. Hopefully this will give the queen (if there is one) space to lay eggs. I then found all of Virginia's frames with any eggs or brood and condensed them down into a single super and put that back on above the queen excluder and put an empty super on top of that. I took all of Virginia's frames of honey and combined them together into a couple of supers and put them on top of Georgia. Now Virginia may or may not be queen-right and has 2 supers. Georgia is queen right and is very tall with 5 supers- one of them is empty, one is about 50% full, and 3 are nearly 100% full.

Do I know what is going on inside of Virginia? Nope. Am I doing the right things to manage the situation? Not sure of that either. Maybe in a week or two I will have a better idea- or maybe I won't.

Garden Bees

2011-07-24T12:38:00.006-06:00

I got the camera back yesterday after missing it for a few weeks. I had to go out this morning and find some bees in the garden that would pose for some pictures.

This first photo is one of the bees pollinating our yellow squash.

This next photo shows a bee collecting nectar from one of the many clover blossoms in our lawn.

This next set contains photos of the hollyhocks. They are a good source of pollen- they produce a ton of it. But I think the bees use them as a nectar source as well.

These last two are photos of a bee as it was pollinating our cantaloupe vines.

The cucumbers do have blossoms but I could not find any bees on them this morning. We also have some sunflowers at one end of the garden. I am sure we will have some pictures of them later on this summer.

Progress Is Slow

2011-07-23T10:35:00.004-06:00

I peeked in on the bees today. They are making little progress in the honey supers. I guess there probably is not a real strong nectar flow going on right now. The alfalfa flow was pretty intense at first but as the summer goes on it becomes less and less intense even though it continues to bloom. As the hay alfalfa grows after it is cut and blooms again we should get another strong flow for about a week or so. I understand that spotted knapweed is blooming right now in other parts of the country. Do we even have spotted knapweed here in Wyoming? And if so, do we have enough around Lovell to even make a difference?

Anyway, I checked them out last week and found that Virginia still had no eggs. I could have moved a frame of eggs from Georgia over to Virginia and let them raise a new queen, but that would have taken extra time to raise her, wait for her to mate, and then wait for her to get into a good laying routine. I decided to order a Russian hybrid queen from The Walter T Kelley Company. They could not ship her this week due to the high heat in the Midwest- nobody wants a cooked queen to arrive in the mail. She will be shipped early next week. The queen plus shipping and handling cost about $30- now that's an expensive bug! It does seem like a lot if you think of her as just a bug, but it seems pretty reasonable to me considering all you get out of her.

I decided to go with a Russian hybrid for a few of reasons. I have heard that they are hard workers and don't mind chilly rainy weather. I have read comments from other beekeepers in the Beesource forums that Russians will get out and start working before the sun is all the way up and even when it is chilly and rainy. They have said that when their other bees are tucked away inside the hives the Russian are out working. Another reason is that Russians apparently build up more slowly in the spring. That might not be good for southern beekeepers who need big numbers for strong nectar flows in March, but I am hoping that it will translate into fewer bees and thus less swarming before the big nectar flow starts in June. I have also read that they are a very hardy breed and over-winter better than other breeds and that they are more naturally resistant to mites, nosema, and other pests. These last reasons are not as critical to me as I have not seen a single varroa mite or any other pest in the three years I have had my bees, they have not had any problem over-wintering, and so far nosema has not been bad enough to cause any lasting effect on either hive.

I mentioned in my last post that Georgia had filled the queen excluder in with wax and had effectively sealed the workers out of the supers. I had cleaned out the excluder and placed it back on the hive. Last week they were in the process of sealing it off again, so I removed it completely. Today I was a little worried that the queen might have moved up and laid eggs in the honey supers. Both of the supers were full of bees but there were no eggs or brood up there. That is good. Last year I removed the excluder and ended up with brood in the supers and then had a heck of a time getting the queen back down in the deep hive bodies.

So there we are- Virginia is still queenless with four supers. The bees are making slow progress filling them up with honey. Her Russian hybrid queen should arrive sometime next week. Georgia is queen-right and is also making slow progress in the two supers on top of her hive.

Some good news- Chris and the kids are coming home today! I have not seen them for 2 weeks. It will be so nice to have everybody home again. They are also bringing the camera back with them so next post there should be some pictures to accompany all this text.

Asymmetry

2011-07-15T18:22:00.004-06:00

Wow, I haven't said anything about the bees in quite a while. I had to go back and reread my previous post to remember what has been going on.

First I had better apologize for not including any pictures. Chris and the kids have left me home alone for a couple of weeks and took the camera with them. You will have to try to see it all in you mind's eye.

Let's see... When I last posted about a month ago I was checking on the bees a while after Georgia swarmed. We were waiting for Georgia's new queen to start laying eggs. While she did not have any eggs there were still a lot of bees. I had put a honey super on each hive and found that Virginia was storing some nectar up there but Georgia had not stored any.

The alfalfa and Russian olive bloom started on about June 20th. White dutch clover that shows up in so many yards started blooming shortly before. I had put a second super on each hive in anticipation of this big nectar flow and hoped that the bees would fill them up. At the end of June we left town for a while. (I came back after ten days but Chris and the kids are still gone.) Before we left I decided to throw on a third super just to make sure they would have room- I was feeling pretty optimistic. I also checked the brood boxes and found that Virginia now had no eggs (she may have swarmed) and Georgia now had a laying queen.

I arrived back home and found that Virginia had filled all 3 supers 75-90% with nectar! I was very excited and quickly threw on a fourth super. Virginia still had no eggs, however. If she did swarm earlier it might have been too early for her new queen to start laying. I will have time in a few days to check on her again. If I still don't find any eggs I will be ordering a new queen from a supplier. I think I would like to try a Russian queen this time if I can.

After seeing how much nectar Virginia had collected I was excited to look into Georgia. Much to my disappointment Georgia's supers were completely empty. As I removed the last super I discovered that the queen excluder was almost completely clogged with wax and propolis. The bees had effectively sealed off the honey supers- they couldn't have stored nectar there if they had wanted to. I also found that they were back filling the broodnest with honey. There were still eggs and uncapped brood, but there wasn't much room for the queen to lay. I removed the excluder, cleaned it out (placing the excluder on several layers of newspaper and then going after it with a hairdryer is a pretty quick way to clean it out), and put it back in the hive. Maybe I should have kept it out- I guess we will find out in a few days. I am hoping the bees will move all that nectar/honey in the broodnest up into the super and give the queen a little more room to lay.

I removed two of the empty supers from Georgia and will put them back on as they are needed. The two hives are not looking very symmetrical right now as one hive is standing tall with four supers and the other is stunted with just one.

Post Swarm Check-Up

2011-06-11T17:54:00.003-06:00

I peeked in the hives a few days ago. I just wanted to see how much progress they were making in the honey super.

They each had one medium honey super I put on a while back. Then on May 25th I checked to see how much nectar they had collected. Virginia had stored next to nothing but Georgia had filled about 4 frames a quarter of the way with nectar. With the fruit tree bloom over and the alfalfa bloom not yet started I wasn't sure if there was enough nectar coming in to make a difference.

Since I was just going to peek under the hood for a second I didn't bother smoking the bees. They were very calm and didn't give me any trouble. I looked at about 5 frames in Virginia's super first and found that she had stored a fair amount nectar in about 4 or 5 frames. I close her up and went over to Georgia who swarmed not too long ago.

After seeing the progress Virginia had made I was very hopeful for Georgia, but, to my disappointment, Georgia had almost no nectar in the super. I thought that maybe the bees had consumed it all as they were preparing to swarm. The bees that are planning on leaving with a swarm will gorge themselves on honey and nectar so they have something to live on before they are able to collect nectar for their new home.

As I was about to close Georgia up I decided that maybe I should peek in the brood boxes to see what was left after the swarm. Even though I did not have my smoker with me the bees were very calm even while I was down in the brood nest. I did not see any eggs or larva but I did see quite a bit of capped brood. I also came across a handful of queen cells. They were not hanging off the bottom of the frames like many swarm cells do- these were about halfway up the frames so I am hoping they were supercedure cells rather than more swarm cells. I also found that the bees were filling the brood nest with nectar.

It is not too surprising that there were no eggs or larva. Since the hive swarmed they were either left queenless until the other queens emerge or there was a new virgin queen that would not have had time to mate and start lying eggs. Even though the bees are filling the brood boxes with nectar there is still a lot of space for the new queen to lay and as the capped brood emerges there will be even more space. I figure that they will move the nectar back up into the supers once the queen starts laying and needs more space.

I was surprised to find that Georgia was still so full of bees. Especially considering that the swarm that left her appeared so large. I think that she will recover nicely and will still have a good productive year.

I did put another super on top of each hive- they now have two medium honey supers. They don't need them yet but alfalfa and Russian olives should be blooming soon (last year they both bloomed about June 20th) I expect nectar to be coming in fast and furious when that happens.

Swarm!

2011-06-01T23:56:00.008-06:00

One of the hives decided to swarm today. I assume it was Georgia as she was the strongest of the two hives and had a noticeably larger population.

I was in the middle of my lunch break when my cell phone rang. It was Chris, my wife, calling to tell me that our neighbor had just stopped by to tell her that our bees were hanging out in her bushes. She thought that they had all left the hive and landed in her yard. She was not at all upset or afraid- she really thought it was kind of neat. She just thought we might want to take them back.

Chris would have collected them herself, but I wanted to get in on the action too. It took me half an hour to get home then we rounded up the gear and the box we were going to put them in. As we walked around the corner into the neighbor's yard we walked into a big cloud of bees. They were just in the process of taking off again! We followed the cloud down the block and suddenly they were gone- we couldn't figure out which way they went.

Chris got a few pictures of the swarm before I got home.

So much for my minimalist approach this year. Last year my attempts to prevent swarming left the hives queenless and this year we lost a bunch of our bees in a swarm. It would have been nice to have recovered this swarm and started a third hive.

We Have Nectar!

2011-05-25T13:25:00.006-06:00

This is just a quick update on the status of the hives. Back on May 13th we inspected the hives and put a medium honey super on top of each hive. The bees had plenty of room in the brood nest, but since dandelions and fruit trees were starting to bloom we thought we would give the bees room to store honey if they needed it. We have not had a lot of sunny calm days since then, but since today we are getting a break from the rain I decided to take a quick look in the supers to see if they had made any progress up there.

I first popped the top off Virginia and looked through a few frames. The super had quite a few bees up in it but was certainly not full of bee by any means. I looked at four frames and found a only five or six cells with nectar on each frame. I was not too surprised by this considering the relatively little time the bees have had to forage.

I then moved over to Georgia and found the super very full of bees. I looked at five frames and found significant nectar on three of them. Each of the three frams was about 1/4 full of nectar. These two photos show the nectar shining in the sunlight.Just think of what Georgia could have accomplished if we had had decent weather! I do hope that the weather dries out so the bees can take advantage of the fruit trees etc. before they finish blooming.

As for the fewer number of bees in Georgia- here are my thoughts (I could be wrong and probably
am): Back on May 13th we discovered 2 queens in Georgia's hive. They were just a couple of inches apart and one of them was missing a wing. I do not think they were in the middle of swarming or the existing queen would have swarmed before the new queen emerged from her queen cell. Since one of the queens was missing a wing I figure the she was the existing queen and the bees had superceded with a new queen. I have heard that the mother and daughter queens can live side by side for a while in this situation. If the existing queen either left or died there would be a period of time with no brood production before her daughter had time to mate and start laying eggs. That could explain the fewer numbers in Virginia's hive.

In any case, it looks like we are getting started with this years honey production. Can't wait!

Photos Of Nectar Flows

2011-05-22T18:37:00.010-06:00

We have had a few days of rain which has kind of put a damper on the bees' ability to get out and forage for nectar. But today has been a beautiful day so I took the opportunity to get out with the camera and snap a few photos of the girls while at work.

The dandelions are in full bloom right now and our yard is one big yellow field. If the sun is shining and there isn't much wind you can see the bees fly up around your feet with every step.

The dandelions are a welcome sight in the spring. They are among the first flowers to bloom after the willows get under way and are a major pollen and nectar sources for springtime.

A lot of fruit trees are also getting underway. These next two photos are from the pear tree in our back yard.

The bees do seem to enjoy the pear blossoms but so far that has not translated into a lot of pears on the tree. We are usually lucky to get just one or two. I am not aware of a lot of pear trees in town. For all I know, this may be the only one.

The next two are bees on the apple tree also in the back yard.

There are a lot of apple trees in town and I think they are all blooming right now.

Besides apple trees there are a lot of crab apple trees in town. Since our community is not large the entire town is within easy foraging distance of the hives. This next photo is a crab apple tree just around the block from our house.

You can see how it is covered in pink/purple blossoms. That looks like a lot of nectar to me.

These next two photos show some little purple flowers that have been springing up in vacant lots and other open spaces. I do not know what they are called but the bees seem to like them well enough.

These purple flowers seem to spread quickly and I'm sure no one wants them coming up in their yards, but I don't mind them on the canal banks supplying forage for the bees.

Besides these trees and flowers in the preceding photos it seems like just about every hedge, shrub, and flowering tree is bursting in blossom. If we can just get some nice sunny warm days the bees might be able to pack away a little honey.

These last two photos were taken this morning. The bees were very busy taking off to go foraging as well as performing orientation flights. I wanted to get a picture showing how many were in the air.

These photos do not quite show how many bees were actually in the air. But if you multiply the bees you see here by 5 or 6 you might get the idea.

Last year the bees continued to fill the supers up with nectar even after the main dandelion flow and the fruit tree flows were finished and before the alfalfa bloom started. I suppose there must be other various wildflowers and weeds along the canals, ditch banks, and road sides. Last year the alfalfa bloom started on about June 20th- that is when honey production cranks up in earnest. I think that this spring hasn't been quite as cool and wet as last year so maybe things will really start moving a little earlier than last year.

Queens... Living And Dead

2011-05-13T23:20:00.012-06:00

We finally made it back into the hives today. It had been a while. This year I am taking more of a minimalist approach to managing the hives. There are two reasons for this. First, I have just been so dang busy this year. I have hardly had time to think about the bees much less actively manage them. Secondly, last year I started feeding sugar syrup and pollen patties when it started warming up at the end of March. Both hive populations built up explosively and then I was left trying to prevent swarming by opening up the brood chamber on more than one occasion. With all those manipulations both hives ended up going queen-less for a good portion of the summer. This year I fed them bee candy and crystallized honey to get them through until the nectar flows got underway this spring. Here is what we found today:

We started with Virginia. I did not want to go through every frame, just check on a few to make sure the queen had been laying and to see if they were getting crowded. On the very first frame we pulled we saw two queens a few inches apart. This was very exciting. I had not seen a queen in either hive since shortly after we hived the original packages in 2009. Here is a photo of one ofthe queens.

I don't know why there were two queens in the hive or if there might have been more somewhere in there. If you look closely you can see that this queen is missing a wing. Maybe she was the old queen and is being superceded because of her injury. Who knows?

Both hives have some empty frames so there is plenty of space for the queens to lay.

During the last inspection back in April, both queens were laying in loose spotty patterns. Here is an example of their brood patterns lately.

The pattern is looking a lot better!

We came across two queens in Georgia as well. These queens were not live adult bees, though. As I pulled the top box off we found this next image on top of the frames below.

It is a photo of two queen pupae that were apparently in queen cells on the bottom of one of the frames in the upper box. Queen cells hang so low that they frequently get attached to the frames below them. The cells were torn open exposing these to pupae. Since they were on the bottoms of the frames they would be in swarm cell position. I am not sure why the bees would be making swarm cells as there is plenty of space in the hive for the queen to continue laying. In remaining consistent with my minimalist approach this year I am going to assume that the bees know what they are doing and will let them figure things out themselves.

The bees have been very active for the last several weeks. I have seen lots of pollen coming in. In fact, here is a photo of a frame full of pollen.

It was really kind of pretty- an entire frame packed full of bright yellow pollen.

Dandelions are in full bloom right now as are some plum trees and a few apples. The apple trees in our yard will blossom shortly and the pear blossoms are ready to pop open any minute. The crab apple trees around town are also very close to blooming.

With these current nectar flows and those that are about to start we went ahead and put a honey super on each of the hives. I spaced the frames out to nine frames in a ten frame super. I tried this last year, and it makes it easier to uncap the frames at honey harvest time as the comb is drawn out a little deeper and extends beyond the edges of the frames.

If it stays nice and warm maybe the alfalfa will bloom a little earlier than it did last year and honey production will crank up into high gear.

Spring Cleaning

2011-04-16T21:30:00.008-06:00

Earlier in the week I made it into the hives for the first inspections of the year. Each inspection took a while as there was a lot of cleaning up to do. A whole winter's worth of wax and propolis doesn't clean up easily. Everything was stuck together and there was a mess of bees, wax, etc. in the bottom that needed to be cleaned up.

I modified my management style this year. Last year I was so excited to get the colonies built up that I started feeding sugar syrup and pollen patties in about the middle of March. The populations increased quickly, and by the time summer was coming on I was trying to prevent swarming. With all of the hive manipulations to keep them from swarming both hives ended up going queenless for a good part of the summer. This year I decided to hang tight and only feed them bee candy to keep them from starving.

So here we are in the middle of April and I have seen pollen coming for about a week and the bees have been doing orientation flights for quite a while. As I dug through the hives I found quite a bit of honey and a fair amount of pollen left from last year as well as new pollen from this spring. Both hives have good healthy populations with eggs, larva, and capped brood. I am glad I haven't been feeding sugar syrup or the numbers would be booming way too early.

This first photo shows a few bees on a frame with a small bit of honey.

There were several more frames with a lot more honey than this.

This next photo just shows some of the brood. This pattern is kind of spotty but I suppose it will get better as the queen gets things cranking this summer.

Here is the bottom board of Virginia's hive. There was a lot of bits of wax, sugar from the bee candy, pollen, and piles of dead bees.

Finally, this last photo shows the underside of Virginia's screened bottom board. It is tipped up on its side leaning back against the other hive. Last summer some of the bees crawled underneath and started building this comb. I don't have any idea why they felt compelled to do this. I cleaned it all up but wonder if they will just do the same thing again this year. All the eggs and brood were in the upper deep hive bodies in each hive. Since I had torn the hives completely apart to clean it all up I too the opportunity to reverse the hive bodies. The queens should now have plenty of room to move up and fill all those empty frames with brood. Hopefully this will prevent any swarming while still building numbers to be ready for the nectar flows in the coming months.

First Pollen Of The Year

2011-04-13T22:48:00.004-06:00

Finally! The first pollen of the year started coming in 2 days ago. It is kind of exciting when you see it for the first time in the spring. It makes me feel like summer is almost here.

The pussy willow started blooming 2 days ago also. Last year it bloomed on April 11th so we are just about on the same schedule. You can read about last year's pussy willow bloom right here. It appears as though something besides the pussy willow was also blooming because there were actually 2 different colors of pollen coming in. There was a light yellow and a dark orange.

Anyway- here are a few pictures of bees on the pussy willow.

I love taking pictures of the bees!

Spring WIll Come... Eventually

2011-02-24T12:29:00.003-07:00

It is cold and snowy again- the temperature is supposed to hover right around zero degrees for the next couple of days. I am ready for spring to arrive- I'm sure it will, eventually. Even though it is cold and snowy I am getting excited for bee season.

I found this really cool map tool that can be used to draw a radius of any distance around your hives so you can see the potential foraging area of your bees. Click right here to follow the link and use the map tool.

In the image below I have drawn a 1.5 mile radius around my 2 hives.
The green rectangles indicate known alfalfa fields for seed production that blossom continuously throughout the summer. The orange outline indicates where there is a large concentration of Russian olive trees along the river bottom. They bloom for about a week and provide a good source of nectar and pollen. The blue line cutting across the map indicates the approximate location of a canal which is a potential water source for the bees as well as providing habitat for more Russian olives. Last year the alfalfa bloom and the Russian olive bloom occurred at the same time on about June 20th.

There are other nectar sources within the radius besides those outlined on the map. There are lots of other alfalfa fields which are cut for hay. Our farmers usually get 3 or 4 cuttings each summer and it seems like the alfalfa blooms for several days to a week before the fields are cut. There are also lots of pastures which contain dandelions, clover, other wildflowers, and even nectar producing weeds. This all combined for a total of 15 gallons of honey harvested from our two hives at the beginning of last September.

I'm sure the bees will travel further than 1.5 miles to collect nectar and pollen. I just suppose that the majority of our honey production comes from nectar collected within this radius. There was a study performed right here in Wyoming to determine exactly how far bees would travel. The study found that bees would travel up to 7 miles to forage- but at that distance they consumed more honey in order to travel the 7 miles than they were able to produce. The max distance the bees could travel and still produce excess honey was 4 miles. You can read a short article about that study by clicking right here. It really is quite interesting. But right now it is time to shovel the walks one more time.

The Candy Is In The Hives

2011-02-14T13:28:00.007-07:00

The bee candy is in the hives. It was pretty easy to make. The recipe I followed just called for water, sugar and vinegar. There are other recipes that use water, sugar, Karo Syrup, and cream of tartar. A quick internet search will bring up a few different recipes. Below is a picture of the candy cooling in the molds.

I used two 9"x9" disposable baking pans lined with waxed paper. I didn't want to make a very big batch on my first try in case it didn't work out very well.

These next two pictures show Virginia first and then Georgia with there cakes of bee candy.

You can see in Georgia's picture that the candy is broken in two. I wanted to see how strong the candy was. It is about the consistency of stiff fudge but not as heavy. The waxed paper was difficult to peel off. The bees will eat the candy off any bits of paper that remain and will probably remove the paper form the hive if I don't get back in there first. I put jars of crystallized honey in as well. I wonder which one the bees will eat first.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Georgia's cluster looked pretty small. When I opened her up today I saw that the bees were covering almost half of the frames. Looks like there are more bees left than there first appeared.

We are supposed to continue with warm weather for a couple more days and then get cold. I don't know when it will be warm enough to check on them again. I think I will prepare in advance and make up more candy just in case they need more before it is warm enough to put on a top feeder.

February Thaw

2011-02-12T15:06:00.004-07:00

It finally warmed up a little- enough for the bees to get out for some cleansing flights. I walked over to the hives today and saw little yellow spots all over the snow. I also saw several bees who went out to relieve themselves, got chilled, and crash landed on the snow never to see the inside of their hive again. Some people think this is kind of sad, but I have always thought of the entire hive as being one organism. If some bees are lost I am not bothered as long as the individual hive remains healthy.

Since it was a little warmer today I wanted to see how the bees were doing and how much honey they have left. I had a chance to pop the tops back in the first part of January- at that time both clusters were in the upper deep just below the medium supers that are sitting on top. I wasn't sure how much honey they might have gone through since then so I thought it might be a good idea to have something ready to feed them just in case. Last year I tried the mountain camp method of feeding- that mostly left a big mess in the hives. I didn't have anything else ready to go so I filled a couple of pint jars with some old crystallized honey and figured I could lay them down on their sides on top of the frames. That would give me time to whip up some bee candy to put in on Monday or Tuesday. (It is supposed to keep getting into the upper 30's and 40's for a few more days.) Here is a picture of the emergency feed I had ready to go.

I first opened up Georgia's hive and this is what I found:Georgia's cluster appears small. I am not sure if it really is that small or if the majority of the cluster was still down below. I did not want to disturb them too much to find out. She still has about 7 medium frames of honey left.

I next popped open Virginia's hive. This is what I found under her cover:Virginia's cluster covers about half of the medium super. She also has about 7 medium frames of honey left in her super.

I decided I did not need to provide the crystallized honey as emergency feed today. I will make some bee candy this weekend and place it in the hives on Monday. I think I might put both the honey and the bee candy in at the same time. It will be interesting if they take all the honey before starting on the candy, or if they will take them simultaneously. I have never made bee candy before so this will be a new adventure. I will use a recipe I found on beekeeping.com.

At this point it looks like Virginia has the healthier hive and larger colony. Last year it was just the opposite and Georgia had a booming hive while Virginia struggled all spring. They both ended up requeening themselves last summer so I don't know which one has the better queen now.

Lastly, we drove up to Cody this morning to run a few errands. As we were driving back I noticed that the willow trees up there are turning bright orange. Willows are probably the first plants that offer the bees any kind of forage each spring. From what I have been able to research on the internet it looks like bees use willows for both nectar and pollen. This does get me a little excited for spring to arrive, but I know that we are still a long way off from any significant nectar flow. It is hard to be patient.

So Cold!!

2011-02-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

I am sick and tired of the cold!!

Hive A Happy New Year

2011-01-05T10:04:00.007-07:00

It's a new year and the bees have been doing their winter thing. They have spent the first part of this year tightly clustered inside the hives. In fact, they have spent the last month or so in tight clusters. There were a few days at the end of November when we had some temps warm enough for the bees to clean out some of their dead. Since then, however, I don't think a single bee has stuck its head outside the hives. We have had a few weeks of temps hovering around zero degrees F and only a few days at or above freezing. With the cold weather I have not seen any yellow spots in the snow- they have not been able to get out for any cleansing flights. They can sure hold it for a long time.

I walked over to the hives on New Year's Day and brushed the drifted snow out of the entrances. As I was bent down near the entrance I could hear the buzz from the cluster without knocking on the sides. I am not 100% sure but I think that is good news. I am pretty sure it means that since I could hear them so easily the bees must still be down in the bottom deep hive body. Bees usually start the winter in the bottom of the hive and move up as they consume the honey they have stored. Since they are still in the bottom, they still have the upper deep and the medium super to get them through the rest of the winter.

Here is what the hives are looking like on this cold January day.
I hope everyone had a good 2010 and that 2011 will be even better!

Bee Pollen And Warfarin

2010-12-06T20:26:00.002-07:00

I heard about a case study in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy which describes an interaction between bee pollen and warfarin resulting in an elevated INR. In other words, taking bee pollen along with warfarin (an anticoagulant or "blood thinner") could cause "thinner blood" and increase the chance of bleeding. I do have to mention that calling anticoagulants "blood thinners" is one of my pet peeves. The viscosity of blood is not affected; its ability to clot is.

The full article cannot be viewed without a password, but the abstract is available. If you could read the full article you would find that the interaction is most likely due to the variety of flavenoids in the bee pollen which inhibit warfarin metabolism by the liver. Anyway, you can read the abstract here if you would like.

I See Dead Bees

2010-11-28T22:24:00.002-07:00

I know the bees are alive because I saw a bunch of their dead today.

We have had such a mild fall this year. We had highs in the 60's clear into November. The last few weeks have turned cold and snowy, though. I hadn't seen the bees in quite a while and then the snow came. It blew into the entrances and froze in place so the bees had no way to get out even if they wanted to. I pressed my ear against the sides of the hives and knocked- last winter I could always hear a buzz coming from inside, but this time I heard nothing. I was a little worried that they were not ready for the cold snap and that something had happened to them. I shouldn't have worried- bees have been taking care of themselves for millions of years.

I took a walk over to the hives today and saw some good news- dead bees. With the warmer temps the last few days the ice in the entrances melted and the bees began clearing out some of the dead that had accumulated inside the hives. There were about 10 dead bees laying on top of the snow in front of each hive. As the winter progresses we will find more bees that die and are cleared out by the bees left inside. They are very hygienic creatures.

Crystallizing Honey

2010-11-07T18:29:00.002-07:00

It's happening a little earlier than it did last year.

Last year we extracted honey in September and it finally started crystallizing in about March. This year we extracted at the beginning of September and we have been seeing signs of crystallization for a couple of weeks now. The honey is getting cloudier and cloudier. I guess this year there must have been more nectar sources with higher glucose contents. Honey with a high glucose content will crystallize more quickly and honey with a high fructose content will crystallize more slowly- it all depends on the nectar source. I could tell that this year's honey is a little different from last year's- it is a little darker in color and its flavor is, for lack of a better work, a little "fuller".

It really doesn't bother me that is crystallizing now- it is not difficult to reliquify. Besides that, a sticky honey jar is one of my pet peeves. We use a lot of our honey on top of oatmeal, and the kids are always stickifying the jar when they transfer honey to the oatmeal. Once it crystallizes the kids can scoop out some crystallized honey without making a mess- the honey relifquifies as it is mixed into the hot oatmeal. It's a win-win. The kids still get their honey and I don't have to deal with a sticky honey jar!

Fall Feeding

2010-10-19T13:37:00.006-06:00

Fall is here and that means it is time to feed the bees.

At the beginning of September we harvested honey and stole all the honey the bees made this summer. Now it is time to make sure the bees have enough stores to get them through the winter. Since we pulled the honey early in September the bees had a fall nectar flow from sunflowers, goldenrod, and a few other blooms that occurred this fall. Besides their 2 deep hive bodies I left them each a medium super to fill back up with honey. To be sure they have enough, I am supplementing their feed with sugar syrup.

They say that in the fall you should make the sugar syrup in a 2:1 (sugar to water) mixture- this is supposed to stimulate honey storage. In the spring you are supposed to feed with sugar syrup in a 1:1 mixture to stimulate brood production. I don't know why this makes a difference to the bees, but that is what the experts say. Last fall I fed a 2:1 mixture but had problems with the sugar precipitating and clogging up the feeder. This year I am using a 1.5:1 mixture and it seems to be working pretty well.

The first gallon of sugar syrup given to each hive this fall also contained fumagillin. Fumagillin is an antibiotic used to treat and prevent nosema. Nosema is a protozoan that likes to infect the GI tract of honeybees and cause dysentery. Feeding on sugar syrup that contains fumagillin all winter will hopefully keep the bees good and healthy.

Hear is a photo looking inside the feeder.
Last year a lot of bees fell down into the syrup and drowned. This year I took a wire brush and roughed up the inside of the plexiglass shield to give the bees feet little ridges to cling to. I don't think I have found any dead bees in the feeder this fall.

This photo shows the bees close up.

You can see them lined up across the feeder sucking up the syrup as they prepare for winter.

Wasp Wars

2010-09-29T13:17:00.002-06:00

This morning I walked past the hives and saw a bunch of activity in front of Virginia. There were several wasps trying to gain access to the hive. Every time one would try to get through the entrance the bees would gang up on it and drive it out. I saw one bee take on a wasp all by itself- the two wrestled for a couple of seconds on the front porch and then took flight while still locked together. They flew a couple of feet and fell to the ground. The bee then flew back to the entrance, turned to face the outside, and filled in the gap in the line of guard bees across the front. I am so proud of those girls!

Unscrupulous Beekeepers?

2010-09-26T20:45:00.006-06:00

Do you believe that such a thing exists? I suppose no industry is perfect.

The following article describes dishonest honey producing practices. The offenders should definitely be punished. My fear, though, is that some, as good intentioned as they may be, will get their way and the FDA will establish nation-wide honey standards. Sounds great- right? But the federal government will have no authority to do this and may (some would say "probably") end up requiring that honey producers prove that their honey is not adulterated. This would put the burden on the rest of the honest beekeepers who just want to be left alone to do what they have always done.

Remember what Thomas Jefferson said: "It is the natural order of things for government to grow and liberty to yield."

Government will always, in the name of improving our lives and keeping us secure, usurp our liberty UNLESS the people actively prevent that from happening.

I read another quote, also by Jefferson, I believe, that says "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have."

I'm not saying nothing should or could be done- but let's be careful what we ask for.

Anyway, here is the article:

RALEIGH, N.C. – You might call them the Honey Police — beekeepers and honey producers ready to comb through North Carolina to nab unscrupulous sellers of sweet-but-bogus "funny honey."

North Carolina is the latest state to create a standard that defines "pure honey" in a bid to curb the sale of products that have that label but are mostly corn syrup or other additives. Officials hope to enforce that standard with help from the 12,000 or so Tar Heel beekeepers.

"The beekeepers tend to watch what's being sold, they watch the roadside stands and the farmer's markets," said John Ambrose, an entomologist and bee expert at North Carolina State University who sits on the newly created Honey Standards Board.

Florida was the first state to adopt such standards in 2009. It's since been followed by California, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Similar efforts have been proposed in at least 12 other states, including North and South Dakota, the nation's largest producers of honey, together accounting for roughly one-third of U.S. output.

Beekeepers and honey packers around the country are fuming about products masquerading as real honey, and they hope the state-by-state strategy will secure their ultimate goal: a national rule banning the sale of any product as pure honey if it contains additives.

Americans consume about 350 million pounds of honey per year, but just 150 million pounds are made domestically, creating a booming market for importers and ample temptation to cut pure honey with additives such as corn syrup that are far less expensive to produce.

This month, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago announced the indictments of 11 German and Chinese executives and six companies on charges that they avoided nearly $80 million in honey tariffs and sold honey tainted with banned antibiotics.

The scale of the problem nationwide is hard to gauge. It's largely a concern for the big producers who make most of America's honey, said Bob Bauer, vice president of the National Honey Packers and Dealers Association.

"The honey industry is looking to be proactive and take whatever steps are necessary not only to keep it from becoming a widespread problem, but to get rid of it entirely," he said.

The most passionate supporters of the laws tend to be beekeepers and other small producers outraged at what they see as the corruption of their craft.

"They're trading on the good name of honey to sell their product," Kenosha, Wis., beekeeper Tim Fulton said of phony honey peddlers.

Ambrose said the North Carolina board — formed by the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the state Beekeepers Association — won't be a "honey patrol."

The board will instead respond to complaints about improperly marketed honey, which under state law is now defined as what honeybees produce: no more, no less. Once a complaint has been received, a state-approved lab will test the product. If it's not pure honey, the state can order it to be removed from sale and impose fines for subsequent violations.

"You can go to roadside stands throughout the western part of the state and they'll try to sell you Karo syrup and swear it's sourwood honey," said Charles Heatherly, a North Carolina beekeeper.

Sourwood — Heatherly calls it "the Cadillac of North Carolina honey" — is mostly found in the state's mountainous west. It can cost up to $10 a pound, making it an attractive target for adulteration.

It was a similar impersonation of local honey that provoked Nancy Gentry, a beekeeper who owns Cross Creek Honey in Interlachen, Fla., to launch a bid to get a honey standard not just in her home state, but around the country.

"People were taking raw honey, adding high fructose corn syrup and marketing it as grade A USDA No. 1 honey, but there is no such thing," said Dick Gentry, Nancy's husband and a retired trial lawyer who helped steer the campaign in Florida.

But the real sting in the Florida provision, and in standards adopted in California, Wisconsin and North Carolina, is that it makes it easier to file lawsuits against purveyors of bogus honey.

Agencies have been reluctant to create standards for honey ever since a Michigan jury in 1995 found in favor of a honey processing firm that had been accused of cutting the product with an additive. The jurors said there weren't enough regulations governing honey to make the charge stick and that the government failed to identify the additive.

Under the new laws, it isn't necessary to know out what's being added to honey. Any additive, from cane sugar to corn syrup, deprives it of the label "pure honey."

That could prompt retailers or beekeepers to file more lawsuits.

"For us, it is through the civil courts, then, that we take back the product," Nancy Gentry told an industry group in Fresno, Calif., according to a transcript of her speech. "We crush unscrupulous packers and throw out honey pretenders."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has worked to block the sale of honey contaminated with potentially harmful chemicals, and it's reviewing a petition seeking a national honey standard, spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said.

In the meantime, North Carolina beekeepers promise to keep on the lookout to ensure every jar of honey holds what the label says.

"Some of the people who think they've been buying sourwood all these years have actually been buying corn syrup, and they have no idea what they're missing," Ambrose said.

Cleaning Up The Supers

2010-09-22T21:52:00.005-06:00

Last weekend I posted about this years honey harvest. Today I will just comment on how we cleaned up the supers.

After extracting the honey the supers were still "wet". That is to say that the comb on the frames was still covered in honey- not enough to extract, but there was still enough to make everything sticky if it were left that way through the winter. Since bees love honey it made sense to let the bees clean it up.

A couple of days after extracting I took the supers out and put them back on the hives. This time, though, I left the inner cover between the brood nest and the supers. I guess the inner cover creates a barrier between the colony and the supers so the bees don't think of the supers as actually part of the hive and don't start storing honey up there again. I did leave the queen excluders in place- I didn't want to leave any chance that the queens would move up into the supers again. Anyway, the workers were able to move up and down through the hole in the middle of the inner cover.

After 4 days I took the supers back off. I found that the bees had cleaned up all the honey and repaired the comb that had been damaged during uncapping and extracting. I also found that the supers were full of bees. I didn't want to go through each frame and brush off all the bees again. So I laid the supers on the ground about 5 feet from the hives and let them sit overnight. The next day all the bees had moved back into the hives, and I took the supers back in the house. All in all it was a very easy process.

Now I still had a sticky extractor and some sticky buckets left in the house. I took them out and laid them on their sides next to the hives. It didn't take long for the bees to be all over them licking up the honey. After a day or two all the equipment was cleaned up and ready to be stored for the winter.

I can't wait for next year to do it all over again!

Honey Harvest 2010

2010-09-19T14:50:00.007-06:00

Extracting honey is such an exciting time. Everything we do all year is in preparation for this one day. Here is how it all went:

The first step was to pull the supers off the hives. Last year I rigged up a fume board with some plywood and a piece of felt, sprayed on some "Bee-Quick", and tried to drive the bees out of the supers. I failed miserably. With the bees remaining in the supers I set them on the basketball court in the backyard and waited for evening. I figured that when the evening cooled off and the sun went down the bees would leave the supers and go home. That didn't work either. So I spent a couple of hours in the dark taking each frame individually over to the hives, brushing the bees off and then taking the frame inside the house. This year I tried a different approach.

On September 3rd I took out a large plastic tub which had been covered with a sheet out to the hives. I removed each frame from the super one at a time, brushed the bees off, put the frame in the tub, and replaced the sheet. When all the frames were removed from one super I brushed the remaining bees out and took the super over to the back door where I covered it with another sheet. I dragged the tub of frames over to the house, put the now beeless frames back in the super and replaced the sheet. I did this for 3 of Virginia's supers that evening. I repeated the process for 3 of Georgia's supers the next morning. It sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn't too bad. If a had more hives I would probably figure out a different method. I did have four supers on each hive, but the most recent addition to each hive was far from ready. I decided to leave them where they were and let the bees fill them up with honey this fall- a little extra insurance for their winter stores.

After running errands etc. on the morning of September 4th we got everything ready to go at about 3:oo pm. Here is a photo of the set up. We later moved the whole thing to the other end of the kitchen where it was a little warmer. The honey wasn't flowing very well sitting right next to the air conditioner.

At 3:00 on the 4th we got busy uncapping, spinning, and filtering. I figured it would take several hours to get it all done. We were up pretty late that night. Extracting 60 frames in a 3 frame tangential extractor took longer than I had anticipated. Next year's extraction day might turn into a 2 day event. Or maybe I just need to get a bigger extractor.

I will say this- The heated uncapping knife made all the difference in the world. It was so much faster and easier than last year when we used an unheated knife which had to be warmed up in hot water before uncapping each frame.

The homemade uncapping tank worked but could have been better. The following improvements will be made next year: a larger tub will be used (60 frames make a large pile of caps. It needed a larger surface area.), the cross beam will be moved to one end to provide a larger area for the caps to fall off the knife, the wire mesh will be redesigned to be lifted straight up out of the tub, and a honey gate will be installed. Or I could just take Chris' suggestion and order an uncapping tank from a beekeeping supplier.

Here are a few photos of the process. In this first photo I am uncapping a frame of honey. Here is a pile of caps in the uncapping tank. I'd say about half a gollon of honey dripped out of the caps and into the tank. We let it drip overnight and into the next afternoon.

These next two photos show a frame in the extractor (you are looking at the unextracted side) and an empty frame upon coming out of the extractor.

This next series shows the unfiltered honey pouring out of the extracor, the unfiltered honey in the bucket, and the filter it went through to clean it up.
We misjudged the number of 5 gallon buckets we would need. Since filtering is such a slow process we had to extract the honey into one bucket and slowly filter it into another. By the end we were catching honey in various pots and pans. In the end we had almost 15 gallons of honey- not bad! We finished filtering the next day. Here is a photo of the final product.
We have been selling it in pint and 1/2 pint jars and advertising just by word of mouth. It is mostly gone now- I plan on taking it to a farmers' market this week. We'll see if I can sell the rest of it there.

Honey Harvest- Final Numbers

2010-09-06T12:54:00.003-06:00

Final numbers for honey harvest 2010 (drum roll, please)...... 170 pounds and just under 15 gallons! Not bad. Add in the 2.5 gallons we extracted earlier in the summer and we got about 16 gallons for the year.

I just finished filtering the last of it this morning. I have to thanks Chris for letting me take over her kitchen for the last 2 1/2 days. Now it is time to clean up, process wax, and bottle the honey.

I will post again later with more details and some photos.

Homemade Uncapping Tank

2010-08-31T21:21:00.006-06:00

This weekend is quickly approaching and we have been trying to get ready for the extraction process. Last year we didn't have an uncapping tank so we tried to tie one of our plastic queen excluders to the top of a big plastic bin. It worked.... kind of. Let's just say it was a pain to use. This year I decided to build my own uncapping tank. Here is how it went:

I started by stealing one of Chris' plastic containers- one of those she usually uses to store old blankets, clothes, etc. I cut a couple of notches just big enough to fit a 2X4 on either side of the container. Then I drilled holes into the sides on both ends a few inches from the top.

I then cut a 2X4 just a little longer than the container is wide and put a screw all the way through about half way up the board.

Next I cut a couple of dowels the same length as the 2X4. I cut some hardware cloth down to size, wrapped the ends of it around the dowels, and laced it together with wire.

I put it all together by setting the hardware cloth down in the container (without the dowels) and then sliding the dowels in through the holes on one side, through the end loops in the hardware cloth, and out the other side. Then I set the 2X4 in its notches with the screw pointing up.

I should be able to place the end of a frame full of honey on the screw, uncap one side, and rotate it around on the screw to uncap the other side. The caps should get caught on the hardware cloth while the honey drips through to the bottom.

I put the 2X4 in the center so I could uncap onto either side of the tank- in retrospect, I wonder if it would have been better to put it further to one end in order to leave more room for the caps to fall. I suppose I can still change it if I need to.

The only thing left is to cut a hole near the bottom and install a honey gate. If this contraption works well I will see about doing that next year.

We Have Set A Date!

2010-08-28T19:34:00.004-06:00

It's official! We have committed to a date and will be extracting honey next Saturday, September 4, 2010. We will take pictures of the whole process and post them here when we are done.

I plan on taking a couple of jars to Rawlins, WY on September 11th for a silent auction at a Constitution Day dinner and fund raiser for the newly organized Constitution Party of Wyoming. It would be well worth your while to make it there that day- Scott Bradley, a constitutional authority, will be the guest speaker. Besides that, you can bid on my honey! If anyone would like more details I would be happy to pass them along.

In a non-bee related subject. I dug the beets this afternoon. Here is a photo of the beet harvest.

This is our first year with beets so we didn't plant very many. We will can them on Monday. If all goes well and we enjoy eating them this winter we might plant more of them next year.

This is always a busy time of year. Besides the beets, all the rest of the produce in our yard is getting ready to harvest. That also means canning and processing. Honey will be extracted next weekend and will need to be bottled. Tomatoes will all be ripening soon and that means tomato sauce. Apples will be ready to be picked sometime in September. Last year we canned apple pie filling; we are thinking about making apple sauce this year. Grapes will be picked about the first week in October. They will become juice or jelly. Onions, peppers, and some tomatoes will become salsa. We will dig the potatoes and carrots about the second week in October and will be used to can stew. It all keeps us busy- but it is so satisfying.

Her Majesty Has Returned

2010-08-24T12:28:00.006-06:00

The queen is home! Over the last few weeks I have been dealing with queens that moved up into the honey supers to lay their eggs.

Georgia's queen moved up one super, laid some eggs and went back down. I put the queen excluder on her and we have all been happy ever since. Virginia's queen, on the other hand, moved up two supers to start laying eggs. I thought she had moved back down as well so I put the queen excluder on. Last week I discovered that she had laid more eggs in the honey super and that the queen excluder had actually trapped her up there instead of down in the deep hive bodies. As I reported last week, I brushed all the bees in all four honey supers back down in to the deep hive bodies and replaced the queen excluder.

I checked on Virginia's honey supers again today and found plenty of capped brood and some larva. I didn't find any eggs and all the larva was more than a few days old. A good sign! Here is a photo of one of the frames out of that super.

Not a bad brood pattern- just not where I want it to be. There are some larva around the outside edges of the brood. This super was brand new with empty, combless frames when I put it on the hive, so the bees have worked hard to draw comb on all those empty frames.

I did do a quick check down in the upper deep hive body to make sure the queen was down there. I only pulled a few frames and saw lots of larva just one to three days old. That was enough for me and I put the hive back together- I did not want to risk injuring the queen now. No more requeening this year!

As I was putting the supers back on I noticed how heavy they are getting. They are all full of honey (except for the super full of brood) and in the process of being capped. I did the shake test where you hold the frame horizontally and give it a shake. If the contents drip out the honey is not yet ripe; if it stays in you've got honey in that comb. I predict that if we pull the supers off during the first week of September, we should get a lot of good thick ripe honey. Some of the brood in the super might not have emerged by then. If that is the case we will just leave that super in place until they do emerge. We won't be getting any ripe honey out of that super anyway.

We are getting close- I can't wait!

Her Majesty Has Returned

2010-08-24T12:28:00.004-06:00

The queen is home! Over the last few weeks I have been dealing with queens that moved up into the honey supers to lay their eggs.

We are getting close- I can't wait!

Trapped Queen

2010-08-22T12:49:00.002-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, while inspecting the hives, I discovered that both queens had moved up and laid eggs in the honey supers. Georgia had moved honey out of the super directly above the deep hive bodies and the queen laid eggs there. In Virginia, however, the queen crossed over a whole super of capped honey to lay eggs in the next box up. I looked through the supers and tried to find the queens. When I didn’t find either of them I figured she must be down in the deep hive bodies. So I put the queen excluders back on in order to keep the queens down low. This would allow the brood in the honey supers to mature and emerge before we extract honey. I do not want to deal with brood in the supers while we are trying to extract.

I checked out both hives last Tuesday to see how the bees were doing with capping the honey in the supers. I found that the bees have collected just a little more nectar- I think that the nectar flow is slowing down some. I was also expecting to find some brood where the queens had been laying. That is exactly what I found in Georgia- a few frames of capped brood directly above the queen excluder I put on last a couple of weeks ago. Georgia is capping more of the honey in the supers. I did not inspect any lower into the brood nest, but she looks like she is doing well. I think this new queen is a good one- the population has grown significantly since Georgia was queenless.

Georgia also had capped brood where the queen had been laying up in the honey super- but I also found larva and eggs! Apparently, when I put the queen excluder back on the queen had not moved down into the deep hive bodies. My queen was trapped up in the honey supers! Luckily she hadn’t laid eggs in more than that one medium super- at least I didn’t see any eggs or brood in any of the others. I looked over each frame in that super and didn’t see the queen anywhere- I am horrible at finding the queen. I have not seen a queen since just a few weeks after we hived our packages in April of 2009. Anyway, in order to make sure I got the queen back down in the deeps, I pulled all 4 medium supers off the hive and went through each super frame by frame. I looked over each frame, brushed all the bees off in to the deep hive body, and set the beeless frame off to the side. After all the bees were cleaned out of the supers I replaced the queen excluder and put the supers back on the hive. I am hoping the queen made it back down where I want her. I will check again next week and will hopefully find eggs in the deep hive bodies only.

As I mentioned the nectar flow is slowing down. The alfalfa fields are still blooming but not nearly like they were earlier in the summer. I am not certain when we will extract our honey. Last year we pulled the supers off in the middle of September. That seemed to work well- I fed them sugar syrup in the fall and they had time to build up enough stores to get them through the winter. I did do some supplemental feeding last January because I thought they were getting low but realized later that it was not needed.

I guess we will see how things go. Hopefully we won’t see any new brood in the honey supers and we can pull the supers after all of that brood has emerged. I’ll keep you updated.

Eggs In The Honey Supers

2010-08-07T20:31:00.008-06:00

Eggs in the honey supers? Eggs do not belong in the honey supers, but that is where I found them today. Actually, laying eggs up in the honey supers is not wrong, but I would rather that the queen stay down in the deep hive bodies and reserve the honey supers for "my" honey.

As I went through the honey supers I found that Georgia still has a lot of uncapped honey. I hope the bees get busy and cap it all off during this next month. Georgia does have the bottom super (directly above the broodnest) full of capped honey. At least it was until a couple of weeks ago. The bees have been emptying the honey out of the bottom half of the center frames in the bottom super. It looked like they were making the brood nest bigger for the queen to lay. I had removed the queen excluders from the hives earlier this year because queens are not supposed to cross capped honey. Since I had capped honey in the bottom supers I thought that removing the excluders would encourage the workers to move up and make more honey. Anyway, since the queen excluder had been removed and the bees emptied the honey out of some of the frames, the queen moved up and laid a bunch of eggs in the honey super. I made sure the queen was not in the super and put the queen excluder back on. This will keep the queen from laying any more eggs up there. Now I will be able to extract honey after the brood from the existing eggs emerges without getting baby bees in the honey.

I did not inspect any more of Georgia's broodnest. During the last inspection I discovered that Georgia is now queen right and I have decided not to dig down into the broodnest anymore this summer. I don't want to take a chance on causing any more queen problems.

Last week I took Virginia's newest honey super full of empty frames and put it down in the 2nd honey super position. So there is one honey super full of capped honey directly above the brood nest and the new empty super directly above that. My thinking was that, even if there was not time this summer for the bees to store honey in this super, if the bees could at least draw some comb then this super would have a head start next summer. I figured that moving the super down closer to the majority of the bees would facilitate faster comb production. I had removed the queen excluder from Virginia as well as I expected the super of capped honey to serve as Virginia's excluder. When I finally made it down to the empty super, I found that the bees had been busy drawing comb. It was not complete but they had made a good start.

Here is a photo of the new comb in the empty super.
The preceding photo shows some nice white new comb but does not show what I was actually looking at. This next photo is a close up of the same frame. Look at what is inside the cells. Eggs! I thought these frames would be safe from the queen with all the capped honey directly below it. The next photo shows what the queen had to cross to lay those eggs.

That capped honey is beautiful, isn't it? Apparently capped honey will not contain a queen if she wants to get to the other side. After Virginia's inspection I put the queen excluder back on her as well. I really don't want to have to deal with brood in the honey supers come extraction time.

Last time I inspected Virginia her new queen hadn't been around for long. She had been laying eggs, but they were pretty scattered. She hadn't quite gotten her legs under her yet. I went through her brood nest today, and it looks like she has settled down nicely. I saw several frames in both the upper and lower deep hive bodies with nice tight brood patterns. It does feel good to have both hives queen right again.

There has been something interesting going on with Virginia's hive this summer. I don't' know if it is common or rare, but I was not expecting it. You see both of our hives have screened bottom boards and sit side by side on a solid platform. It appears as though some of Virginia's bees have gone underneath the hive and attached comb to the underside of the screened bottom board. Here is a photo looking down in to the hive at the comb underneath.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture- the camera had a hard time deciding what to focus on. This comb is actually running side to side- at a 90 degree angle to the frames above it. There is not a lot of space under there, and I assume they are storing honey in the comb. In this next photo you can see some of the bees coming and going from the side.

There are a couple of bees there fanning the entrance.

The bees were extremely calm today. I think it was probably because they are both finally queen right. I have wondered though if smoker fuel affects the bees' mood during inspections. Last summer I used cedar chips as my fuel and this summer I bought a bag of shredded recycled cardboard. With the cardboard fuel the bees have been cranky all summer. Besides that the cardboard smoke is stinky and leaves a lot of creosote gunking up the top of the smoker. I switched back to cedar chips today- cedar smoke just smells so good.

We Have Orientation Flights..... Again!

2010-08-02T20:14:00.003-06:00

Earlier in the summer I used to see huge swarms of bees in front of the hives doing orientation flights on a nearly daily basis. Since the hives have been having queen problems I haven't seen any orientation flights in quite some time. Yesterday however, I saw a small group of bees in front of the hives flying up and down and side to side at right angles. I saw the same thing again today. Even though there weren't a lot of bees orienting themselves to the hives' locations it was nice to see them at it again. I'm sure that the bees performing the flights were all from Georgia's queen. Virginia's queen is not old enough to have produced bees performing orientation flights yet. The bees in front of Virginia were from the frames of brood I moved over from Georgia to try to prevent any laying workers from developing.

I did go through the honey supers this afternoon. The bees are finally starting to draw a little comb in the newest supers with empty frames. Virginia has just a little less than 3 medium supers full of honey right now. Georgia has about the same, but remember that we extracted one of Georgia's supers earlier in the summer and put the empty super back on. The bees are continuing to move the honey out of the bottom super directly above the brood nest. Next time I do an inspection I will put the queen excluder back on so I can still extract those frames without worrying about brood getting in the way.

Becoming Queen Right

2010-07-30T11:26:00.004-06:00

I think we are on our way to becoming queen right.

Both hives have had queen problems this summer and both have superceded. Georgia was the first to supercede and develop her own new queen. It took a couple of weeks to get her legs under her and start laying well, but after today's inspection I have concluded that she is doing a great job. Down in her brood nest I found lots of capped brood, larva, and eggs all in a nice tight pattern. Will the new bees from this queen get up and foraging before the nectar flow slows down? I hope so- I would like to see them put away a little more honey for me before the end of the summer.

As far as Georgia's honey supers go, she has not made progress in the newest super full of empty frames I put on a while back. She is putting honey back into the super we extracted a few weeks ago. It is almost completely filled back up with nectar/honey. None of it is capped yet though.

The bottom super (just above the deep hive bodies) was the first to be filled with honey. Once the bees had filled it, I pulled the queen excluder off and let that super of honey act as an excluder to keep the queen from going any higher. Today I discovered that the bees have been removing honey from the bottom half of the center frames in that super. It looks like they are trying to give the queen more space to lay. This happened earlier in the summer, too. At that time I reversed brood boxes to move the queen back down to the bottom box, and the bees filled the super back in with honey. I opted not to do that today. With the problems the queens have been having this summer I decided to leave well enough alone. Will I get brood in the honey super? Maybe. I will deal with that if and when it happens.

Virginia has had more of a rough time with her queens this summer. I think one supercedure attempt failed, and she had to give it a second try. By the time the second attempt was completed the hive was completely broodless. I ordered a new queen from Old Sol Enterprises thinking that the second attempt had failed, but last week I discovered a few eggs and larva. The new queen was supposed to have shipped on Monday and arrived sometime this week. Either the guy at Old Sol meant the queen would be shipped next Monday or I miss understood because no queen has arrived. No matter, in today's inspection I found eggs, larva, and capped brood. The pattern is not great but it took Georgia's queen a little while to settle down and get going properly. It looks like Virginia is on her way to becoming queen right as well. If the new queen does arrive next week I will try to find Virginia's queen and replace her with Old Sol's. I think that I would rather have a queen from proven stock rather than a queen from an earlier queen that had to be superceded in her second year.

Frustrations Of A Second Year Beekeeper

2010-07-26T17:18:00.008-06:00

I guess nobody ever said that the second year of beekeeping would be easy. I just assumed that, with a year of experience, it would all be pretty straightforward. Ha! I was wrong!

Last year was really not too complicated. We hived the packages toward the end of April and fed them sugar syrup until they had enough nectar coming in to quit taking it. The queens laid eggs and raised brood like crazy. As the bees filled up one super with comb and honey we would add another. At the end of the summer we extracted honey and fed them more sugar syrup to make sure they could make it through the winter. It all worked out pretty much the way Beekeeping For Dummies said it would.

This year has been a different story. First, both hives built up rapidly this spring, and I had to try to prevent swarming- we had swarm cells up into June. Then both hives went queenless for a while.

Back in June Georgia did successfully raise a new queen who started laying a couple of weeks ago. Virginia, on the other hand, had a more difficult time raising her own queen and went queenless and broodless longer than Georgia. Back on July 5th I reported that Virginia had 6 supercedure cells, and it looked like she was finally on her way to requeening herself.

A couple of weeks ago I inspected Virginia to see if the new queen had started laying but didn't find a single egg or larva. I figured that the supercedure attempt had failed and, without any eggs or larvae, the bees would not be able to make their own. A few days later I moved a frame of brood from Georgia to Virginia to stop any laying workers from developing and I ordered a new queen from Old Sol Enterprises in Oregon. The queen was supposed to have shipped today and arrive in a day to two. I have since checked on Virginia again and, to my surprise, found eggs and larvae! I didn't see a lot, just a few. I guess my bee math must have been off. What was curious, though, is that it looked like there were several cells with royal jelly in with the larvae. Does this mean that the bees already know that this new queen is not up to snuff and they are already trying to replace her? When the new queen arrives from Old Sol I will try to find the current queen and replace her.

In the mean time, with all of these queen issues, the populations of both hives have dropped somewhat and extra honey production has almost stopped. At this point, we will harvest honey this fall- we have 3 medium supers on each hive that are mostly full of honey. Think of what it could have been if everything had gone according to plan! Now I just hope to have both hives queen right and with a decent population before fall.

We actually have extracted some honey already- also on July 5th I reported that our bees were beginning to run out of room. We had a couple more supers and frames on order, but they were slow to arrive. So we pulled one super from Virginia and extracted a couple gallons of honey and put it back on the hive. The honey is delicious- it has a smoth and almost buttery flavor. When the new supers did arrive we put those on as well. With the queen issues and declining populations, the bees have not done much in the new supers; they have only drawn a minimal amount of comb. I figure if they can at least do that much then it will just accelerate the comb building process next summer.

I think we have a few more weeks of decent nectar flow- we'll cross our fingers and hope everything goes well.

New Queens and Nectar Flows

2010-07-05T22:16:00.017-06:00

Things are moving right along this summer. Last time I updated the blog the bees had been collecting nectar in the honey supers- they had gone through the dandelion and fruit tree blooms and were finally collecting nectar from some unknown source. We had been anxiously awaiting the start of the alfalfa bloom (our main nectar flow) which had been delayed this year due to a cool wet spring.

Both hives have been having queen issues this year. As of the last update Georgia had a supercedure cell in the works and Virginia's queen appeared to have started laying again.

I think I will tackle things a subject at a time rather than chronologically.

HIVE CONFIGURATION
This first picture is what the hives look like as of today. I know- it looks a little odd, but let me explain...
When we first ordered the bee hives about a year and a half ago we decided to go with BeeMax polystyrene hives. They looked easy to put together and we thought they would help the bees overwinter. Since that time we have decided that we want to switch over to regular wooden hives so have ordered wooden honey supers to go on top. We will be ordering wooden hive bodies and switch them out next spring. It makes them look a little strange on the outside, but the bees don't care what they look like. They build comb and store honey just the same either way.

I drilled a hole in the top super on each hive in an effort to encourage more honey production. I figure that if the bees can access the super directly without traversing the brood chamber and lower honey supers then they ought to be able to make more nectar collecting trips. I attached a small landing strip in front of each to make it easier for nectar laden bees to land. If you have ever seen bees full of nectar returning to the hive you know that they are so heavy they have a hard time hitting their target.

The photo above shows a lone worker on one of the landing strips fanning the entrance.

Nectar Flows

Our cool wet spring delayed the alfalfa flow this year by about 2 weeks. We had seen a few lone alfalfa plants beginning to blossom but the big alfalfa fields still looked pretty blossomless. Finally the fields started filling up with purple and blue flowers right about June 20th. We are glad to see it get started. The alfalfa fields being raised for seed will blossom continuously until sometime in September (I think). There are 4 or 5 of these fields within a mile and a half of our house. That should keep the girls busy.

Also on June 20th the Russian olives began their bloom. You'd think that, having grown up with Russian olives all around, I would have realized that they get covered with little yellow blossoms every year. I guess I never looked closely enough to see them. We found a tree near our house and snapped this picture of a bee foraging on a Russian olive blossom.

We did not see a lot of bees working this tree. I don't know if Russian olives are not an important source of nectar or if the bees just prefer the alfalfa that was starting at the same time. In any case, the Russian olives continued to blossom for a week or two and then the blossoms died off.

Honey Supers

The bees have been storing nectar in the supers for a while now, but when the alfalfa flow started they really picked up the pace. Georgia has had 3 medium supers for quite a while, but the bees hadn't been doing anything up in her top box until this past week. They are actively building comb and storing nectar there now. Last week I put a third super on Virginia as well and today I saw that they were starting to draw comb up there. They are not quite as far along as Georgia is, though.

Here is a photo of a frame of honey from Georgia's second super. They have a little more than half of this central frame capped. They have not started capping the outside frames yet, but it is just a matter of time.

This next photo is a top view of one of the frames from Georgia's first super. I spaced the frames out a little and only placed 9 frames here. You can see that the comb has been drawn out a little further and the caps extend out just beyond the width of the frame. This should make it easier to uncap with a hot knife when extraction time comes around.

Each hive now has 3 supers and the bees are working hard to fill them up with honey. We bought 1 extra super with frames to go on each hive this spring thinking that that should be enough. They have worked harder than we anticipated and we put our last super and frames on Virginia last week. We have ordered more supers and frames- let's hope they get here quickly.

Queens

Both hives have been having queen issues. We inspected both hives on June 26th and found the following. Georgia had a couple frames of capped brood, no eggs, very few larva, and 1 capped supercedure queen cell. Virginia had a little capped brood, very few eggs, very few larva, and no queen cells.

We thought about re-queening both hives with commercially bred queens, but after calling several queen breeders we found that no one would be able to get us a queen for 2-3 weeks. We then decided to let Georgia supercede with their own queen and just wait and see what we might find in Virginia later.

During today's inspection I found some eggs but not a lot. In a few of the cells I actually saw a couple of eggs. My first thought was that I have a laying worker in the hive, but there is still some capped brood in the hive. I actually watched a couple of workers chew their way out of their cells. Since laying workers develop from the lack of brood pheromones (according to Michael Bush's website) I concluded that the eggs must be from the new queen who is just not up on her feet yet. I will continue to monitor this situation and inspect again next week to see how they are doing.

In Virginia's brood nest today I found no eggs, nor larva, some capped brood, and some capped queen cells that can be seen in this photo.

Six capped queen cells- I am assuming that they are all supercedure cells to replace the queen who seems to have gone missing. I find it curious that both queens had problems at the same time like this. We will leave Virginia alone for a couple of weeks and then check how the new queen is getting along.

One thing that does have me a little concerned is that the bees seem to be filling in the brood nest with honey just about as quickly as the new bees emerge from their cells. That doesn't leave the new queens much space to lay eggs. In order to give them a little more space I removed a couple outside frames full of honey and put a couple of empty frames in the center positions. I brought one of the frames in to the kitchen table and we had a tasty treat with our supper. This honey was a little darker and stronger than the honey we extracted last fall. But that was mainly alfalfa honey from the supers. This was honey from down in the hive bodies and made earlier in the season. I wonder if maybe this is dandelion/fruit tree/wild flower honey. It is amazing how different nectar sources can have such an effect on the flavor and appearance of the final product.

Re-Queening

2010-06-14T22:16:00.004-06:00

It looks like it is time to re-queen one of the hives. But I'm not doing it- the bees are taking care of that themselves.

Back on June 1st I reported that the queens in both hives had really slowed down in the brood production department. I was hopeful that they had slowed down because the nectar flow had slowed and that there was nothing seriously wrong with them.

As I started Georgia's inspection I could tell right away that things were different. This had been such a great hive which supplied us with the majority of the 75 pounds of honey we harvested last year. She survived the winter in nice style and built up explosively this spring. But as I started going through the supers today I could tell that the population had dropped off a little and there was no more honey in the supers now than 2 weeks ago. As I started making my way through the broodnest I did find capped brood, some larva, and a few eggs which had been laid in a spotty pattern. Finally I came across this frame seen below.

Here we have two empty queen cups and a capped supercedure queen cell near the top of this partially drawn frame. It looks like the bees are mounting a coup and preparing to replace the current queen. I will let this queen develop, mate, and take over the hive rather than ordering a new mated queen to install. Installing a new queen would require finding and getting rid of the existing queen. Since I haven't been able to find either queen since shortly after we installed the packages last spring, I'm not sure how successful I would be at finding her now. This whole scenario really is a little disappointing- I was hoping that this hive would keep booming and really pound out the honey this summer. Let's hope that we can recover from this little set back in time.

Virginia, on the other hand, seems to be doing a lot better. She has 2 medium honey supers- the first had fully drawn frames and the second had some partially drawn and some empty frames. The first super is almost filled with uncapped honey- the outer frames are about half filled and the central frames are completely filled and are starting to be capped. Up in the second super the bees are starting to draw more comb to fill with honey.

Down in the brood nest I discovered that the queen has picked up laying again- I found lots of eggs, larva, and capped brood all in a nice tight pattern. I also found 6 or 7 swarm cells/queen cups along the bottom of the frames of the upper deep hive body. The bees have plenty of room right now and I suspect that this past week of cool rainy weather made them go a little stir crazy and start thinking about swarming. I cut out the swarm cells (two of them had royal jelly but were not even close to being capped) and queen cups. With warm weather in the forecast maybe the bees will start working outside and stop thinking about swarming.

Progress

2010-06-06T21:52:00.004-06:00

We checked out the hives yesterday. It was a nice warm day and I just couldn't help myself. We didn't do a full hive inspection- just checked out the honey supers to see how much, if any, progress the bees were making.

The last time we checked the hives was just four days previous on June 1st. During that inspection I took a photo of one of the center frames of Virginia's first super above the brood nest. Yesterday Chris took a photo of that same frame- the two of them can be seen below. The top photo is from June 1st and the bottom photo is from yesterday.

On June 1st the bees had filled in about 2/3 of the frame with uncapped honey. Yesterday they had filled in almost the entire frame with the exception of a couple of spots at the bottom of the frame. I don't remember how quickly they filled in the honey supers last year, but this seems to be pretty good progress to me.

I don't know where they are finding the nectar- they don't seem to be touching the few dandelions that are still blooming and I haven't been able to locate any other major nectar sources in the area right now. It's a mystery.

Inspected The Hives Today

2010-06-01T23:12:00.009-06:00

We had been out of town for the last 5 days and just made it home at about midnight on the first. My wife thinks that this is kind of strange, but I really missed the bees while we were gone and I thought about them a lot- always hoping that they were ok. I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a hive cam on this blog so I can keep tabs on them when I am not around.

The first thing I did when it warmed up a little this morning was get geared up to do an inspection. I found that the bees were incredibly docile- I did smoke them but I wonder if I could have done the whole inspection without smoke. I know that the veil wasn't necessary.

You may recall that I placed one medium honey super on each hive earlier in the spring when the dandelion and fruit tree nectar flows were beginning. A week later, Georgia's population was booming so I gave her another super just to give her a little more room. I checked the supers on both hives before we left last week and neither really needed another super at that time. I added a super to each anyway just in case some big nectar flow started while we were gone and the girls went wild with honey production. I gave Virginia her second super with partially drawn frames and Georgia a third super with empty frames.

I started with Georgia. Her top super of empty frames has not been touched. There were a few bees up there, but there was very minimal comb being drawn. Before removing each box I always crack it open a bit and puff a little smoke in to calm the bees before I open it up completely. This photo shows the bees reaction to the smoke. You can see their heads down in the cells gorging on honey.

This super has uncapped honey in about 5 of the 10 frames. None of the frames are completely full though. There is a little more honey than last time I checked but not much. I think we are between nectar flows right now- I wish the alfalfa would hurry up and start. I am thinking the cool spring this year pushed everything back a week or two.

This next photo shows the top of the bottom honey super- the one located directly above the brood nest.

Burr comb is what happens when you space out nine frames in a ten frame super and then place a super with ten frames above it. The frames don't all match up so the bees add extra comb where they think it belongs. It makes a bit of a mess to scrape out, but cleaning it up is quick and easy and it gives us extra wax to make beeswax hand balm/emolient or whatever you want to call it. I suppose as all ten of the frames in the super above are drawn out I could space those frames out to nine in the super as well. I discussed why I am going with nine frames in a super in the post dated May 14th.

As I made my way down into the bottom super I found lots of uncapped honey. However, in the center frames, the bees have been storing some pollen in the bottom half of the frames. It looks like they are expecting to use the bottom of the honey super frames as the top part of the brood nest. But with the queen excluder on the queen cannot make it up there.

Down in the brood boxes I found capped brood, some larva, and very few eggs. I am not 100% certain why there are so few eggs. I thought the queen must be having problems but then I discovered the same thing in Virginia and I wondered if it could be just a coincidence that both queens were having problems or if there was something else going on. After a little research I came across a power point presentation in which Michael Bush explains that during a nectar dearth queens will sometimes slow way down on the egg laying. I hope that this is what is happening now.

Anyway, it seemed that most of the broodnest was located in the upper deep hive body. I wanted to move the brood nest a little lower so the bees would fill in the super with honey instead of pollen so I reversed the brood boxes in an attempt to move the queen back down. I did not do this earlier in the spring because there were about equal numbers of eggs and brood in the upper and lower boxes. It looked like the queen was moving up and down in order to utilize all her space.

Virginia now has 2 medium honey supers. The first has 9 fully drawn frames spaced out in a 10 frame box and the second has 10 partially drawn frames. As I began the inspection I found that the bees had done some work on the comb of the top super but had not stored any nectar up there. The bottom super has uncapped honey in about 5 or 6 of the frames. Here is a photo of one of the center frames.

I has a beautiful color, doesn't it? You can see the curved line separating the filled and empty cells. That shape makes me wonder if Virginia is also trying to use the bottoms of these frames as part of the brood nest. I thought I would reverse Virginia's brood boxes as well but found that, while I did not find many eggs here either, most of the brood nest was already in the bottom box. Hopefully the bees will fill in the rest of these frames with honey when the next nectar flow gets going.

I guess I will leave them alone for a while and check them again when the alfalfa flow starts. Hopefully then the queens will pick up the egg laying and the bees will really start packing away the honey.

Correction

2010-05-25T19:12:00.003-06:00

I have to make a correction to something I said in my previous post. I heard a piping queen during my last inspection and reported that the piping was from a new queen as she prepares to mate. I was informed (very politely) by someone reading the blog that I was mistaken and that the piping is from the old queen calling to the new queen so she can kill her. So sorry about that. And thanks for letting me know about my error- there is still so much to learn.

So I guess I must have a new queen that hatched from a supercedure cells that I had not seen. So why were the bees superceding? The old queen seemed to bo doing great. I just have to remember that bees are smarter than we are- they usually know what they are doing.

Anyway, I did more research on queen piping and came across this really interesting paper called "Listen to the Bees" by Rex Boys. He chronicled the research of Eddie Woods who studied the various sounds that bees make. He was a sound broadcast engineer and hobbyist beekeeper. The paper discusses some technical material that I had to read over a time or two, but it is quite interesting. You can find it here if you are interested.

Piping Queen

2010-05-23T18:43:00.006-06:00

I did a full inspection of both hives a few days ago. I think they are both looking good but I am not entirely sure what is going on inside Georgia. The results were as follows:

Georgia is still crammed full of bees. As I reported in an earlier post Georgia has been topped with 2 medium honey supers. I had originally put on only one super but a couple weeks ago or so I found that the hive was packed with bees from the bottom board to the outer cover. There was nectar being stored in the first super but none of it had been capped yet. I decided to add a second super just to give the bees a little more room. I provided a top entrance with the second super to make it easier for the bees to get in and out of the supers and hopefully make more honey. As of today, however, none of the bees seem to discovered the top entrance and I have not seen a single bee use it.

During this inspection I found uncapped nectar in both supers. Some of the frames in the first are filling up, but there is not much in the second. I think that we are kind of in between nectar flows right now; the fruit trees and dandelions are winding down and the alfalfa is not ready yet. Hopefully the alfalfa will get going before to long and the bees can really get busy. Alfalfa is the main nectar flow in the Big Horn Basin; it blooms continuously from maybe the end of May until maybe the beginning of October. Here is an interesting map with major nectar flow information.

Back to the inspection. I went through every frame of the brood nest to make sure there weren't any swarm cells and I didn't find any. That is a good thing. There were lots of eggs, larva, and capped brood. The photo below is a frame from the upper deep hive body.

I thought that the amount of capped brood here was pretty impressive. This queen is certainly prolific. The fact that this queen has been so great is the reason I am now a little confused as to what exactly is going on in there. You see, during the inspection a week or so ago I found capped brood and eggs, but no larva. I thought that was a little odd. This spring I have seen several queen cups; some up high in the frames (supercedure position) and some along the bottom of the frames (swarm position) but all had been empty. Until that last inspection, that is. At that time, as I lifted one of the frames out, I found a capped queen cell on the bottom of a frame (swarm position) but only one of them. When they are preparing to swarm they usually build several swarm cells. This queen cell must have been connected to the frame next to it as well because as I pulled it out it ripped the cell open and exposed the entire pupa inside. I cleaned it up with the hive tool replaced the frame.

Now fast forward to a few days ago- As I was down in the bottom deep I heard this warbling sound coming from inside the hive. It was loud enough to be heard over all the buzzing of the bees. I wasn't sure but I thought it might be the sound of a piping queen. I did an internet search and came across some recordings. Sure enough, that is exactly what I heard. Now, as I understand it, piping comes from a virgin queen as she prepares to mate. So, what do I have? A hive with the existing queen and a virgin queen that is preparing to swarm? Or a queen from a supercedure cell mounting a coup? And where did this piping queen come from? Scotland? OK- that was a bad joke, but I really have always wanted to go to Scotland and learn to play the bagpipes. Back to the subject at hand- I can't imagine that the bees would want to supercede this queen and I haven't seen any capped queen cells except for the one that broke open. What is going on here!?

As I opened Virginia I looked through her super and found lots of uncapped nectar so I did not add a second super at this time. I imagine I will have to add one once the alfalfa gets going.

Going through the brood nest I came across this little girl chewing here way out of her cell. See her photo below.

I am thoroughly impressed by Virginia's queen this spring. This hive struggled last summer and there wasn't a huge population going in to the winter. I was thinking of re-queening her this spring but never got around to it. I wonder if the bees re-queened themselves last fall because she has built up explosively this spring. While in the brood nest it seemed that bees were coming out of nowhere. I had to smoke to clear the bees out enough pull out a frame and after looking at if for about 15 seconds I would have to smoke again to move the bees out of the way to put the frame back in. I seriously could not see the frames in the box for all the bees covering them. I did find that there was lots of pollen and honey in the brood chamber and it looked like the queen might be running out of room so I expanded the broodnest by pulling a frame with honey and pollen from the edge and placing an empty frame in the middle. I hope we are almost through the spring swarm season so the bees can just get down to business and make us some honey!

Playing Catch-Up

2010-05-14T20:02:00.014-06:00

A lot has happened since I last posted anything on this blog so I will catch up on what has been happening over the last couple of weeks.

About 2 weeks ago I inspected the hives. Everything seemed like it was cruising right along until I noticed something on one of Georgia's frames. This drone stood out with wings that looked a little different from the others. I separated it out where I could get a good look at it. Its wings are not horribly deformed but they are definitely smaller than the wings on the other drones and have a slightly more rumpled look. I was afraid that I had deformed wing virus in the hive. DFV is usually carried by varroa mites and I have not seen any other sign of the mites at all. I have checked under the screened bottom board and uncapped drone brood and have not come across a single one. This was the only bee I could find with this type of wing. I inspected Georgia this evening and did not come across any others so I am hoping that this bee was just a fluke and that all is well.

When I performed that inspection a couple of weeks ago the dandelions were starting to bloom and the fruit trees were about to start. I put on a queen excluder and a medium super on each hive and hoped that there would be enough of a nectar flow to get the bees started on honey production.

My plan with the queen excluder this year is this: I will start out with a queen excluder on since I tried it without one last year and ended up with brood up in the honey super. Once the bees have filled the first super with honey I will remove the excluder and use the first honey filled super as the excluder. As I understand bee behavior, the girls are sometimes reluctant to go through a queen excluder, but the queen does not like to cross over capped honey. So by removing the excluder after the first super is capped, I hope to boost honey production and at the same time keep the queen down in the bottom boxes.

The weather the last couple of weeks has been chilly and windy with a little rain here and there. It was amazing that even on chilly damp days there was still a steady stream of bees leaving the hives. One day, after it had rained the night before, I was able to take a picture of this bee drinking from some rain water which had collected in an old plastic wading pool tossed in the corner of the yard. We had put out a 5 gallon bucket with water for the bees but good luck telling those girls what they are supposed to do.

The fruit tree bloom did finally get started. We have a small apple tree and pear tree in our back yard, there is a large apple tree across the street, and there are lots of crabapple trees all over town. I have seen various bushes and hedges around town that have blossomed in pink, white, and yellow. I have no idea what they are but they have attracted the bees. Here is a shot of a bee on an apple blossom in our back yard.

The pear tree actually blossomed about a week before the apple tree did, but the bees pretty much ignored it until just a couple of days ago. They did finally find it and then really went after it.

That brings us to today. This evening I decided to see how Georgia was doing. I had to wait til I got home from work so there wasn't time to inspect both hives. When I took the outer cover off of Georgia I was amazed to see so many bees clogging up the medium super and completely filling the space between the inner and outer covers. I gave them a few shots of smoke (I'll tell you about the smoker in a minute) and cleared them out of the way and checked out the super. As you can see in this photo they had been busy collecting and storing nectar. This picture is pretty indicative of how much nectar was in all nine of the frames (I'll tell you about the switch to nine frames in a minute too.) Click on the photo to get a closer view of the nectar.

Ordinarily I would wait until most of the honey in this super was capped before adding another super, but since the hive was so full and crowded I thought it would be prudent to give the bees a little more space. So on went the second super and it is just the middle of May. I am surprised at how much nectar this hive has already collected- I think this may be a good year for honey.

I peeked in Virginia's super as well. She has stored nectar in all nine of her frames also, but has not collected as much as Georgia.

As I was closing everything up I saw this bee on the side of the hive. It looked so pretty with the evening sunlight shining through her translucent, honey colored abdomen.

Now, just a couple of foot notes:

1. Smoker: I have a new smoker fuel. I ran out of the cedar chips I had been using and remembered that we had some old pet litter in the basement called "Yesterday's News". It is made of old newspaper compacted down into little pellets. It worked well and burned for a long time. It doesn't smell nearly as nice as the cedar chips do, though.

2. 9 frame supers: Last year we used 10 frames in each of our 10 frame honey supers. However, when we went to extract the honey we found that it was difficult to uncap them as the caps did not extend beyond the edges of the frames. This year we bought some frame spacers and are going with 9 frames in a 10 frame super. This will hopefully allow the bees to draw the comb a little deeper so as to extend the caps beyond the edges of the frames and make it easier to uncap. I have read that you can only do this if you are using frames that already have fully drawn comb or the bees will draw it out unevenly or try to fill in the gaps with burr comb. We had about 25 fully drawn frames from last year (the others were all partially drawn but still had capped honey) so we are going with nine frames in the first two supers which we already added and will use 10 in the rest. Next year we should be able to go with more 9 frame supers.

Whew. There. We did it. It was a big job but we are finally all caught up. I will fill you in later as things continue to change.

Bees On Dandelions

2010-05-02T18:25:00.006-06:00

The bees are out in force on all of the dandelions in our yard. We have quite a patch behind the house- literally hundreds of dandelions. Let's hope I do a better job of keeping bees than I do of keeping a nice lawn.

Before I get to the photos of the bees and dandelions I will catch up with what has been going on around here. Back on April 22nd a bunch of bushes with pink blossoms and a few trees also with pink blossoms started to bloom. (I started an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all my bloom dates. I am hoping that over the years this will help me be more prepared for what is coming.) Since Georgia was pretty full of pollen brood and honey I added the queen excluder and a medium super on April 24th. Shortly after this the weather turned south. We had several days of wind and cold (down to 24 degrees one night) and even a couple of days of snow. I was disappointed that the bees were unable to get out and take advantage of those blossoms. A few other fruit trees have popped out in blossoms, the apple trees are close, and the crabapple trees shouldn't be too far behind them. So we are close to some good nectar flows, but right now we have dandelions!

Here are some photos that I took this afternoon. The bees were everywhere! I had to pay attention to where I was kneeling to make sure I didn't squish any bees. These pictures aren't great, but I love taking pictures of my girls!

See the proboscis extending down to find the nectar.

I don't know what the problem here was. There were plenty of blossoms for everyone.

She has her head down sucking up the sweet nectar.

Sucking up the nectar again. Looks like she really had to go deep.

That is a pretty pollen sack, Don't you think?

Another one diving in

If you look closely through the petals just below the bees head you can see her proboscis extending down to get the nectar.

Pussy Willow Blooms Today!

2010-04-11T15:42:00.006-06:00

The bees have, for the past 2 or 3 weeks, been bringing a little bit of pollen. Not a lot, but every now and then I would see a bee or two returning to the hive with small pollen baskets on their legs. I was never able to figure out where they were getting it as I have not seen anything in bloom since last fall. As I was walking across the yard today I noticed that the pussy willow was finally popping out in yellow. (It has had the little white buds for a couple of weeks now.)

When I arrived at the pussy willow I found bees all over the place. They should really start packing in the pollen now.

I assume that at least the majority of the bees were mine, but there are two other hobbyist beekeepers here in town. One has a couple of hives just about 3 blocks from our house and the other has 2 more hives just about 1/2 mile away. I suppose there could be other feral colonies in the area as well.

I took several photos but I am no photographer. These two are the only ones that were even half way in focus.

Time To Remodel

2010-04-09T22:02:00.004-06:00

I did a little remodeling in Georgia's hive yesterday. I thought she was getting a little crowded so I knocked out a few walls and made the nursery a little bigger.

Ok, actually, I expanded the brood nest. Georgia has been booming and she is full of bees, and I have been a little worried that she would swarm on me this spring. In fact, she has been so full of bees that even though temps haven't been above 60 she has been bearding a little on the front of the hive- even into the chilly evening hours. As I inspected the hive I found that the queen has been moving back and forth between the upper and lower deep hive bodies- there are eggs, larva, and capped brood in both boxes. I checked for swarm cells and didn't see any. That meant that I still had time to try a swarm prevention maneuver.

According to some beekeepers on beesource, bees swarm in the spring because the queen begins to run out of room to lay. As the workers fill in the hive with honey the brood nest becomes restricted with fewer eggs being layed. This puts nurse bees out of work. The unemployed nurse bees then start signaling to the other bees that it is time to raise another queen so part of the colony can take off and find a new home. In order to prevent this I "expanded the brood nest". In the bottom box I removed three frames which contained no brood from the outside edges of the hive and replaced them with three empty frames. I placed the empty frames interspersed among frames containing brood in the middle of the hive. This will give the queen a little more room to lay and gives the unemployed nurse bees something to do as they build new comb on the new frames. Hopefully this will keep them content until the nectar flows start and I start adding supers.

As I was inspecting Georgia I came across this queen cup in the middle of a frame which the bees built it in the middle of this low spot in the comb. It is located in the upper 2/3 of the frame. Why the bees never finished drawing out comb right here I don't know. Had it been down along the lower edge I would been concerned about swarming, but as it is I don't think I have much to worry about. Bees will sometimes make these queen cups just in case they need to supersede the existing queen. I ran across a few of them last summer as well. I suspect that this one will sit empty as I can't imagine they will want to supersede this prolific queen. It looks like she is doing a fantastic job.

I inspected Virginia as well and discovered that her queen has been moving up and down between the brood boxes also. Her population is much smaller though, and there is still lots of room left for her queen to lay.

Before closing them up I treated both with terramycin to prevent foulbrood infections. I bought it from betterbee earlier this spring. It came as a powder mixed with powdered sugar and soy flour. I just took a couple of handfuls and sprinkled it on top of the top bars. I don't know if the bee consume it directly, pack it away with pollen, or what. Maybe as the bees track through it and carry it around the hive it kills any bacteria or spores it comes in contact with. I will repeat this treatment once or twice more this spring.

Now once again I sit and wait. In a week or two I will inspect again, check for sign of swarming, expand the brood nest again if I need to, and treat again with terramycin. I can't wait for this year to get moving!

The Long Days Of Spring

2010-03-29T21:54:00.003-06:00

Here we are at the end of March. These spring months seem ot go by so slowly. It seems as though, since winter is over, it should be time to warm up, for flowers and trees to blossom, and nectar to start flowing. But the dandelions and pussywillows haven't even blossomed yet. So here we go, passing time feeding the bees and hoping they don't swarm.

The weather today cooperated for the most part and I had a day off, so we decided to venture into the hives and see what was going on.

We decided to take on Gerogia first. The first couple of frames were full of sugar syrup/honey, and then we pulled out this. At first glance we thought we were looking at a row of swarm cells along the bottom, but on closer inspection they turned out to be a bunch of drone cells. Whew! Gerogia is the hive that we are concerned about swarming. It is so strong and so full of bees, we hope we can keep them from trying to find another home.

Later on we came to some frames that looked more like this. You can see lots of capped brood. This frame was taken from Georgia's upper brood chamber. As we moved into the lower brood chamber we came across lots of eggs and larva that had not been capped. We had been planning on swapping the brood boxes to make sure the queen got moved to the lower chamber in order to prevent swarming, but it looks like she decided to move down on her own.

This was one of the first frames we pulled out of Virginia. You can see capped honey/sugar syrup next to empty comb. We just thought this was a curious pattern. The comb containing the honey has been drawn out further than the empty comb. Maybe the bees are planning on drawing out the rest of the comb and filling it up later? Who knows.

Here is a frame from Virginia's upper deep. You can see that there is plenty of capped brood. If you click on the photo to get a larger view, you can see different stages of larva as well. Of course there is capped honey up in the corners. There is pollen stored in the strip between the brood and the honey. This is a good frame to show the pattern of brood, honey, and pollen in the brood nest.

This photo is also from Virginia. Virginia had been a more aggressive colony and her numbers dwindled last summer so we had been worried about her queen. If you click on the photo you can see the eggs in the cells just to the right of the bees; there is a single egg in each cell. This means that the queen is laying and that she has been here within the last 3 days. If there had been more than one egg in each cell that would mean we have a laying worker. A laying worker develops when the hive has gone queenless and one of the new worker bees develops sexually and begins laying eggs. This is bad because, since the worker does not mate, all the resulting bees are drones. If not remedied, this spells the end of the colony. Even though Virginia's queen is around and laying we would still like to replace her. Since her bees are more aggressive and didn't produce as well as Georgia's, we hope a new queen with better leadership skills will improve their temperament and work ethic.

We took this opportunity to clean out underneath Virginia's hive. Bits and pieces of wax, pollen etc. fall through the screened bottom board and accumulate below. Underneath Virginia we found bits of wax, pollen, sugar that had fallen down from the mountain camp feeding earlier this winter, a few dead bees that had crawled underneath, and these strange little, red, shell-like pieces. They kind of remind us of miniature popcorn hulls. Click on the photo to see them close up. Any idea what they are? Anyway- what we didn't see were mites. And that is a good thing.

As we were cleaning up this little girl decided to stop by for a snack. I had gotten a little honey on my glove and Lucy here decided to pay us a visit before we went inside.

Spring Is Springing

2010-03-07T10:22:00.008-07:00

Has spring arrived in Wyoming? It sure feels like it. Temps have been in the 40's and 50's for the last couple of weeks. Yesterday warmed up into the mid 50's and I decided that it was time to start some spring feeding for the bees.

I have struggled with how to manage the hives this spring and swarm control has been on my mind a lot. I know that usually bees have to be fed in the spring for 2 reasons: 1. to prevent them from starving to death before good nectar flows begin and 2. to get their numbers built up so when the nectar flows do start they can get going with honey production. Now, we have two different situations in our hives. Virginia had a pretty weak colony going in to the winter so I definately need her to build up her numbers this spring. To that end, I gave her a pollen patty and some sugar syrup with fumigillin and Honey-B-Healthy. The fumigillin will treat nosema and the Honey-B-Healthy is an essential-oil-conataining solution that is supposed to boost bees' immune systems. The pollen patty will stimulate brood production as pollen is required to feed the larvae. There has been no pollen in our area yet- the pussy willows will be the first to pop out in a week or so I think.

Georgia, on the other hand, had a nice strong colony going into the winter. Back at the beginning of February I had a chance to peek in the hives and found that Georgia's cluster took up about half of the upper deep. You can read about that and see her photo here if you would like. Because of her healthy population, I am more worried about Georgia swarming. I decided to manage her a little differently. I went ahead and provided her with sugar syrup mixed with fumigillin and Honey-B-Healthy just as I did Virginia, but I did not add a pollen patty. I don't want Georgia to build up too fast and swarm on me before I get a chance to perfome some swarm prevention maneuvers.

I knew Georgia would be doing well but I was not expecting to see what I saw when I opened her up. As can be seen in this photo the bees are covering the entire upper deep. I decided to do a full inspection to get an idea of how large her population is and what is going on in there. Cleaning off all the propolis and wax that had glued all the farmes in place was a chore and a half. As I started pulling frames out I found that the outer 4 frames (2 on each side) were still full of honey and the center 3 or 4 frames were nearly full of eggs! Now this surprised me. First of all, I found it odd that I should find eggs but no larvae or capped brood. I don't think these could be left from last fall- I am sure the bees would have cleaned them out if they hadn't survived the first cold snap. So I guess the queen started laying just a few days ago. Since we haven't had any pollen coming in I didn't know why she would be laying now. But when I made it down into the lower deep I found those frames almost completely empty except fora few frames with a bunch of pollen left from last year. Throughout the entire hive I saw bees- lots and lots of bees. With Georgia booming the way she is I think I can expect great things from her this year- if I can keep her from swarming that is. So if there are any other beeks with more experience than me out there, I would appreciate a comment or two about how to keep this hive going without losing half her population to a swarm.

Now to change the subject- Last month I felt like I got Christmas all over again. One Friday I got a package in the mail with all the seeds we ordered for the garden. We ordered from Johnny's Selcted Seeds. The next Monday I got a package from Betterbee which contained the items in this photo: 2 medium supers with pierco frames, an electric uncapping knife, a new hive tool (because I lost mine last year), a bee brush, a frame grip, Honey-B-Healthy, terramycin, fumigilin, and Mite Away. We are now waiting for the delivery of 2 bee suits- one that will fit Chris (my wife) and my oldest son and another that will fit my daughter and youngest son. We are all excited!

To finish on a feel good note- my daughter (who is 10) was walking home from school a couple of weeks ago with another kid when they got in an argument about bee stings. During the exchange she referred to herself as a beekeeper. It makes my heart smile.

A Beautiful Day For Bees

2010-02-13T14:15:00.005-07:00

Yes... Today was a beautiful day for bees. We had our warmest day of winter so far as the temperature hit 46 degrees. Upon walking out in the backyard and glancing at the hives I saw bees galore, maybe hundreds of them, on the front of the hives and flying out in front. With a closer look I saw yellow spots from cleansing flights all over the snow extending out 20 feet ot so from the hives. Even more interesting was that in front of Virginia it looked like the bees were performing orientation flights. What I did find surprising was that there was considerably more activity in front of Virginia than Georgia. Virginia is the much weaker hive of the two.

I did take the opportunity to initiate some Mountain Camp feeding for Virginia. I have read that late winter and early spring can be the deadliest time for bees as they run out of honey stores and starve to death before the spring nectar flows begin or their keepers begin feeding them for the spring build-up.

To accomplish this type of feeding, I added an empty medium super to the top of the hive, placed newspapers directly on top of the frames, and added dry granulated sugar on top of the newspaper. I poured the sugar on in layers and sprayed with water in between to form crusty layers. This is supposed to encourage the bees to eat the sugar rather than carrying it out of the hive and disposing of it. The final product can be seen in this picture.

Besides providing the bees with something extra to eat, the sugar in this kind of feeding absorbs moisture in the hive. Moisture in a hive can be deadly as it can chill the bees as well as act as a breeding ground for Nosema, a protozoan which causes dysentery in honey bees. I found a good discussion on Nosema from UC Davis here if you would like more information. It is interesting and an easy read.

Now Nosema is something which I am mildly concerned about. As I looked around at the spots on the hive and in the snow from today's cleansing flights, I saw some that looked kind of streaked and had a slight brownish color- 2 signs of nosema. We did treat both hives last fall with Fumigillin-B in their sugar syrup, but Virginia took very little of the sugar syrup we provided to her. Assuming we can get both hives through what is left of this winter we will treat again later this spring

Cleansing Flights

2010-02-06T16:58:00.006-07:00

Heat wave today! It finally got above 40 degrees. We have had a few days approach 40 but never warm enough for the bees to actually get out of the hives. Consequently, I have not been able to see the bees get out for any cleansing flights. I had looked for the little yellow spots in the snow that are evidence of cleansing flights but had not seen those either... until today.

When I noticed that the temperature was climbing I ran out to look at the hives- lo and behold there were actually a few bees getting out and about. I decided to take this opportunity to peek in the hives and see how winter stores were holding out.

I lifted the cover off of Virginia first- here is a photo of the cluster. I did not pull out any frames or move anything around so as not to disturb the cluster too much. As I looked over the hive I found that they have capped honey left on 4 or 5 of the frames. I didn't have time today but I am still going to supplement Virginia with dry sugar. Maybe 4-5 frames of honey will be enough to get them through, but I don't know enough to be sure yet. There is a huge learning curve when it comes to beekeeping- especially this first year.

I didn't bother with the veil and gloves while looking at Virginia. The bees were so calm- not a single bee flew out of the hive. When I lifted the cover off of Georgia, however, about 4 bees shot out. Maybe they wouldn't have bothered me, but I didn't feel like testing the water. How would I explain a bee sting in February? Anyway, I ran back in and donned the veil and gloves before proceeding.

This is what I saw when I finally got in to take a look at Georgia. It doesn't look like they were organized in such a tight cluster as Virginia. It looks like there are just a lot more bees as well. Georgia developed into a nice strong colony last summer while Virginia kind of dwindled at the end, so I am not surprised to see more bees here. I am a little worried about Georgia swarming during her spring build up so I am planning on performing a procedure called "opening the broodnest" as a method of swarm prevention. I think that Georgia is doing just fine as far as honey supplies go. They have moved up to the top deep hive body, but if you click on the picture to get a larger view, you can see that all the frames are still full of honey.

As I said earlier, there were some bees out on their cleansing flights- just a few though. Bees are very hygienic and won't relieve themselves inside the hive. This means that while it is cold outside the bees have to "hold it" until it gets warm enough outside to fly out and "cleanse" their systems. You can always tell when bees have been performing cleansing flights by the little yellow dots of bee pooh in the snow. Here I was able to capture some evidence of their cleansing flights today. After taking off the veil and gloves I found a little yellow spot on top of my helmet where one little bee decided to say "Hello".

In this next picture you can see the bee that followed me in the house. I pinched it in a paper towel to stop my youngest son from freaking out. When I unfolded it I found this yellow stain that had apparently been squeezed out of the bee. I assume it is the material the bee would have shed during its cleansing flight this afternoon. Don't ask me why but I felt compelled to give it a whiff. Maybe it should come as no surprise, but bee pooh does not have a pleasant odor.

On a completely unrelated note, the honey that we harvested last fall has finally started to crystallize. It has not solidified completely, it just looks kind of cloudy with all the little crystals in it. We pulled the supers off last September so it has taken about 5 months for crystallization to begin. I have no idea how that compares to anyone else's honey. I do know that honey from different nectar sources crystallize at different rates. Dandelion and sunflower honey, for example, will crystallize fairly quickly. In any case, crystallization doesn't affect the flavor and our honey is still the best anywhere (in my unbiased opinion that is).

Snow Bees

2010-01-26T12:24:00.007-07:00

Here we are at the end of January and man is this winter dragging! Every year I forget how long it stays cold and start looking for the warm weather before it is ready to arrive.

Anyway, we have had a cold but relatively dry winter up until a few days ago. Over the weekend we got dumped on by a big storm system that came through. By Saturday afternoon we had about 7 inches of snow on the ground.

The bees survive the snow just fine. In fact I doubt they are very aware of it at all. I have read that snow piled up around the hive actually helps to insulate them and protect them from the wind.

I did clear the snow away from the fronts of the hives but I don't know that that was completely necessary. The heat from the hives had already melted the snow directly in front of the entrances. What was interesting was that even though it was only 24 degrees outside when I took this picture, there were bees crawling around the front entrances. They are not supposed to break the cluster until it gets well above freezing. The only thing I can figure is that they were taking advantage of the melting snow in front of the entrances to collect water.

Now back to the subject of feeding Virginia. I know I have changed my mind on this subject a couple of times. Back in December I was worried about both hives and wanted to add some dry sugar as supplemental feed. Then, when I peeked in at the beginning of January, Georgia's bees were still in the bottom deep and Virginia's had moved up to the top- I thought they both had plenty of honey so I quit worrying. Since then I have read that if the bees are to last the winter on their own honey, they should still be working on the bottom deep in the first part of January. Apparently spring can be a precarious time for bees and they can quickly starve to death if they run out of honey stores too early. So now I have decided to supplement Virginia with dry sugar- if we can ever get some warmer days that is. I don't want to chill them to death while I am trying to save them from starving to death.

Inside The Hives

2010-01-11T18:05:00.004-07:00

It warmed up to a balmy 38 degrees today so I went out to take a peek at the hives this afternoon. There was not a lot of activity but there were a few bees walking around on the front porches. Since it was apparently warm enough for the bees to break cluster a little I decided to peek inside and maybe see about feeding them some supplemental sugar to make sure they could make it through the winter.

Having never opened up the hives in winter before, I didn't know if they would be calm or cranky and if I should gown up or go in bare skinned. I chose to don the hat/veil combo and put on the gloves just to be safe. It turned out that I didn't need to- they were very calm and docile. Not even one bee flew up out of the hives.

As I looked down into Georgia I could hear the bees buzzing in there but couldn't see any without pulling and moving the frames. I didn't want to disturb them too much so I let them be. I guess the cluster was down in the bottom deep hive body. What I did find, to my pleasant surprise, was that all the frames in the top deep were full of capped honey! That really put my mind at ease- I was afraid that I had not fed them enough last fall and they would run out of reserves before spring. I replaced the top cover and moved over to Virginia. Virginia was just as calm but I could see plenty of bees. The cluster had moved up to the center frames of the top deep hive body. I was even more worried about Virginia's stores because she seemed to take less of last fall's sugar syrup, but the 3-4 frames on either side of the cluster were full of capped honey. Let me tell you- that really put my mind at ease. Looks like no mountain camp supplemental feeding will be necessary. I closed up Virginia and went back in much less apprehensive than I had been.

I have one question that I am hoping some of you other beekeepers out there will be able to answer. As I looked down into Virginia I noticed some of the bees looked like they had yellow pollen granules stuck to them. I had noticed the same granules on some of the dead bees outside the hive. It is not on all of them by any means- actually they are on far less than half. Do any of you have any idea what it is and should I be worried?

Let's see- we are now approaching the middle of January. I think it will be time to start spring feeding in a month to a month and a half- sometime in March? I have some pollen patties stored in the freezer- we ordered them to feed the packages when they arrived last April. What I didn't know then but I do know now is that 15 pollen patties will last us several years. I will throw them on the tops of the frames in addition to sugar syrup to give the bees a kick start on spring brood rearing. Hopefully, we will then have two rip-roaring hives going in time for the late spring/early summer nectar flows. I do still want to order a new queen for Virginia- she really slowed down at the end of last summer (even decreased in population a little bit) and her bees got a lot crankier than Georgia's did. I hope that a new queen will calm them down and help them build better numbers.

Winter has been long but the end is in sight! We will soon get to graduate from "Newbie" status and become "Second Year Beekeepers"!

They're Alive!

2010-01-05T08:56:00.004-07:00

Just a few days ago I posted Snug As A..... Bee In A Hive and mentioned that it had been to cold for the bees to fly in the past month or so. This had become frustrating to me because A) I miss seeing them buzzing around, and B) I am a little concerned about their winter stores and want to start some supplemental feeding with granulated sugar. Well, shortly after posting that blog entry I happened to look up at the thermometer saw that it was 39 degrees outside. So much for the accuracy of The Weather Channel!

I immediately ran outside to look at the hives and saw.... nothing! I was really disappointed. I crouched down and rapped on the side of each hive with my knuckles and heard a loud buss from each of them. A few guard bees from each hive wandered out of the entrance with their stingers up in the air. They are cranky but still their! It was good to see them, even if they were mad. I stood there for a while and watched as a few bees did a little house keeping and brought some of their dead comrades out of the hive and deposited them a few feet away.

We were just about 20 minutes away from heading out to church so I didn't have time to get the mountain camp feeding going right then. By the time we made it home the temperature had cooled back into the 20's. I guess that will have to wait for another day.

Snug As A..... Bee In A Hive

2010-01-03T10:26:00.002-07:00

Oh I am tired of winter... and I think the bees are, too.

December was a cold month and the last time I have seen any bees (any live bees that is) was Thanksgiving weekend. I remember that day specifically because November 30th was St. Andrew's Day. I was dressed in a kilt on November 29th waiting to head out to church and decided to go have a quick look at the hives. It was a frosty morning, but as the sun hit the front of the hives the frost melted and left little drops of water suspended over the front entrance. As I looked more closely I saw two little bees from the Georgia hive slowly sipping water from the hanging drops. I thought that would make a pretty cool picture and ran inside for the camera. By the time I made it back out they had slipped back inside. While I have seen a lot of dead bees since that time, those were the last live bees I saw before winter set in with a vengeance in December.

As December started, a cold front moved in and for about 2 weeks night time lows were reaching 20 degrees below zero and day time highs were lucky to get above zero. It warmed a little after that. Most days we have had highs in the 20's with lows in the teens and single digits and the occasional subzero night with a few dustings of snow. The last week of the month we finally started to get a few days above freezing but still not warm enough to allow the bees to fly. With it being too cold to see the bees fly I have been anxious about how they are faring inside. I have periodically put my ear down to the entrance and have always been able to hear the cluster buzzing inside. It is amazing to me that it can be 20 below outside but the bees stay snug and warm inside their hives. Sometimes the buzzing is louder and sometimes it is fainter- I assume that is due to the cluster moving about on the frames eating the honey they had stored- sometimes they are close to the entrance and sometimes they are further away. I just hope they have enough honey stored to last them through the winter.

All through December I have found piles of dead bees in front of the hives. Georgia was a really strong hive going in to the winter and has had large piles of dead bees on and around her front porch. Virginia was a much weaker colony with a smaller population and has had many fewer bees littering her entrance. I know it is normal for bees to die in the winter but I can't help feeling a little sorry for the girls.

The cold temps have had me a little nervous as bees are very hygienic creatures and will not... how shall I say this... do their business in the hive. They have to wait until it is warm enough to perform "cleansing flights" and relieve themselves outside. I was beginning to wonder how long bees can "hold it" before they explode. I consulted with other beekeepers on beesource.com and learned that during times when the bees are rearing brood they have to relieve themselves at least every few weeks because they are consuming pollen which contains a lot of solids. When they are not rearing brood (like now) however, they are only consuming honey which is very low in solids and they can hold it for months at a time. That made me feel a lot better. So now I am anxiously awaiting the day when we get a nice warm front move through and highs reach about 40 degrees so I can watch the bees fly again.

As far as the honey stores go, I can tell the bees are using it up- I just am not sure how fast. At the beginning of the winter I hefted the hives to get an idea of how much honey was available to the bees. Georgia's hive was quite a bit heavier than Virginia's- but Georgia had a much larger population and would need more. I hefted them the other day and Georgia has gotten a lot lighter. Virginia is lighter also, but the difference is not as great. I keep telling myself that they will be fine but I worry all the same. I suppose it is normal for fathers to worry about their little girls. If it would ever warm up enough to take the top cover off, I would supplement their honey stores with sugar in a feeding method called "Mountain Camp" feeding. To do this you simply put newspaper across the tops of the frames in the hive, pour on granulated sugar, and replace the top cover. The bees can then crawl up onto the newspaper and take the sugar that they need. According to the weather channel's website we are not supposed to get warmer than the low 30's for the next 10 days or so. Come on warm front! Where are you?

In other news- we have been experimenting with the hand and foot balm that we have been making with the beeswax. Originally we were just melting beeswax and olive oil together. This worked but left your hands kind of greasy for a few minutes after applying it before it all soaked in. Recently we bought a little lanolin and added that to the mix. This had made it creamier and less greasy. We just might have stumbled upon the perfect recipe!

I guess that's it for now. If we spot any cleansing flights or if we are ever able to go ahead with mountain camp supplemental feeding I will let you all know how it goes.

What To Do With All That Wax?

2009-12-08T17:24:00.004-07:00

So we harvested honey, fed the bees, and got them all tucked away for the winter. Now they should be all taken care of until spring- not much left for us to do except wait. That doesn't mean that we have been sitting idle though. All through the summer we were collecting burr comb from the hives and then then we collected the wax cappings from the honey frames when we harvested honey. We had read that you can use beeswax for all kinds of products from lip balm to furniture polish- but it has to be cleaned up first.

Beeswax, when it comes out of the hive, not not very clean. In fact, burr comb especially, can be quite dirty. It is full of honey, bee parts from any unlucky bees that happened to be in the way when the wax was scraped out, pollen, and sometimes even bee eggs if the queen happened to be close to the burr comb before it was scraped out. Our first attempt to "clean" the wax early last summer was unsuccessful. We threw the wax into a pot of water and heated it until the wax melted and then poured the whole thing through some cheese cloth. We figured that the cheese cloth would filter out any impurities while the wax and water would pass through and cool with the wax solidifying on top of the water. This did filter out most impurities except for the eggs- they were too small and we ended up with wax with a bunch of eggs all through it.

Fortunately, I was surfing the internet one day and came across another beekeeper's blog with a video about how to build a simple solar wax melter that would filter out any impurities. If you want to watch it yourself you can find it here. Basically, it is just a styrofoam cooler with a piece of glass across the top. Inside the cooler you place a plastic container with a little bit of water in the bottom and a paper towel rubber banded across the top. On top of the paper towel you place the wax you want to melt and put the whole thing out in the sun on a hot summer day. The sun melts the wax, the paper towel filters it, and then the clean wax solidifies on top of the water. We built one of our own, but instead of a styrofoam cooler we found an old metal box that had been painted black. We tried it a few different times but the weather wouldn't cooperate with us. This was a cooler and cloudier summer than usual so we were only successful a couple of times. We did manage to finish melting the wax but with a modified solar wax melter in that it was not solar- just a wax melter. We used the same set up but we used a metal bowl instead of a plastic container and put the whole thing inside the crock pot set on "keep warm". It worked just as well but wasn't as fun as using the sun to do the work. We ended up getting about a pound and a half of bright yellow wax.

After the process of melting and filtering the paper towel is saturated with beeswax and all the impurities. This sludge that is left is known as "slum gum". Beeswax is quite flammable so the leftover slum gum has made for excellent fire starter in our wood burning stove this winter.

Alright- now that we have all that wax, what do we do with it? We have already used some of it it to make hand moisturizer. I think I would actually call it a salve- definitely not a cream or lotion. It definitely has hydrophobic properties as it is just a mixture of bees wax and other oils. But- in this dry winter air, it will keep your hands as soft as a baby's bottom. Will we branch out and make other products? Maybe we will wait until next year to attempt lip balm or any other more adventurous recipes.

Bees and Potatoes

2009-11-07T21:25:00.006-07:00

Well, it is definitely fall. We had a few weeks of winter back in October. Lows were getting down to the single digits and stayed below freezing for several days in a row. I had fed the bees some sugar syrup prior to the cold weather but was not sure that they had been given enough to build enough stores for the winter. After that time it warmed up for a while so I fed some more and then it got cold again so I stopped feeding. I was thinking that they had been given enough so I didn't continue feeding during this last warm spell.

Now, lets go back in time to remember that Virginia started the summer like gang busters. Later in the summer, however, she started to struggle and we actually harvested more honey from Georgia than Virginia. I actually think that Virginia had decreased in population and hadn't taken much in the way of sugar syrup to build up her winter stores. I had about given up on her and figured I would just need to order new bees for next spring.

It now looks like Virginia realized that she needed a larger population to survive the winter because lately we have seen lots of orientation flights in front of the hive. The queen is either still laying or has been laying recently even though there has been no orientation flight activity in front of Georgia for some time now. I have decided to put the feeder back on Virginia to give them the opportunity to build the stores and survive the winter if they will.

Last week I happened to notice a lot of activity and discovered that the bees were conducting orientation flights while I was working in the garden. The soil on one side of the garden is less fertile than the soil on the other side. I was moving some of the dirt around so the plants on the east side will grow and produce better than they have. As I was doing this, I got to thinking that this was kind of like redistribution of wealth- taking some good soil from some of the potato plants and giving it to others. I thought,"Is this really fair? To take from some potato plants and give to others? How will the potatoes on the west side feel about that?" But then I thought, "Well, I am the gardener and I just want all the potato plants to grow and produce well." Is this any different than what some in the federal government want to happen in our nation today? Don't they just want us all to succeed?

What is comes down to is this: I am the gardener in my potato patch. I know what I want my potato plants to look like when I am finished with them. I can cultivate them the way I want to because they are mine. When the government confiscates property (whether that be land, money, wages, or anything else that rightfully belongs to an individual) in order to transfer it to another individual, they are saying, in effect, that the property rights of some are more sacred than the property rights of others. In doing this, the government can cultivate and mold us into the individuals they want us to be and we become nothing more than a bunch of potato plants. Now, I can do this with my potato plants because they belong to me, but we do not belong to the government. The government belongs to us. Let us all stand up and declare "I will not be a potato!"

Honey Harvest

2009-10-11T16:08:00.014-06:00

The honey has been harvested! This truly was an exciting experience for us. We were trying to not let our hopes get up, but our bees outdid themselves. "Beekeeping For Dummies" said not to expect a honey harvest the first year because you start with such a small population of bees and no preexisting comb- the bees are starting with absolutely nothing. When you think of all that our bees have accomplished in just a few months it is remarkable.

The harvest actually took place a while ago and I have just been to busy to get this blog updated since then. About the middle of September I finally got around to pulling the supers from on top of the deep hive bodies. The question is "How do you get the supers off without getting all the bees inside of them?" We decided to go with a product called Bee Quick applied to a fume board. The principle is that you spray the Bee Quick, an almond oil containing solution, onto the felt covered surface of a fume board. The bees apparently can't stand the smell of almond oil so when you remove the top cover from the hive, place the fume board on the top super with the felt/Bee Quick side down, the bees move down into the next super. In my inexperience I figured that I didn't need to buy a fume board- I could just glue felt to one side of a piece of plywood and use that for a fume board. I soon learned that this didn't work very well. You see, fume boards are made of metal and need to heat up in the sun before applying the bee quick so the bee quick can actually vaporize in the hive and push the bees down. My homemade fume board only pushed about half of the bees out of the supers.

Here are is the ineffective fumeboard on top of one of the hives.

Here are the four supers laid out on the basketball court waiting to be taken inside. They can't be seen in this photo but there were still a lot of bees on the frames. As evening approached and temperatures started to cool a little bit I pulled out each frame one at a time, carried it over to the hives, and shook the bees off in front of the hives. I then had to rush it in the house before any bees landed back on it. With ten frames in each super, this was a long process. We ended up with several bees inside the house as well. I am thinking of getting a bee escape to use next year. A bee escape is a board you put in between the boxes. They are easy for the bees to move down but difficult for the bees to find the entrance to move back up. It takes longer to clear a super of bees but I hear that they are pretty effective.

Once the supers were down in the basement tucked away in the store room, I put the top feeders loaded up with sugar syrup back on the hives so the bees could store up enough food to get them through the winter. I added a little fumigillin to the sugar syrup to prophylactically treat for bacterial infections that can sometimes afflict bees.

We ordered a three frame tangential extractor from Mann Lake which arrived about a week after the supers were removed from the hives. Extractors remove honey from the frames by spinning the frames inside the barrel shaped body of the extractor. Tangential extractors have the plane of the frames running tangentially to the extractor (makes sense) and must be turned around after the first side is extracted. Radial extractors have the plane of the frames running radially like spokes in the extractor and will extract both sides of the frames at the same time. Our tangential model was a little cheaper than the radial models.

We decided at the last minute to extract on a Saturday evening and at about 7:00 set up the extractor in the kitchen. The following pictures give an idea of how things went.

Here I am uncapping a frame of honey. As the honey in the hives is "ripened" the bees cover it up with a layer of wax caps. Those caps have to be removed before the honey can be extracted. You can buy heated or unheated uncapping knives for this job. Unheated knives still have to be heated in warm water or it tends to tear up the comb. We tried using a bread knife heated in warm water- but that didn't work so well so we borrowed an uncapping knife from a friend. The process went much more smoothly after that.

As you remove the caps from the frames you remove a significant amount of honey with them. We attached a queen excluder to the top of a plastic bin to allow the honey to drain off the caps.

Here is the whole set up. The uncapped frames go in the extractor and I crank on the yellow handle on top of the lid. The honey spins out of the comb, runs down the sides of the extractor, and out the honey gate at the bottom.

The honey runs out the honey gate and through a couple of filters to remove the bits of wax and bee parts. It is collected in a bucket with another honey gate at the bottom. The filters have to be cleaned periodically during this process or they clog up and everything slows way down. After about 6 hours of uncapping, extracting, and filtering we ended up with 75 pounds or about 7 gallons of honey.

The final product! The bottling process went pretty quickly. Just hold a jar under the honey gate and fill'er up! We bottled in quart, pint, and 1/2 pint jars. The word got around at the hospital where I work and we sold out in about a week- except for a couple of pints we kept for ourselves and a few gifts for neighbors and family members. Can't wait for next year when the bees have some preexisting comb to work on and are starting with a larger population.

Stay tuned- the year is not over and there is more to learn and do!

The Story Of A Beehive That Struggled For A While But Is Doing Better Now

2009-09-19T14:48:00.004-06:00

I’m back! It has been a while, I know, and I will admit that initially it was just laziness on my part. But then the computer went down and it took a couple of weeks to get it up and going again. Now it has been so long and so much has happened that I am not sure how to tackle everything in one post. I guess I will add it all in “chapters”.

Back in July and August I mentioned that the Virginia hive was doing a poor job of drawing comb in its super with the queen excluder. I removed the queen excluder and the bees moved right up, started drawing comb, and storing nectar. I didn’t think the queen would move up to the super because she had a ceiling of honey on the tops of the frames in the top deep hive body. In other words she was “honey bound”. At the next inspection though, I found eggs in the center frames of the super. We don’t want eggs in the super because that is supposed to be the honey that we get to steal. I promptly put the queen excluder back in place to keep the queen out of my honey. During a later inspection I found that all of those eggs had developed into larvae and then capped brood. It was just a matter of waiting for them to emerge from the cells and clean them out so the cells could be filled with nectar which would be “ripened” into honey.

While Virginia suffered complications, Georgia’s hive seemed to be really taking off. She has been outpacing Virginia since the middle of July. Virginia was definitely the stronger of the two hives in the beginning and she filled up her deep hive bodies about a week before Georgia did. Starting in July, though, Virginia began to struggle. I mentioned in an earlier post that I destroyed what may have been a supercedure cell in Virginia’s hive. Since that time I have left the bees to do what they wanted. I did see what could have been supercedure cells in Virginia but did not look too closely as I did not want to damage them. They might also have been empty queen cups. In any case, Virginia seemed to lack the activity outside the hive that Georgia was having- that is until a few days ago. I went out to work a little in the garden and found hundreds of bees in front of Virginia taking orientation flights. I had not seen this for a while and I was getting a little nervous. I have theorized that Virginia’s bees did supercede the queen and it took a while for the new queen to emerge, mate with the drones, start laying eggs, and then for those new bees to emerge and start working in the hive. Now we just need to let her build up her numbers and I think she will be good to make it through the winter.

That's probably good for now. I will catch you up with the rest later.

Foragers

2009-08-02T22:58:00.009-06:00

This is an alfalfa field south of town. You can see the Pryor Mountains in the background. I am pretty sure that these fields provide the main nectar source for the area.

On the left you can see big blue boxes that house cutter bees- the main pollinators for alfalfa. Honeybees get nectar from alfalfa but do not pollinate it.

Here is a close up view of some alfalfa blossoms from the field. The fields are jammed full of these little things.

Here we have a bee working the blossoms on the broccoli in our garden. Last years broccoli gave us nice big tight heads of broccoli. We must have grabbed a different variety this year because the heads were loose and sparse so we decided to just let it go to seed and see what the bees could do with it. They love it!

We have quite a lot of clover in our lawn. The bees had been ignoring it for the first part of the summer. They are paying more attention to it now.

Pretty good profile of the bee here sucking the nectar out of the clover.

The wings really reflect the sunlight. When the sun is shining during mid-morning the bees reflect the sunlight as they take of and come in to the hives. It looks like little points of light zipping through the air.

Straight head-on view here. Too bad it doesn't have it's proboscis out to stick down into the clover.

Honeybee in a red hollyhock. I thought that bees would only use hollyhocks for pollen- they have so much of it. But as you can see this bee is going past the pollen and I assume is sucking nectar from the center of the flower.

The bees were ignoring our hollyhocks as well until a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, a honeybee in a pink hollyhock. This one is dusted in pollen.

Confessions Of A Confused Beekeeper

2009-08-01T19:18:00.004-06:00

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do- it has been a while.

As you might recall, back on the post dated Juy 12th I had reported that the bees were doing a poor job of drawing comb in the medium super I had placed on top of Virginia's hive a couple of weeks earlier. During that same inspection I found that Georgia had filled in her deep hive bodies with comb and so placed a super on top of her as well. Well, a week later I inspected the hives again only to find that there were very few bees in the supers and they were still making very little progress up there. Besides that, as I was inspecting Virginia I discovered what appeared to be a supercedure cell. I freaked out a little and destroyed the supercedure cell- I am not sure why I did that, but I did. I guess I felt like if there was a supercedure cell then there was something wrong. No supercedure cell, nothing wrong- so I wiped it out. I asked about the situation with other beekeepers on beesource.com and got scolded just a little for destroying a new queen cell that the bees probably needed. Always trust the bees! They know best!

There were still eggs in Virginia when I destroyed the supercedure cell, so I thought I would give it a few days and reinspect. I figured that if they really did need a new queen they might still have time to make a new supercedure cell from one of the remaining eggs. If there was not time I thought I would steal a frame full of eggs from Georgia and give it to Virginia so there would be plenty of eggs for a new queen cell. Once I got into Virginia for this second time I spotted the queen and lots of eggs but no supercedure cell. Since the queen was still there and there were eggs with which the bees could supercede if they needed to, I left everything the way it was. Yes- I decided to trust the bees. If there are any more experienced beekeepers reading this and are shaking their heads wondering what this newbie thinks he is doing- Please comment and tell me what is really going on and what I should be doing. Thanks!

While I was down in the brood nest the bees got pretty ticked off. I was glad to be wearing my veil and gloves. I couldn't believe how many bees were in the bottom box- they just kept boiling out. Anyway, my seven year old was out playing in the yard (this had never been a problem before), and the bees decided to go after him. He ended up with 3 stings before he made it in the house. I was talking to another beekeeper in town about it and asked why they were so mad this time. He said that if you mess around in the brood nest in the middle of summer they will always get ticked off. I will leave the brood nest alone for the rest of the summer.

Now back to the problem of the bees not making progress drawing comb up in the supers- Some of the other beeks on Beesource don't use queen excluders. They say that bees don't like to cross the excluder and it puts a damper on honey production up in the supers. I decided to pull the queen excluder off Virginia and leave it on Georgia. About 5 days later I went back and just looked through the supers. I found that the super on each hive was full of bees and that both hives were making significant progress- there was some comb on nearly every frame and the center frames had quite a bit. There was even some nectar being stored. From this I have concluded that, at least in our two hives, a queen excluder may not be necessary as the bees in Virginia were storing nectar and there were not eggs, but that the presence of a queen excluder does not hinder anything since both hives seem to be making equal progress. Maybe there was just a lull in the nectar flow which picked back up last week?

I was not expecting the bees to have made this much progress in this their first year so I do not have extra supers and frames on hand. I can see that I will need to provide more space for the bees. I have ordered two more supers and ten frames for each from Mann Lake Ltd. They should be arriving sometime next week. I think I still have time before they run out of space.

The alfalfa fields are still in bloom. I am surprised that the alfalfa to be used for seed is still blooming- this has gone on for quite a while. The other alfalfa fields used for hay have been cut once, are in bloom for the second time, and are just about ready for their second cutting. I had never noticed how pretty alfalfa blossoms are and how many there are. All summer the bees had pretty much ignored the nectar and pollen in our yard but are now all over the hollyhocks, clover growing in the grass, and the broccoli plants we let go to seed. Most of the bees do still take off for parts unknown but I have been able to catch a few photos of the bees on blossoms in our own yard. I will post those photos in the next post either tonight or tomorrow- the next post chronologically but the first post as it appears on this page.

New Sting

2009-07-17T14:29:00.003-06:00

I got stung again. The first time I got stung I just wanted to peek under the top hive feeder and look in the hive for a second. The feeder had been glued in place with propolis and by the time I got it off it came up with a loud "CRACK" that set the bees off. One of them stung me on my forhead. I barely felt it and by the next morning it had swelled up in a knot and itched for a few days.

This time I just wanted to peek in the supers to see how much comb the bees had drawn. Chris has told me never to open the hives without my gear on. Why did I do it? I think I can relate to Pippin in The Lord Of The Rings when he couldn't help himself and had to look at the palantir just one more time. Anyway, I lifted off the outer and inner covers and 2 bees shot out of the hive and nailed my on the side of the wrist and the back of the hand next to my watch. They were more painful than the first sting but not horrible and they did stop hurting within 30 seconds. That night they looked like mosquito bites and nothing more. The next day my hand began to swell. Eventually my knuckles disappeared and the swelling extended up my fingers. Below is a picture of what my hand looked like this morning.

By the time this picture was taken a lot of the swelling had gone down, but you can still see some puffiness in the middle knuckles in my middle, ring, and pinky fingers.

Now, I have taken the outer and inner covers off, peeked in the supers, and replaced the covers several times without incident. I think that as the summer heats up and they bees have more honey to defend they are becoming a little more protective of their hives. I think I will leave them alone now and only look in when I am doing inspections with the smoker and all the gear in place.

Adding Supers

2009-07-12T17:59:00.013-06:00

I dug into the hives a few days ago. We have had a super on top of Virginia's hive for a couple of weeks now, and I fully expected to see the bees building comb and filling it up with nectar. There has been a nectar flow going on for quite a while since the alfalfa has been blooming. Maybe it hasn't been as strong a flow as I thought because when I looked into the super there wasn't much comb.

Here in this photo you can see the small amount of comb the bees had built on this frame. There were four frames with about this same amount of comb. I was hoping for more.

Once I got through the super I started into the upper deep hive body. I could immediately see that the bees had filled out all the deep frames. The first frame was really cemented in place with wax and propolis. That combined with the fact that it was full of nectar and capped honey, which makes the frame surprisingly heavy, made it difficult to remove from the hive. You are supposed to carefully pull the frames straight up so you don't damage the comb. Well, as I wrenched the frame loose from the wax and propolis, the frame twisted sideways as I pulled it up. Besides this, there was a piece of burr comb on the side of the hive facing the frame. As I pulled the frame out at a crooked angle the burr comb scratched along the honey comb on the frame and pretty well mangled a big chunk of comb. I pulled it on out as it was dripping with honey- I bet a couple cups of honey dripped out. I captured some of the drippings- just enough for everybody in the family plus one neighbor kid to have a taste. Mmmm- Delicious!

Here is a shot of one of the deep frames with mostly capped honey and some open cells full of nectar toward the bottom.

Another frame with capped honey on the top half and some capped brood in the bottom half. When we first started I worried that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between capped honey and capped brood. The difference is obvious, isn't it?

Once I discovered that there was plenty of capped brood and new eggs in Virginia I figured that the queen was doing well. I don't know what else I could accommplish by going throught he rest of the hive except disrupt the hive operations so I put things back together and didn't bother inspecting the bottom box.

Georgia's hive still had it's top hive feeder and the bees had been taking large amounts of sugar syrup. I removed the feeder and looked down into the the deep hive body and saw that the bees had finished drawing comb on all of the deep frames. As I started the inspection I found that the bees had not filled all of the comb with nectar/sugar syrup, but they were making progress.

As I came across frames with capped brood I saw something I had not seen before. As the bee larvae grows it is capped with wax and the larvae transform through the pupae stage and turn into adult bees. When they are fully developed the worker bees chew away the wax caps and climb out. The drones need help chewing through the wax caps and climbing out of the cells from worker bees. Anyway, I looked closely at one of Georgia's frames of capped brood and discovered two cells where the worker bees inside were in the process of chewing their way out of their cells. I could see little sets of antennae and eyes poking through. I tried to take pictures but, like I have said before, we need a new camera. They turned out way to blurry to post.

After I was done inspecting Georgia I added a queen excluder, a super, the inner cover, and replaced the outer cover.

Here is a photo of the two hives sid by side. They both now consist of, starting at the bottom: screened bottom board, two deep hive bodies, queen exluder which cannot be seen, 1 medium honey super, inner cover which cannot be seen, outer cover, and a brick to keep the outer cover from blowing off.

This is not how the color scheme was supposed to work out. Virginia was supposed to be yellow and Georgia was supposed to be blue but, if you read the very first post of this blog you know that the second hive didn't arrive until a couple of hours after the bees did. We were forced to use Virginia's second deep as Georgia's first and we didn't get a chance to paint Georgia's bottom board before we had to install the packages. Now the colors are all mixed up. Oh well, it gives them character, right?

Hopefully the nectar will continue to flow and they will start drawing comb in the supers. Progress seems kind of slow but if you consider that they started with just three pounds of bees and no comb, they have really done a lot in just 2 months and 3 weeks.

Hummin' Hives

2009-07-02T20:52:00.003-06:00

Ok- I know I just gave an update yesterday, but I have to mention what happened this morning. I sometimes like to listen to the hives- that has always meant pressing my ear against the side of the hive and litening to the hum inside. Is that weird? Maybe. But I enjoy it anyway. Anyway, back to the story- I went outside at 6:00 this morning ready to leave for work and decided to go look at the hives really quick. When I got within 5 feet I thought I could hear a low hum. I said to myself "That can't be the bees." I took a couple more steps and listened again and confirmed that it was in fact the bees humming that loudly! I have read about this on beesource.com before and I am excited to hear it myself. It is the sign of a really good nectar flow with the bees in the hive fanning the honey comb with their wings in order to evaporate the moisture out of the honey. Our bees are so cool!

Sweet Honey

2009-07-01T22:24:00.001-06:00

Well, there hasn’t been a whole lot of new news with the bees lately. We did inspect the bees last week but there was virtually no progression in either hive, which left very little to blog about. We did peek in the hives yesterday, though and there is a little more to discuss.

To start with, we have been mildly concerned about the Virginia hive. A couple of weeks ago, since she had dawn comb on 8 of the 10 frames, we added a super and removed the top hive feeder. During last week’s inspection we found that there were some eggs and larvae, but the brood pattern was kind of spotty and there was not any new comb that was not there the previous week. In retrospect we can see that we were just a little too excited with Virginia and jumped the gun a little. We should have waited one more week before adding the second deep hive body and should have continued to feed them 1 more week before adding the super. I read somewhere (and any of you who might know better can feel free to correct me if I am wrong) that it takes a pound of honey to make 1 ounce of wax. I think that when the super was added there was no nectar flow going on. With no nectar flow the bees can’t make honey. If the bees are not making honey they can’t build much comb either.

During this past week the bees from both hives have been very active. All day long the bees have been taking off for and returning from parts unknown. The way the hives are situated in the back yard they either have to fly up and over hedge about 10 feet tall across the yard to the east, up and over a hedge about 8 feet tall to the north, or up and over the house to the south west. Consequently they all fly up immediately after leaving the hive. Anyway, when the sun is shining, the bee’s bodies reflect the sunlight. It is a beautiful sight to look toward the hives and see all these little points of light constantly shooting up and coming down.

As we have watched the bees coming in this past week we have noticed that they have been bringing in very little pollen. We assumed that this meant that there must be a good nectar flow going on and they were bringing in nectar instead. This was confirmed when, during yesterdays hive inspection, we discovered that Virginia had very nearly finished drawing out comb in the deep hive bodies and filled them with capped honey. Capped honey, by the way, is the finished honey ready to be eaten. Bees fill the honey comb cells with regurgitated nectar which has been treated with various enzymes used to break down the sugars in the nectar. They then fan the honeycomb to evaporate the water until they have nice ripe honey. They cover the honey with wax caps so they can store it until it is needed. As of yesterday they had just started to draw comb up in the super. I am thinking that if we had just been a little more patient and added boxes and stopped feeding at the right times we might be a week ahead of where we are now.

The nectar flow we are now experiencing must be from the alfalfa fields outside of town. They have all been full of little purplish blue blossoms. It is now time for the first cutting of hay so those fields will be out of commission until just before the second cutting. There are several fields being used for seed rather than hay. I do not know if alfalfa will continue to blossom as long as it is not cut or if the blossoms will dry up as it goes to seed. Does anyone out there know? Please leave a comment and tell me if you do.

Anyway, I did scrape a little burr comb with some capped honey from the top of the frames in Virginia’s top deep hive body. There wasn’t a lot of honey there- just enough to smear on a couple of fingers for Chris and myself. It was a very light mild honey- and quite tasty. Woohoo! Our first taste of Robertson honey!

Georgia, as usual, is lagging just a little behind Virginia. She has drawn comb on 7 of the 10 frames in her upper deep. When I saw this I got excited and just about removed the feeder and added a super. I took a deep breath, remembered Virginia, and decided to feed one more week before adding the super. I am confident that next week there will be a super sitting on top of both hives, and, as long as the alfalfa keeps up, both will be filling up with honey.

Photos From June 12, 2009

2009-06-14T22:52:00.004-06:00

The bees started spilling over the side of the hive as we were doing the inspection. When we were ready to put it back together it took just a few puffs of smoke to get them all back inside.

A queen cell hanging off the end of some burr comb on the corner of this frame. The camera (we used a cell phone camera because our other one was missing its batteries) decided to focus more on the hive in the background than on the subject of the photo.

This photo shows a bunch of bees clinging to each other hanging off the bottom of the frame.

Another queen cell pointing downward off the bottom of the frame.

Swarm Cells and Alfalfa Honey

2009-06-14T18:38:00.006-06:00

We're back after almost two weeks off. The weather turned south and for about a week and a half it rained almost constantly and rarely got above 60 degrees which kept the bees inside the hives and us out. The weather finally broke and the days warmed back up into the 70's so we finally got back in to inspect the hives last Friday.

During the cold rainy weather the bees couldn't really get out and forage a whole lot. As they were kept inside the hive they really went through a lot of sugar syrup. Since it had been two weeks since the last inspection we weren't sure how much the hives would have progressed (we are never sure of anything) but were hoping that things were moving right a long. We brought out 2 medium supers just in case we needed to add them to the hives.

As soon as we opened Virginia's top cover and removed her feeder we could see that it would be time for a super. Nearly all the frames in the top deep hive body were full of comb. The bees had just started building comb in the second side of the 8th frame. As we moved through the hive we became concerned and more than a little confused. We were finding lots of capped brood, eggs, and larvae all through the upper hive body, which is good, but we also came across four queen cells hanging down off the bottom of a couple of frames. Remember from an earlier post that queen cells hanging off the bottoms of the frames are swarm cells and mean that the bees are running out of room and are getting ready to split the hive in half leaving us with only half of the bees to produce honey. We destroyed those swarm cells and moved on to the lower deep hive body. This is where we really got confused. We found some capped brood and lots of empty cells. The queen had obviously not been down there for a while, but did have lots of room to lay eggs if she just would. So why were the bees creating swarm cells? And how do we prevent them from doing it agin?

Well, we put Virginia back together the way she was and added a medium super. Between the top deep hive body and the super we inserted a queen excluder. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of beekeeping, a queen excluder is a screen-like device with holes large enough for the wokers to pass through but too small for the queen to pass. This excludes the queen from the super ensuring that only honey is stored in the super and that the queen doesn't lay eggs up there. Who would like to be squeezing honey onto their toast in the morning and have a bee pupae pop out onto their breakfast? Ok- that wouldn't really happen. The honey is all filtered after it is extracted and before it is bottled. It is exciting to have added the super- now the bees will fill out the frames with comb and start storing honey! We have been told not to expect honey for ourselves this first year- but we can hope.

We spoke with a more experienced back yard beekeeper today about Virginia's swarm cell situation. He said not to worry too much. Destroying the swarm cells and adding the super were the correct things to do. He also suggested that we reverse the positions of the deep hive bodies. The queen likes to move up but rarely moves down. By switching the deeps we can let her move up into the hive body with more room for egg laying. This combined with the addition of the super should be plenty to prevent any swarming. We will see if we can make that switch tomorrow.

Also- we have removed the hive feeder now that we have added a super. If the bees fill up the super with sugar syrup instead of nectar we will end up with thick sugar syrup insead of honey.

Georgia seems to be cruising along just a little behind Virginia. She was not ready for the addition of a super yet. It seems like about six of the frames in Georgia's upper deep hive body were filled with comb. I am guessing that we will add a super to Georgia in the next week or two.

While we endured all those days of cold and rain I got to worrying that there wasn't going to be enough nectar sources close enough for our bees to forage effectively. I read an article about how far bees will go to forage and decieded that 3 miles would be their effective foraging limit. That article was quite interesting- you can read it here . Anyway, I got on GoogleEarth and plotted a 3 mile radius from a center point at our house. If you are familiar with geography around Lovell, WY you will be able to visualize the following: Three miles from our house goes south into the hills beyond the cemetary, west just beyond Midway Motors, north into the hills beyond the river, and east almost to the junction heading to the National Recreation Area. This is a much larger area than I though it would be.

Back in March I was talking to a member of the family that owns Queen Bee Gardens. He says that most of their honey comes from alfalfa. Well, there is plenty of alfalfa within 3 miles of the hives so I think they will be fine. I found the following interesting as well. I had always thought that honey bees couldn't work alfalfa because when a bee tries to get in the flower it triggers a release mechanism in the flower and part of the flower pops open hitting a honey bee in the head. That is why smaller cutter bees are always used to polinate alfalfa fields. It turns out that honey bees figure out how to stick thier proboscis in the side of the blossom to get the nectar but are not then able to collect pollen from those plants. Honey bees are just so cool!

Ten Apples (And a Sting) Up On Top

2009-06-02T09:21:00.002-06:00

I guess I will start with apples. A couple of weeks ago, while the fruit trees were in bloom, the small apple tree in the backyard was covered in bees. The hum of the bees in the tree could even be heard inside the house! Thanks to those bees the tree is now loaded with marble sized apples. I think we can look forward to a bumber apple crop this year. The pear tree, on the other hand, does not seem to be producing quite like the apple tree is. It never had the huge swarm of bees that the apple tree had but it did still have its fair share. Now we can only find a few developing pears in the whole tree. I guess there is nothing left to say about the pears except "Hmmm...."

I did something stupid this week. I was anxious to see how much progress the Virginia hive had made. It was a couple of days before I would be able to do the inspection and I wanted to see if, after the population explosion, Virginia's bees had started building comb on the outer most frames. So, after work when the evening was cooling down, I decided to just lift the edge of the top hive feeder and peek in. I had done this before without any problems, but that was when the population was a lot smaller. Anyway, I went to lift the edge but the bees had stuck the feeder to the hive with propolis (that's bee glue made from tree sap). The propolis broke free with a loud CRACK and the feeder popped up completely clear of the hive. The bees did not like that at all. I don't know how many bees came out of the hive but they all headed straight for me. I quickly replaced the feeder back on the hive as the bees were divebombing my head. As they chased me across the yard I felt the tiniest pin prick on my forehead. I thought to myself "That could not have been a sting, it didn't hurt." It gave me no problems that night so I thought I really had escaped unscathed. The next day it swelled up into a hard red knot and itched for the next four days. If that is all bee stings are made of- I say BRING THEM ON!

The last inspection occurred on May 29th. The hives are making progress filling in the empty frames with comb, but it is slow. In Virginia, we expected to see that she had finished drawing comb on the las three frames of the lower deep hive body and that the bees had moved up to the upper deep. Well the bees did move up but they had not touched the last 3 frames in the bottom compartment. The bees have always been clustered in the hive just to the right of center and had filled up the frames on the right side faster than the left. We were not sure what to do to get the bees to fill in the last three in the bottom or if we should just let them do their thing and they would fill them in eventually. We got some good advice from another beekeeper on beesource.com and will replace the three empty frames in the bottom deep with three frames filled with comb but no brood from the upper deep. We will then take the empty frames from the lower and move them to the outside edge of the upper. Beesource.com, by the way, is an excellent resource for beekeepers. It is visited everyday by hundreds of beekeepers from all over with all kinds of experience. They are always happy and willing to share their expertise and answer any question anybody has, even obvious questions from newbies like us. We recommend it to beekeepers who want to share, new beekeepers who want to learn, or anyone just thinking of starting a couple of hives of their own.

Georgia's bees had set up in the same position as Virginia- just to the right of center. They finally did fill out seven of their ten frames so we added a second deep hive body. Now we will see if they follow Virginia's example and move up without finishing the last 3 frames. In the last post we mentioned a curious cell in Georgia's hive. It looked too big to be a drone cell but not quite right to be a queen cell. Well, it wasn't there this week. Either it was our imagination or it was a drone cell that finally became a drone bee. I dont't think it was a queen cell because the hive didn't swarm and if it had been a supercedure cell I think there would have been more of them. Now we wait for the bees to fill in the deep hive bodies so we can start adding supers to the top. Have I explained what a super is? I'll do it now just in case I haven't. A super is smaller than a deep hive body and is placed on top of the deeps. The queen stays in the deep hives bodies laying eggs and raising brood. The worker bees fill the deeps up with honey and pollen for the hive to use. Any extra honey they produce they put up in the supers. That will be our honey!

Bees always amaze me and I could watch them for hours. Yesterday morning I got up early to weed and thin the lettuce in the garden. The hives are located just a few feet from the garden so I had a good view of them the whole time. Before the sun rose high enough in the air to shine directly on the hives there were just a few odd bees flying outside. As the sun peeked up over the hedge and direct sunlight hit the hives there was a sudden burst of activity and the bees poured out of the hives. It is like they were inside the entrance just waiting for the sunlight to hit. Beautiful!

Population Explosion

2009-05-25T21:38:00.002-06:00

Population explosion! That's what we were hoping for this past week. Since it takes 21 days from egg laying for an adult bee to emerge, we were just a few days short of seeing new bees during our last inspection, which occurred at about 22 days after the colonies were installed in their hives. (We figure it took a few days for the bees to draw enough comb for the queens to start laying.) With all that capped brood we had been seeing for a couple of weeks we were excited for all those new bees to start making their way out into the world.

One day last week- round about the 19th of May- we suddenly saw what looked like hundreds of bees outside the hives. It looked like they were all facing the hives flying left and right and up and down. This would be their orientation flight. The first time a bee leaves the hive they have to orient themselves to the hive so they can find it again. Somehow this orientation flight in front of the hive sets the little GPS in their brains so they can fly straight back to the hive even after they have been foraging 2 to 3 miles away. I tell you bees are amazing creatures! All those bees doing orientation flights could not have been the result of new bees emerging from their cells. They must have been bees from eggs that were laid shortly before the packages were sent to us. Bees do not leave the hive until about day 18 if their adult life. Worker bees go through several stages in which they have different responsibilities. You can read more about that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_bee#Progression_of_tasks if you would like. But, bees have been emerging from their cells and entering the world. It's a good thing too. The hive populations were getting pretty low but they should be growing on a daily basis, now.

As we got in to the inspection we found the old comb, where the capped brood used to be, had been vacated and new eggs were sitting in its place. There still was, of course, more capped brood and larvae in other parts of the comb. The comb that was once white now ranges from yellow to yellowish brown. We are assuming that the color change is from the pollen that the bees are bringing in. We are not sure, however, if they are still producing white comb that gets coated with pollen or if they are actually producing a different color comb from the pollen and nectar they are eating.

Other than more bees, neither Virginia nor Georgia had changed much from the previous week. With such low populations of bees there were just not enough bees to build comb on more frames. So Virginia still has most of the bottom deep filled with comb and a couple of frames in the upper deep and Georgia still has about 5 frames filled with comb in her single deep hive body. We will see where we go from here as more bees are "born".

One item worth noting in Georgia's hive was a peculiar looking cell. It looked a little too large to be a drone cell but not sure that it looked quite like a queen cell. Queen cells are cells in which queen bees develop. They are larger than drone cells and droop down- almost like a peanut. Like this:

We did not take this picture- we borrowed it from drone.cyberbee.net

Worker bees can "make" a queen from any egg (except a drone egg) they choose. They just have to feed the larvae Royal Jelly, a substance nurse bees produce, and viola! A queen is born!

There are two reasons workers would make a new queen. If the bees are out of room and the hive is too crowded, the workers will produce a new queen and the old queen will take half of the colony and "swarm". They will take off and find a new place to live. This would cut our colony and honey production in half. Not a good situation. These swarm cells typically show up on the bottom third of the frames. The other reason they might want a queen would be to replace the current queen. If the current queen is not getting the job done and laying the proper number or types of eggs, the workers might want to "supercede" her. These supercedure cells typically show up on the upper two thirds of the frames.

Now this cell that we saw in Georgia's hive was on the bottom of the frame- I think. This would make it a swarm cell. But Georgia has plenty of room with only 5 frames drawn out in comb. We have wondered about Georgia's queen as she is lagging behind Virginia and thought that the workers might want to supercede her. In any case, if it even was a queen cell, we figured it would still be there next week and we could take a better look and decide what to do about it at that time. But let's be optimistic and, for now, say that it is just a drone cell and all is well.

Last of all- we have found our new smoker fuel! We switched form natural fiber twine to cedar chips from a bag of pet litter we got at the grocery store. We got a few coals going in the bottom and packed in the cedar chips. It smoked well the entire time! When the chips got a little low it was easy to put in another handful. Besides that, the smoke just smelled so good!

We will inspect again later this week and update some more then. Bye.

Photos Of Comb On Frames

2009-05-21T11:14:00.008-06:00

So we thought that we would show some progression from an empty frame to a frame fully drawn with comb. If you click on the photos you can see a close up view. Sorry that some are a little blurry- we need a better camera.

Here is an empty frame from the side of the deep hive body. The bees start with the center frames and word their way out.

Here the bees have just started to draw comb on the frame. There is a chunk of burr comb on the edge that was eventually scraped off.

The bees are making progress on this frame.

I thought this photo was kind of cool. You can really see the shapes of the cells. More progress has been made and the cells are deeper on the upper right part of the frame where the bees are clustered together.

A fully drawn frame. It contains capped brood, some pollen, and some sugar syrup stores.

This photo shows some larvae (circled in red) down at the bottom of the frame. I know- we need a better camera.

This photo shows a couple of drone cells (circled in red). Yeah- I know- we need a better camera.

Pollen, Stings, and Double Deeps

2009-05-18T15:26:00.003-06:00

People have been asking what has been going on hive-wise, so it is time for another installment in the on-going drama of our relationship with Virginia and Georgia.

We are a little slow with this update as we did the last hive inspection last Thursday the 14th of May. Everything went well. We are getting used to the whole process so there were few surprises.

We will start, however, with a few observations from the week prior to the last inspection. First of all, we noticed A LOT of comings and goings from the hives as the fruit trees in town have been in full bloom. It has mostly been apple and crabapple trees. In our own yard the apple tree and pear tree have been full of bees! We have been told by a few people in our part of town, who were not even aware that we had started keeping bees, that they had noticed a lot more bees than usual in the fruit trees. Yes! Our girls are making the rounds!

As we watched them returning to the hives we have continured to notice different colors of pollen. We have thus far noticed dark orange, light yellow, cream, tan, and white pollen on the returning bees. We have watched the bees foraging on our apple and pear blossoms to see what color they gather from our own trees. The apple pollen looks white and the pear pollen looks like an off-white greenish color. Very strange if you ask me.

We started preparing for the inspection by lighting up the smoker. It has been giving us problems- we can't seem to keep it lit long enought to get throught the whole inspection. We are getting it figured out though, and this time we kept it going for almost the entire time. We start it going with paper and twigs to get some coals in the bottom and then add balls of natural fiber twine. We have researched alternative smoker fuels and have come across a few people who use pet litter cedar chips. We will try that this week and let you know how it goes.

Keep in mind that Virginia had graduated to a second deep hive body the week before, so her inspection took a little longer than it had in the past. After smoking, we got in and inspected the top hive body. The bees had moved up and drawn comb on 3 of the 1o frames, and the queen had laid eggs on a couple of the frames. There were still not a ton of bees here. Most were still down in the bottom part of the hive.

Down in the bottom deep we were hoping to see mature bees emerging from there cells where they had been transforming from larve to adults, but all the brood was still capped. As we thought about that later, we realized that we were getting ahead of ourselves. We counted up the days and it had only been 22 days since we installed the packages. It takes about 21 days after the egg is lad for a mature bee to emerge from it's cell. A little more if the weather is cool and a little less if the weather is warm. Our weather had not been above 65 for most of that time. I'm sure it took a few days for the bees to draw a little comb so the queen could start laying any eggs. We fully anticipate that we will see new bees when we do this week's inspection. Actually, the bee populations should have been at their lowest point during the last inspection. Worker bees have a life span of about 6 weeks. So over the past 3 weeks since the bees were installed bees were dying off withoug being replaced. I suppose that means that the population of each hive had been reduced by about half. Now it is time to start building our numbers back up!

Besides capped brood on the frames we saw lot of pollen- all different colors. As bees fill cells with pollen it looks like they pack it in the bottom until it becomes little pollen cakes. We came across one cell that was empty except for two little balls of dark orange pollen- a bee must have just popped their pollen baskets into that cell and had not yet packed it down or whatever it is they do. We also saw that the bees are capping the sugar syrup we have been feeding them. It doesn't look like they had actually started making honey yet- we were a little disappointed. We thought that with all of the fruit trees we might see some honey in there. Maybe it takes a greater population to gather enough nectar to make a significant amount of honey. We were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between capped honey and capped brood, but after seeing the capped sugar syrup the difference is obvious. Hopefully some of the pictures turned out well enough and you can see for yourself.

By the time we made it through both hive bodies the bees were getting ticked. I guess you can get through one hive body quickly enough to not bother them too much, but 2 hive bodies just takes too long. We found a few attempted stings on my back where bees left their stingers in my shirt and died in the process. Poor little girls- they gave their lives in the defense of their home! We quickly put Virginia back together and moved on to Georgia.

Georgia's bees had drawn comb on a few more frames but still not enough to add a second deep hive body. As we inspected her capped brood we discovered a few drone cells where, obviously, drones were developing into adult bees. Drones are a little larger than worker bees and drone cells are a little larger too. They are very noticable because their caps bulge out forming a dome. Georgia, like Virginia, had lots more eggs and larvae but not much more that was particularly interesting. We closed her back up and are hoping that maybe this week we can add a second deep hive body.

Since that inspection, there has been one exciting event- we had our first bee sting! Some friends were over the other evening and the kids were running around outside. One of the kindergarten aged kids got stung on his finger. From what we could gather with everyone talking at once, he was holding a bee and then freaked out a little. Bees don't like freak outs so it stung right where it was sitting. All is well now, though. It only hurt for a few minutes. Bee stings always feel better when they quit hurting.

It looks like the fruit tree bloom is about over. Dandelions are still blooming (do they ever stop?) just not in such large numbers as they were. We don't know what the next bloom/nectar flow will be. We assume there will always be some sort of nectar/pollen source for the bees. We get a little nervous sometimes, though.

The hive inspection this week hopefully will happen on Wednesday after our niece's wedding. Congratulations Rachael! Provided there is enough time before we have to get ready for the reception that night.

We will try to keep you posted. See you later!

Photos From The Second Inspection

2009-05-10T19:52:00.005-06:00

The smoker is going and we are getting ready to dive in.

Inspecting a frame.

A close up of one of the frames. The bees are in the process of drawing comb on this frame. You can see pollen being stored.

Close up of another frame completely covered in comb. The solid area of comb in the uppper center part of the photo is capped brood.

We scraped out just a few bits of burr comb during this second inspection.

Virginia on the left and Georgia on the right. The bees are happily back in their hives. Virginia had drawn comb on 7 of the 10 frams and so had graduated to a second deep hive body.

Burr Comb

2009-05-10T19:42:00.003-06:00

The bits of burr comb in these pictures were taken from the hives during the first inspection.

Smallish bits of burr comb scraped from the tops f the frames and sides of the hives. You can see pollen the bees had stored. The shiny stuff inside some of the cells is sugar syrup from the feeder.

The largest piece of burr comb we have come across. This one was hanging down from the top between two frames. The gap between the frames was created by the queen cage we installed when the bees were first put into the hives. Since then we have pushed those frames together. We don't expect to get anymore pieces like this. At least we don't hink we will. But what do we know?

Inspection number two and other thoughts

2009-05-05T21:48:00.003-06:00

We are back.

The weather has been beautiful lately with highs in the 60's most days. Things are really greening up here in the valley but there is still a line a snow across the tops of the Big Horns. Waht a beatutiful view! The apple and the pear trees are just starting to blossom. It should be great for the bees and the bees should be great for the fruit harvest.

Speaking of fruit harvest, we decided to get another apple tree and a couple of cherry trees for the backyard. We had the spots picked for 3 small trees. We bought a Black Tartarian Cherry, a Stella Cherry, and a Honey Crisp Apple. All are semi-dwarf trees so, we thought they would be nice and small- I guess we should have done more research before we got them. After reading about them we found out that they will all grow to about 15 feet in height with a 12 foot spread. Hmmm...Bigger than we thought. We will have to find new spots, but with three big fruit trees think of all those blossoms full of pollen and nectar for the bees. And then all the fruit... farmer's market here we come!

Ok- now for the last inspection. According to "Beekeeping for Dummies" you should do weekly hive inspections for the first 8 weeks. We completed our 2 week (actually 12 day) inspection on Monday the 4th of May. A hive inspection starts with firing up the smoker about 30 minutes before the inspection to give it time to burn down to coals then add more fuel on top so it will smolder and make lots of nice smoke. We have had trouble with the smoker. If handled properly it should keep smoking for a long time. We can't keep it going for more than about 15 minutes or so. Guess we'll just keep practicing

A little more background. Beehives consist of a series of boxes which are open on the top and bottom stacked on top of each other. The bottom 2 boxes, called deep hive bodies, are deeper than the upper boxes and are where the queen lives and lays here eggs. 8-10 frames are stacked in each box. The bees build their comb on each of the frames and use the comb to store honey and pollen and to raise young bees. The queen lays an egg in each cell, the nurse bees feed the larvae, and as the larvae matures the nurse bees cap the cells with wax. Within the capped cells the larvae develop into adult bees, kind of like when a caterpillar develops into a butterfly. Eggs, larvae, and capped pupae are all referred to as brood. Pupae under the wax caps are called capped brood. Smaller boxes called supers go on top the deep hive bodies and are where the bees store extra honey- that will be our honey!

So- when we hived the bees we put each colony in a single deep hive body. As the bees build comb and fill up one box another is added to give them room to expand. We started this inspection with Virginia. We pulled each frame out, looked it over, and put it back in its place. We just needed to see how much room was left and to make sure that they were producing more bees to build up their numbers. We found out the bees had drawn comb on 7 of the 10 frames. Excellent! Time to add a second deep hive body. We also found lots of comb containing stored sugar syrup and pollen. We noticed about three different colors of pollen: orange, yellow, and cream as different flowers have different colors of pollen. The best part, though was seeing how many eggs, larvae, and capped brood there was. I think we are about to have a population explosion. Started with about 15,000 bees in the colony- a well established colony will have 120,000 or more bees. We even saw the queen crawling across one of the combs. We closed Virginia up, added a second deep hive body with 10 more frames, refilled the feeder with more sugar syrup, and moved on to Georgia.

By the time we got to Georgia the smoker was fading. Luckily our bees are so docile they didn't seem to mind the invasion of their hive. Georgia was not as advanced as Virginia. We saw stored sugar syrup and pollen, eggs, larvae, and capped brood, but only 5 frames contained comb and only 3 of the frames had a significant amount. No second hive body for Georgia. We did not see the queen anywhere, but the fact that there were eggs means that she has been around within the last few days. We are sure she was there somewhere.

We were concerned about the slow progress of Georgia. She has always been less active than Virginia. We thought that maybe we had a week queen and that maybe we would need to replace her. After more research and asking opinions of other beekeepers on beesource.com, we discovered that Georgia is about average for the 2 week mark and that Virginia is really taking off. Maybe we should see about getting Virginia into a gifted and talented program.

Now we wait until next week and do it all over again. Can't wait for the fruit trees to come in to full bloom and watch the bees on the blossoms. We are just so proud of those little girls!

Pictures will follow but they will have to wait for another day.

Hiving Georgia

2009-04-30T14:03:00.002-06:00

The Georgia Colony in their package. This
is how they are delivered by UPS.

The can inside is the sugar feeder. Gareth is

taking off the lid.

Removing the feeder can.

Lifting out the feeder can and quickly replacing

the lid. This is when we removed the queen

cage. We did get a photo but unfortunatly

our camera isn't the best and it was too blurry to see.

Placing the queen cage between 2 of the frames.

We removed the cork holding her in and replaced

it with a marshmallow. Then we dumped in the

bees and closed up the hive.

Virginia adventures

2009-04-30T13:50:00.002-06:00

Bees from Virginia Colony

Caleb had a special day at school the day after

we got the bees and hived them. It was pretty

neat to take pictures and equipment to school

to show his classmates.