Antcliff Farms

RIP Hive #4

2011-08-14T16:23:00.002-04:00

Well Hive #4 finally died. It had been looking weird since early spring and finally succumbed to the wax moth. I think this hive lost its queen early on and could not make a new one. I let it go to see what would happen. I probably should have combined it with a stronger hive earlier on.

I did pull 5 frames of honey from Hive #5 and #M. This will probably be all of the honey I pull this year unless there is some unusual Fall nectar flow. Hives 2 and 3 looked fine, just not any fully capped honey frames.

More Honey

2011-08-14T16:14:00.002-04:00

This is a report on honey collected on July 17.

I went down a box deeper in all of the hives to see what was going on. I collected some honey from hives 2, 3, 5 and M as long as it was well capped. I did not collect honey that was next to brood. The brood was typically high up in the hives. I am curious about what is going on in the two bottom boxes in the larger hives, but will not disturb them for another month.

I ended up with 11 frames of honey a couple of them in shallows from hive M. This came out as 40 pints of honey.

Honey Slowing

2011-07-09T10:32:00.006-04:00

Well, again here is a report of two past visits. I don't seem to be getting the volume of honey that I have gotten in previous years - may be the queens, may be sun spots?

Removed seven frames the first week (6/12?) and 6 frames the second week (7/4). I have not gotten much of anything from hive #2, which is weird because it is a large hive with lots of bees, they are just not putting up much extra honey. Hive #3 is still producing well, I always take a couple of frames from it. Hive #4 is still just strange, I am just letting it go to see what happens it may have a laying worker at this time as there seems to be only drone brood.

Hives 5 and M are doing well. I removed the first honey from Hive #M on the 4th, it is in shallow frames, but I got four of them. Hive #5 still putting up honey, but not capped yet.

For as little as I am putting in to them, they are all doing just fine :\

Honey coming

2011-06-04T10:41:00.006-04:00

I haven't updated this in a while, other priorities.

Two weeks ago I got into the hives and pulled out my first honey, then I went in last weekend a pulled some more - here is a recap.

Hive 2 - looking much better than previously, looks like it has settled down to be a solid hive this year. On the first trip I did not pull any honey from this hive, but on the second trip I did pull three frames of good solid honey. Looking forward to more.

Hive 3 - This is the monster hive this year. On my first trip I pulled 9 frames from this hive all packed with honey. On my second trip I pulled another 5 with many almost ready.

Hive 4 - Is still in a questionable state. It may be that this hive is a goner, but I am still waiting on it. On the first trip I went ahead a took a frame of larva/eggs from hive #3 and stuck it in this hive to see if they would generate a new queen. On the second trip these cell were all covered over as brood cells. There was an open queen cell - so perhaps (but I wouldn't put any money on it).

Hive 5 and Hive M again seem to be on similar tracks, they are building up well, they have moved brood up, which is OK with me because it means the queen is laying well, but it means that there is no honey to remove at this time.

A good spring check-up

2011-05-03T22:51:00.002-04:00

Went into all the hives today to see how they were doing. In the order I checked them...

Hive #5 and Hive #M looked almost the same. Both had good brood patterns in box #2 and some honey put up in box #3, they look healthy for this time of year.

Hive #3 is my best hive this year. It has a full box of honey almost fully capped. I went ahead and put another empty box on top, and could probably harvest the full box next week.

Hive #4 - this is still a weird hive. It is down to two boxes, there is some spotty honey in the top box and spotty brood in the bottom box - this is better than no brood, but not much. Not a lot of bees here.

Hive #2 is another weird hive. They are putting up honey like gangbusters but I had not seen any brood til this week. There was brood in the hive this week, but it was in clumps rather than spread across a frame - never seen this before, no clue if it is good or bad. Will be interesting to see where this hive goes.

A new hive

2011-04-19T20:36:00.003-04:00

I had a great experience this week. I went with some friends to pick up some old beekeeping equipment. They also told me there was an active hive there that I could have.

When I first got there I went to the active hive to see what was going on. It was set up in one deep and four mediums. Oops - that big of a hive would not fit in my car! So I went into it to see if there might be some empty boxes. So, the top box was in fact empty, the next box - empty, then I finally got a box that was pretty full of honey. Under this was a queen excluder and then the last medium box. This box was full of brood - yeah, so a active queen. Finally I went down to the deep and found it also to be empty. So, I took the deep off the bottom board and put the medium with the brood on the bottom, and the medium with the honey on top of that. I then put an inner cover on top of these two boxes with a screen cover over the open hole and let the box settle down for a while.

We then went down to a barn that was full of old boxes and frames. For the next several hours we scraped and cleaned boxes, frame, cover, etc. I ended up with a car full of equipment!

Finally back to the active hive. I took some straps and wrapped the the hive together. I had a hive entrance block that I inserted at the last minute and placed it in the car. Now hopefully the bees will stay inside for the 3 hr trip home. Actually the trip home took over 4 hours because I ran into some wicked weather and tornadoes. When I got home I had to place the active hive out in the rain. I did not want to keep them cooped up any longer. I checked on them the next day and they seemed fine.

So, I am going to label this hive #M to remind me of where I got it. If it does well, I may place this in my friend's yard for some variety :)

I also checked the other hives.
I am still not seeing any evidence of a queen on Hive #2, but they are putting up honey like crazy :?
Hive #4 still has no brood, but there is evidence of some empty queen cells, so I will give them some more time.
Hive #3 seems to be doing well, but no honey being put up :?
Hive #5 seems to be doing OK, I am hoping it is going to build up well soon....

A lot of question marks, but that is not unusual for me :)

More bad(?) news

2011-04-10T20:45:00.002-04:00

Did another inspection today. Started with hive #6, the weak split. It still looks like these guys did not produce a queen. I went ahead and took the one box that had bees left in it and put it on hive #5, the other split. Hive #5 seems to be doing well, hopefully their new bee neighbors will get along, they were going to die anyway.

I then looked into hive #4. This is the other one that looked like there was not an active queen. There is still a goodly number of bees in this hive. I did see what looked like larva in this hive. SO again, I am not sure what is going on. I am going to just leave it alone for a while. Either the number of bees will just decrease over time or if there is a queen there will be some brood show up.

Then the new bad news. Although hive #3 looked fine, hive #2 also looked like it did not have an active queen :( This is the box that I split to to make #5. Obviously the queen went with to hive #5 and left hive #2 without a queen. I did see some queen cells in the hive, but did not see any sign of a queen. There are a LOT of bees in this hive, so I hope this one is just slow developing - we will see.

Inspection time

2011-04-06T19:03:00.003-04:00

Had a couple of nascent beekeepers with me and went through all of the hives this weekend - and got some bad news :(

First the good news - Hives 2,3 and the new split #5 are looking very good. Lots of bees, larva, drones, all looking good for this time of year. If all these continue to do well, I will be in the same state I was last year at this time - not bad.

Bad news - I mentioned that split hive #6 did not have many bees going in and out, when we looked inside we saw very few bees and no larva. I guess we never got a queen developed - could be I did not leave enough eggs and larva with them to create new queen, or she didn't find any drones to mate with or who knows. There was an open queen cell in the hive, so I will give them another week and then probably combine these bees in with the new split hive #5.

Worse news - It looks like hive #4 is in the same state as hive #6. This was my large honey producing hive last year. However, something weird went on with this hive last fall that I never could understand - this may just be a result of queen gone bad. I am surprised they did not replace the queen, but oh well. Again, I'll wait a wek than decide what to do with these bees.

But the new beekeepers seemed to enjoy the experience :)

Just an update..

2011-03-20T15:31:00.002-04:00

The day after the March 13th post, I put an additional box of honey comb on top of hives 2,3,4 and 5. I know it may be too early for such, but better that than late.

The splits seem to be doing OK. Number 5, has the most activity with bees moving in and out on a regular basis. Number 6 is less active, in fact I thought it had failed completely (ie all the bees had left), but when I popped the top on it today, there were bees roaming around. It still may be too weak to make it, but for now, I'll leave it alone and see what happens.

The lazy beekeeper gets to work!

2011-03-13T19:08:00.005-04:00

Well it is that time of year, that if I am too lazy, I will lose some bees to swarms. So I dove in today to do some work.

I started in hive #2. At this time of year typically the bottom box is empty because the bees have moved up during the winter. So, I wanted to get down to the bottom box and remove it. The top box surprised me because it now had brood all the way up to this box. The next two boxes down also had healthy amounts of brood including drone cells. The bottom box was indeed empty. So, in real time, I decided to make a split from this colony. I took the second box from the top, put it on a new base and put a cover on it on the other side of my yard (I'll call it hive #5). I took the bottom box (the empty one) and put it on top of the original stack. So for hive #2 I have two boxes with brood topped off by an empty brood box. I also did some checkerboarding, which means interspersing some empty brood comb into the brood area.

So, what does all this mean? There is only one queen between these two hives. I do not know where she ended up. She may be in hive #2 or in the split hive. My hope is that wherever the queen is NOT, that those bees will produce a new queen from the eggs that are in it. This is the same method that I used to produce what is now hive #3. It takes some time, because the bees have to realize that there is no queen, that they need to produce a new one, then wait for the queen to mature, mate and then begin breeding. It means that for one of these hives, they will not produce much if any honey this year, and to be honest, may not make it through this much effort. Most beekeepers would buy a new queen and insert her into the split hive - but remember, I am a lazy beekeeper :)

Hive #3 was in essentially the same condition as hive #2 - so I did the same thing - another split (I'll call it hive #6). This time, I took the empty brood box from the bottom and put it on top of the single brood box of the split, so this one is two boxes high. I took an empty brood box from Hive #4 to put on top of Hive #3, so it is now standing three boxes high, two brood boxes and an empty comb box.

Hive #4 was a little different. It had two empty boxes at the bottom. So, I simply removed them and put one of them on top and one of them I used to top off hive #3 as mentioned above. I also moved this hive about two feet and put it up on concrete blocks.

So, in summary, my original three hives are now three boxes high with two brood boxes and one empty box. I have two splits, one one box high and one two boxes high.

I set out some honey comb boxes that I had put up over the winter so they could air out. I will put these on top of the hives tomorrow to allow the bees to start putting up some stores.

Well, if I did not kill all of the queens and at least one of the splits worked, it could be a good year!

The deep freeze is over!

2011-02-14T07:43:00.003-05:00

Well, it has been quite a while since I have put anything up here, but I have not been doing much either. From the blog I posted back in October, I have pretty much left the bees alone - and it worked! I put a couple more jars of sugar water on in November but really left them alone til yesterday. I did not cover the hives or put in bottom boards or even clear away the snow. I was out of town for most of December and January so the bees fended for themselves.

I had gotten some good vibes a week ago by seeing bees flying from all three hives. Yesterday I went into all three hives to see what was going on. The three hives were virtually identical, this has never been the case before, but I am wondering if it is a result of my "management" or just a coincidence. Each of the hives had a pretty full box of honey still left on the top (this worried me at first). In the second box down (they are all on fours boxes), there was a mix. Generally it was mostly honey, but I also saw what appeared to be new nectar stored (it seems very early for such?). There were some empty spaces on several comb, I assume from winter feeding, but not near as much as I expected. On a couple of frames there was a small amount of brood on the bottoms of these frames. As I went down into the third box from the top (I just pulled a few frames) I could see more brood (somewhat spotty) and some larva (my eyes don't see eggs very well). I saw this as a really good sign, so closed the boxes back up. I took the feeder boxes off of each stack as they had plenty of honey around if the temperature drops again.
One other thing, the bees in boxes 3 and 4 (my hives are numbers 2,3 & 4 for historical reasons) were must feistier than the bees in hive 2. Not sure why, but the bees in those two boxes came out after me as I inspected the hives.
At some point I will want to go all the way to the bottom of these stacks and see if the bottom boxes are empty, and then do a little shuffling to hopefully slow down the swarming instincts, but I will wait a couple of weeks( he crosses his fingers).

So far so good!

The lazy blogger

2010-10-29T19:15:00.004-04:00

Well, I have been a very bad blogger :(

I have done a little better with the bees :)

I did not do a good job of recording my honey receipts from the bees this summer. This year's take was somewhat smaller than last year. But I must say that the effort I put in is relatively small compared to the wonderful honey I get out - it is worth it.

So, just some summary thoughts from the summer. The honey seemed to abruptly stop in June, much more so than last year. Must have been the dryness that hit us harder than I realized.

As a reminder, I now have three hives numbered 2 through 4 (one was lost last year).

#4 which was my strongest producer this year had an odd occurrence in June. At this point, I think I must have had a swarm that left in June - I just wastn't expecting this at that time of the year, and sure exactly why, since the hives seemed to be doing fine. When I went back into the hive later in the summer there was a period when there were no eggs or lava to be found (although there were still older brood). Finally, when I did a good look at all the hives in September there were some new eggs. So, I am assuming that the new queen was created, it took the requisite time to mate and than begin laying. Right now they seem to be doing well, but I will not really now until next spring.

I reduced all of the hives to four boxes with approximately one of pollen, two of brood and one of honey. I am feeding all of the hives 2:1 sugar water to make sure they have enough stores to raise new brood to get them through the winter. (ie they need plenty of bees to keep themselves warm through the winter).

I went out an changed the sugar water tonight, after a week they had sucked the quart jars dry - that is a good sign that they are doing well.

Below is a shot of me at EarthFest 2010 at Sandy Bottom Nature Park in Hampton. Lots of fun and interaction with inquisitive potential beekeepers :)

More Honey

2010-06-13T08:51:00.002-04:00

Checked in again last Sunday. All of the hives seemed to be doing well. I took 10 more frames of honey from the hives. I took the first frame of honey from hive #3 - this slow producer may finally be waking up.

On Friday there was a weird occurrence outside of Hive #4. There was a mini-swarm on the old fence sections that were laying next to the hive. There was only a hundred or so bees and I didn't see a queen. I went ahead and put them in a box with a couple of frames to see if they would either attract more bees (a queen was there) or not. After about an hour I went back and the box was empty - either they went back home or found another place to go. I may have to look more deeply into this hive to see what is going on.

pre-Memorial Day booty

2010-05-29T22:37:00.004-04:00

Went in to check the hives on Thursday before leaving for the long Memorial Day weekend. They are doing well!

Hive #2 - Top box that I put on a couple of weeks ago was beginning to get filled with nectar. Down in the next box, it looked very healthy, I took about three frames of honey, put in some extracted comb for them to fill up again.

Hive #3 - I had put old brood comb on top of hives #3 and #4 (because I did not have anything else). In both cases they had not done much with it. There was some nectar in it, but not much. I went ahead and removed both boxes. I had put together two new boxes of foundation during the week, so I used this along with the empty comb from last weeks extractions to put back on both of these hives. In the case of hive #3, they had brood put all the way up to box #4! SO I did not take any honey from these guys.

Hive #4 - again, this hive is going to be a big producer! After removing the brood comb box (a lesson learned), the next box down was packed with honey. I started taking out frames and ended up taking out the whole box full of honey. All of the boxes are now on nine frames which often makes them very fat and heavy. I took two more frames from the box below, for a total of 11 frames from this one hive.

14 frames overall - I do try to take an even number of frames so I can balance the extractor.

Speaking of extraction, as I mentioned above I did have empty honey comb as I extracted for the first time this year. I took out ten frames of the previous couple of weeks and got about 2 and half gallons of honey from these frames - sweet as ever!

Doing well!

2010-05-17T21:14:00.001-04:00

Checked all of the hives - and they all looked really good. All of the hives had pretty full top boxes, so I need to get some new boxes together! I did pull three frames of honey from Hive #4 and inserted three empty frames of foundation. So far - looks like a good year ahead.

First Honey of the year!

2010-05-03T21:32:00.002-04:00

I went in to check on the hives and came back with some honey.

Hive #2 - There was some activity in the top box, but not much. I checked below, lots of brood, some drone comb, everything looked pretty good. I left it alone. Still in four boxes.

Have #3 - I had put a new foundation box on top last time, it was without action at all. The next box down was hoping with activity - some brood, but mostly honey frames. I pulled two of the honey frames up to the top box to hopefully get them thinking about using it. Also, in four boxes.

Hive #4 - the mother load! This box was already up to five boxes and was already getting full in the top box. I pulled a couple of frames that were already capped. I then went down to the next box and found several capped honey frames also. All together 5 very full frames of honey!

Check-up and movement

2010-04-11T17:35:00.002-04:00

Went out to check on the hives and move one of them.

Hive number two has been on a shaky stand for some time, I shored it up a little last summer but decided to do something more permanent.

I got some left over cinder blocks from a Team Impact show and used them as a base for a new stand. I also moved the hive over about 3 foot so that it gets some afternoon shade and wind block from a scrub pine tree. There were some retuning bees a little confused, but I think it is close enough that they will find the new hive location (I hope).

Inside this hive the bees have some honey in the top box, but not crowded so I'll leave them be.

In hive #3 the top box had a bunch of honey in at and even some brood in the top box (three high). I went ahead and added another box on top of new foundation - we'll see what they do with it.

In hive #4, I had put a new top box of foundation on last week and it did not have much activity in it. I went ahead and pulled up two frames of almost full honey from the box below and put foundation in their place. Hopefully they will start pulling out this foundation as they need it for storage.

Overall, not as much activity as I had expected after the extreme week of heat we have had the last week. But it looks like plenty of brood getting ready emerge.

Video and check up

2010-04-02T16:08:00.002-04:00

I had a crew from the NASA kids program "Our World" come by to take some video shots as background for a story they are doing. I had fun talking to them about bees.

I then went ahead and inspected all of the hives. I just went into the top box to see if they were beginning to put up honey.

Hive #2 and Hive #3 looked very similar - not a lot of stores in the top box, some, but not a lot. Hive #4 had an 80% full top box! So I went ahead and put another box on top of this hive (now five boxes deep)

Opening up the brood nest

2010-03-20T18:51:00.004-04:00

With warmer weather ahead of us for the foreseeable future (fingers tightly crossed), I went into the hives again today. Last week when I move the boxes around I may have made a mistake - at the Colonial Beekeepers meeting this week I was reminded the you have to make sure you do not have a "honey cap" blocking the bees from moving upwards to produce new bees. The problem is at this time of year the queen is looking for space to lay a bunch of new bees. If above the current brood area there is a box full of honey that may actually entice the bees to swarm to find more room.

So, I went in to make sure I did not have a honey cap and also to "open up the brood nest". Again, this is about swarm prevention - the bees will swarm if they are cramped, so I went in and put some empty frames in between the frames where the brood was. This gives the queen more room to lay brood and, hopefully, not think about swarming - we'll see.

So, I did this in all three hives. In addition in Hive #3, the brood was on 6 frames all in one box. To pen this one up I moved two frames to the box above and inserted some semi-empty frames in there place. Hope this doesn't freak them out too much.

I also went ahead and removed all of the internal feeders, there is plenty of stuff popping up outside to give them resources

I did not see any swarm cells in the hives (a good thing), there were some drones cells, but not a bunch.

Looked good

Early Spring Box Swap

2010-03-13T15:28:00.005-05:00

On advise from our President (Colonial Beekeepers) I went ahead and did some box swapping today.

All of the hives have ended up in four medium boxes. During the winter the colony moves up the boxes to continue to have stores to make it through the winter. Thus, theoretically the bottom box could become empty. This is not a particular problem except that it gives a false impression of the size of the colony and makes the stack unnecessarily high. Also, as a reminder, I only have three hives at this point - Hive #2, my monster hive from last year, it was the mother of my first split, Hive #3, my split hive, no production last year, Hive #4, a hive that came into its own last year and produced well. So I went in to see what the status was on my hives.

Hive #2. As I took the top off, the bees were all over the top box. I pulled out one frame in the middle and it was full of honey. The other frames also seemed to be being used for honey pollen storage. Next box down was essentially the brood chamber, alot of good looking larva and brood. Next box down had a lot of bees (could be because I smoked them down) but not much else. Bottom box was also completely empty. So, I took the top two boxes and made it the bottom two boxes. I took the box that was second from the bottom and put it on top. I took the bottom most box off of the hive entirely. So from bottom to top - brood box, honey box, empty box.

Hive #4 (this is the order I worked them in). Top box, not much activity, some honey. Next box, lots of honey but not busting. Second from bottom, brood and honey, heavy box. Bottom Box, brood and honey. I decided to leave this one alone as it seemed to be in good order. I may have one too many boxes on it, but it shouldn't hurt at this time of year. So from bottom to top - brood box, brood box, honey box, light honey box.

Hive #3. Top box, pretty empty, some honey. Next box, good honey box. Second from bottom, brood box. Bottom box, empty. So, I took out the bottom box and just moved everything else down a box. So from bottom to top - brood box, honey box, light honey box.

Went to the Horticultural Extravaganza this morning. Sold some honey still left from last year. Never sure what to charge. Sold 8oz bears for 4.00 or two for 7.00 and sold pint jars for 7.00. Feel like I should have charged more for the pints?

just feeding

2010-03-01T20:42:00.001-05:00

Went in and replaced the feeders on hives 2 and 3. Hive four was still halfway full.

This post is just for my own records :)

3 Alive so far...

2010-02-20T16:48:00.003-05:00

Checked the hives today, in the low 50s - bees were flying from all three hives. I even saw some of the bees bringing in pollen. Not much of the sugar water had been taken, perhaps they are finding stuff outside (seems awful early).

I had taken the top box off of Hive #3 back in the late fall because it was empty and the one below it was only partially full. This hive was brimming with bees out of the inner cover so I am going to put another box back on it tomorrow. I took the box I had in the garage on some para-moth crystals and set it outside to air out before putting it back on the hive. I am assuming one day af airing out will be enough(?)

It was really glad to see the bees had made it to this point in the winter, probabaly still some cold days ahead, but good news.

Cold weather feeding

2010-02-17T23:03:00.002-05:00

I went back to the hives on Sunday to check on the feeders - they were all empty. This is a good news bad news thing - it tells me the bees are eating, but then I worry they may be running low on stores in this coooold weather.

I also replaced the box and feeder on hive #2 as I saw some activity at the entrance - hope stays alive!

Uh Oh

2010-02-14T14:22:00.003-05:00

So, during the storm last week, my wife said - "Does that box belong on the ground?" Well, no. I went out and found out that the feeder box had blown off of hive#2 and taken the inner cover with it. This means that the hive was exposed to the nice snowfall we had :( So, I just closed it up and will look into it when it warms up - but I am not hopeful.

Just an Update

2010-01-28T22:28:00.002-05:00

Went in to the hives on Monday to replace the sugar water. I also took off the inner covers and took out a couple of frames to see what was going on.

Hive #2 - Empty jar, refilled it. Top box better than 50% filled with honey, so these guys should be OK as the weather turns cold again.

Hive #3 - Jar still 1/3 full. Top box was empty. Went down to the next box and it had a good store of honey. I went ahead and removed the top box and put it in the shed with some alpha moth crystals.

Hive #4 - Jar was 2/3 full, this hive continues to be slow in taking syrup, I think they just don't like it. Top box was about 40-50% full so I left it alone.

After the freeze

2010-01-15T22:42:00.003-05:00

Well we have been out of town for three weeks and then the weather continued to be very harsh (in the 20's) so I haven't been in the hives for a while.
My son went out during the heat of the day (low 50's) and did see some bees flying outside of each of the hives (yeah!). When I got home from work I checked the feeders and they were all empty. Hopefully this was all taken by the bees and not dumped on them due to the very cold weather. There were bees up at the inner cover hole on all of the hives so things look pretty good for now. I replaced all of the feeders and left them alone- for now...

Winter Check-in

2009-12-20T16:01:00.003-05:00

I have been quiet on here for a while - so have the bees. I went out today and replaced the feeders on the hives (quart jars filled with sugar water). Two of them were empty and one (Hive #4) was still full. This is the second time I have gotten this result, I am hoping that Hive #4 just doesn't like sugar water instead of a more deathly answer. I will not go in them until we get a really warmer day(in the 40s here). That's all for now.

Fall Harvest

2009-10-25T14:54:00.008-04:00

I went into the hives on Friday to do a "sugar shake" and came back with 10 frames of honey.

So, the sugar shake. I have been working since the inception of these hives to keep out any pesticides. I realize that may cause me some trouble, but I just hate pesticides. One of the problems the bees face at the end of the season is that the queen is slowing down making new bees (because there is no more nectar for them), but that mites continue to reproduce. Mites are a pest that lives on the bees and reproduce in the bees brood chambers. If the mite population gets too large it can overwhelm the bees and cause them to decline.

In place of pesticides one "natural" treatment is to shake powdered sugar over the bees. This does two things - the powder on the bees' bodies makes it tougher for the mites to hold on to them and they fall off the bees; it also causes the bees to groom themselves which also dislodges the mites. Once the mites fall off, they drop to the bottom of the hives, and since my hives have screened bottom boards, they drop to the ground, and they do not have the ability to climb back up again.

I broke down all of the hives and deposited the powdered sugar, with a sifter, on top of the boxes with bee brood in them. The bees looked hilarious all covered with white powdered sugar, especially flying around - they looked like ghost bees. I am supposed to do this three weeks in a row and I already know I will miss next week due to travel - oh well, it is something.

When I went into hive #4 and started going down to get to the brood chambers I found 2 and a half boxes of honey on top. I thought this was too much to leave, so I went ahead and took a box of honey off. I then made a mistake that will go into my "learnings" memory bank. I set the box out in front of the hive, on end, hoping the bees would just naturally return to the hive (I had read this somewhere). After a length of time I went back to see how they were doing, well it didn't look like they had moved off of the box at all, so I started smoking it, and I smoked and I smoked which moved a bunch of the bees off. I then removed the frames and put them all in a cooler to extract later.

On Saturday I got the coolers to begin the extraction process. However, when I opened the coolers there was a strong smell of smoke. The excess smoke I had used, had permeated the wooden frames. Fearing that I had ruined the honey also, I extracted these frames separately from any other honey I had collected. As we tasted the honey we are not sure if I did actually ruin the honey, but we will still probably keep it separate just to make sure. Anyway, no more smoking to move the bees off of a honey super!

Finally, after removing the box of honey from hive #4 all of my hives now have the same configuration which will make an interesting experiment for seeing how they do over the winter. All of them(three hives - 1, 3 & 4) are four boxes high, the bottom two are brood chambers, the next is a full box of honey and the top box is a partial box of honey. This feels right going into the winter, but we'll see. I do plan on feeding the buggers starting in a couple of weeks to make sure they always have enough food source.

Dragon run, then check up

2009-10-11T21:25:00.002-04:00

My wife an I spent Saturday representing the Colonial Beekeepers Association at the Dragon Run Festival held at Thousand Trails Campground in Gloucester, VA. We had a display of Beekeeping gear and I sold some of my honey (the first public sales). The people we very nice and quite interested in the bees - a great experience.

I went into the hives today just to do a check. They seem to be doing fine. All of them had what seemd to be a good store of honey at this point, but no extra that I wanted to take off. Probably done for the season.

I still have a 5 gallon buvket of honey from the last extraction that I need to get into bears...

Weekend Check-Up

2009-09-27T19:49:00.003-04:00

I needed to put the wet frames back on the hives, so I went into them today.

Hive #2 looked very similar to how it appeared a couple of weeks ago, perhaps they have put up a little more honey, but they seem to be holding their own at this point. It is in four mediums.

Hive #4 - after taking two boxes of honey off of the hive last week I hurridly placed a box of foundation on top to make sure they had something to do (and didn't think about swarming). Looks like it was a good move - they were pulling comb all the way across this box and had already put up a substantial amount of honey. I did go down to the third box to see what was going on there. I just pulled up a couple of frames, the ends were packed with honey, but by the third frame I saw a bunch of brood, so I just left this box alone. I put the new foundation box back on top of it and then put a box of wet empty comb on top. I would not be surprised to take some more honey from these girls in a week or two.

Hive #3 - I finally got into this box. I had run out of time two weeks ago so had not been in this box in over a month. It looked ok. I was hoping it was going to be busting but it was just ok. It was in three boxes (all I am using now is mediums). The top box had full frames of honey in the middle frames with a couple of empty frames on the edges. I went down to the second box and it had brood in it, so again, I left it alone. I put the other box of wet frames on top of this hive to give them some roon in case they want some breathing space. Not sure what to expect from this group, should be interesting to see.

I did extract the honey from the frames I took out a couple of weeks ago, I have about a 5 gallon bucket of honey to put into bears - but hey, I am out of bears! I bought 397 of these two years ago!

The bees stole my honey!

2009-09-18T23:10:00.006-04:00

After the inspections on Sunday, I put the coolers of honey on my back porch to be extracted later. I have done this several times before so I had no concerns. However, my wife called me at work on Monday to tell me that there were bees all over the coolers and all over the back porch!

When I got home - what a mess. Bees crawling over the coolers and a mass of bees flying around. I really wasn't sure what was going on. My wife told me she had pushed the top down on one of the coolers because she thought it was open. I took the coolers (after netting up) to three seperate locations in the yard to see what was going on. One of the coolers actually did not seem interesting to the bees and looking inside looked fine. When I opened the cooler my wife had closed the top on, I found that it was full of bees. Also, the third cooler, I found out had tiny holes where the handles were attached and the bees had found them. In both cases the bees were robbing the honey out of the combs and taking it back home :\ The cooler with the handle holes had lost about half of the honey that was originally there, two of the frames were completely empty! The other cooler obviously got slowed down when my wife shut the top completely so I did not lose as much. So after smoking the coolers to get the bees out, I took out the frames and placed them in other coolers and took them inside the house.

Hopefully all of this honey is back in the hives and I'll get it next time :)

September Surprise

2009-09-18T22:41:00.002-04:00

It had been over a month since I had gone into the hive - so it was time.

Hive # 2 is in four mediums. Top box, some honey, some empty space. Next box, brood and honey. Second box, brood, pollen and honey. Bottom box - pollen. The hive seemed OK, but not overwhelming. I am a little worried about its long term survival, but it is OK for now.

Hive #4 - Holy Schmolly. This hive is in five mediums. I had put an empty medium on top of this hive last time because it was doing so well. Well - they had packed out this hive competely. There was comb built between the frames and even on the inner cover. As I tried to take out the frames they was even comb built attaching them to the frames below. They were heavy as stome with all the honey. After emptying the top box into coolers I went to the next box - and it was packed too! Same story second verse, packed with honey from top to bottom. Well, after emptying this box I was out of coolers, out of light and out of energy - it was a lot of work to get this honey out. The next box looked like it also had considerable honey but I am guessing that it also had brood in it, but that look will have to wait for another inspection.

Hive #3 - I never got to it! It still looks like it is doing ok, lots of bees going in and out. It may be a little cramped, so I need to get in there.

Summer!

2009-08-05T21:28:00.002-04:00

Well spring is finally over. I went into the hives today and the bees have put up some honey but not nearly enough for me to think about harvesting any. All three hives look good at this point and I am hopeful to carry them through the winter.

I did move a relatively empty box from hive #2 to hive #3. Hive 3 has recovered nicely from my requeening experiment and needed some extra space to put up stores for the winter.

I will just let them hang out for a couple of weeks before thinking about fall managment.

RIP Hive #1

2009-07-13T22:34:00.002-04:00

Well - Hive #1 did not make it. I opened it up this weekend and it was filled with wax moths and no bees. No bee bodies, just no bees. What a mess to clean up. That was my last frame on deeps so, the good news is that now all of my hives will be on mediums - it makes it easier to swap boxes around. The sad news is that it was my first hive of bees :( As to why, I don't really know, it appeared that the queen was week or disapeared (perhaps I killed her) and they never recovered. I put a frame of eggs in the hive hoping they would produce a new queen but for whatever reason it did not seem to take. Perhaps I should have combined the bees with another hive earlier - but it is not clear how I would know the difference between this hive and hive #3 which appears to have recovered nicely. The uncertainty of beekeeping, at least for the neebee.

The good news!! is that I got another 14 frames of honey from the other hives. This time 4 frames from Hive #2 (lots of partially filled frames left) and 10 frames from Hive #4 (this was a real surprise). There are only 9 frames in the boxes in Hive #4 - I think this is the way I will go in all the hives in the future. First, it reduces the friction between the frames as they go in and out of the hive box and also it gives the bees more room to pull wax and put up honey! The results are that the frames that came out of Hive #4 are packed with honey and seem twice as heavy as those coming out of Hive #2.

I also checked Hive #3, it seems to be doing well, they have put up some honey and the boxes seem to be filled with bees, so I will leave them alone and try to get them through winter.

94 Bears!

2009-07-11T18:33:00.004-04:00

This post is actually two weeks old. On June 20-21 we went into the hives and pulled out 18 frames of honey! 14 of the frames came from hive #2 and 4 from hive #4. Hive #2 is still a monster, we did do some rearranging as they have been moving the brood up and on the left side of the hive. We moved it down and more boradly spaced it across the hive. I know the bees do what they want - but hey, I can try.
Hive 4 is looking good now, a solid hive, producing nice honey. If these guys had just started a little earlier they would have been a very strong hive. Hive #3 looks like it might make it, there were brood and honey, I just left it alone, we'll see how it it look next time. Hive # 1 is not looking good at all, two of the frames (it is only in one deep) had wax moths on them. I took these two frames out and replaced them with clean ones - but we'll see.

Finally - an update

2009-06-13T21:29:00.005-04:00

It has been over a month since I updated this blog - medical stuff has kept me from the bees for too long. I spent the last couple of days catching up.

Lazy beekeeping has paid off in Hive #2 and we put up a mess of honey in the last couple of days. I actually extracted honey a couple of weeks ago and we bottled this and the honey we extracted in the last couple of days.

Here are some pictures of our "processing". My daughter and grand-daugther were big helpers. You can see some decapping on the right and bottling on the left.

My son did all of the hive manipulation as I am under restricted lifting currently. Most of this honey came out of Hive #2, it continues to be a strong hive, 5 medium boxes tall. We took 9 full frames of honey from the top two boxes.

Hive #4 appears to be finally building up, it is now three medium boxes high, we took two frames of honey from them, but left quite a bit since they are still building.

Hive's #1 and 3 still seem to be a questionable state. If they remain this way I will probably have to combine them with each other or other hives later in the year. Hive #3 seemed at least to have a bunch of newly orienting bees out and about, so I am hopeful.

I also put together a simple solar wax melter today. Of course it rained, so I don't know if it will work yet, I'll put it out again tomorrow and take some pictures for here.

Glad to be back!

Where have all the queens gone?

2009-05-02T21:11:00.002-04:00

It appears now that I have three queenless hives :(

I went ahead and put a frame of eggs, larva and brood from Hive #2 into Hives #1 and #3 to see if they would go ahead and make a new queen. Hopefully, I did not move the queen from hive #2! Hive #2 is still going strong.

However, as I looked into hive #4 I could not find evidence of a queen there either! Yikes, I 'll check on this one again soon.

2 Weeks after the split...

2009-04-26T19:58:00.003-04:00

Two weeks after the split and hive #2 is still doing well, but it looks like the other half of the split (#3) is still queenless. Last week when I went in I saw some queen cells, this week none. Not sure if this is because she is out and in the maturity/mating process or if this hive is in serious trouble (ie no queen and no eggs for new queen). They still have some unopened brood and stores, but that's it. At this point I will let them go another week (that will be the 21 days), if I still have bees and still no queen then I will do some emergency treatment (ie add some eggs and perhaps some additional brood from another hive).

Hive #1 is also queenless. BTW - I now can hear the queenless roar and know what it sounds like - both #3 and #1 make the same sound. This hive however still has several supscedure queen cells in progress so I have hope...

Hive #4 has moved some brood up into the top box, this is encouraging for a hive that has spent most of its life in one box. I hope this is a harbinger of good things to come. For now they have plenty of room, but I'l have to watch this one closely.

It was hot today, 80's, sweat dripping down in my face, it skipped spring entirely here.

Hive Update

2009-04-18T21:25:00.003-04:00

So I snuck out of the bee meeting around lunch and took a brief look at the hives.

Hive #2 - this parent of the split is obviously were the queen ended up. The hive is booming again. I went into the top box and found honey in a large majority of the frames. I added another super of frames with combs to give them more room to store, this could be a big producer (if they do not swarm...). I took the feeder off of this one as there is plenty of stuff blooming at this point.

Hive #3 - the split. I am just keeping my fingers crossed on this one. When I went out to look at it today they were dragging out pupa and dead bees! However, when I looked in the hive they looked OK. There is a lot of activity although I never did see any bees bringing in pollen. I don't want to look in for fear of messing up a new queen in development. So, I'll just wait this one out.

Hive #1 - it looks like they have given up on their queen. I saw several superscedure cells in this one and not much else, a little brood, but no eggs or larva that I could see (I didn't look all the way through). Just realized I didn't see much honey either, I will put a feeder back on this one - but they have not taken the food very well in the past.

Hive #4 - I was encouraged by this one. There were finally bees up in the second box. They had several frames in that box with honey in it. Lookin' good.

That's all for now...

Bee Overload!

2009-04-18T19:29:00.003-04:00

Queen rearing class, Va State Beekeepers Mtg and a weird hive has me over my bee - limit!

I had the opportunity to go to a queen rearing class Thursday evening and Friday morning. Keith Tignor the State Apiarist and Rick Fell from Va Tech taught the course. They knew their stuff. We spent Thursday evening in class learning about queen and drone biology and a review of queen reaering techniques. Friday morning was a "lab" outside in the bee yard to look a "starter" and "finisher" hives. Honestly, I do not intend on raising queens for sale or anything, but I learned a lot about replacing my own queens information that will be useful for splits in the future.

Key learnings for me:

queens take from egg through development (15 days), maturity and mating (5 days) - all toghether about 21 days before you should see new eggs.
When making a split make sure their are new eggs (1 day old the best) and the workers will begin making a new queen after just 8 hours of quenlessness.
You can mark queens with just your fingers, a toothpick and tempura paint from the art store. Keith picked up the queen with his fingers and put her in a pill jar while he worked the hive.
Drones must be present before queen mating flights (ie don't try this too early in the season).
Best time for splits is nectar flow.
Easy method for raising 8-10 queens the Miller method

I also attended the Virginia State Beekeepers Assiciation meeting (it was being held about four blocks from my house!) Lots of interesting presentations, some better than others. Here is what I picked up:

I think I have heard this before but it is the first time it clicked. To set up a split you should have five frames center frame should have new eggs (these are needed so they can start "emergency" queen cells) then two frames of brood with nurse bees, then two frames of food (honey and pollen). This can be done in a 5 frame nuc or the center of a 10 frame with empty frames outside the center 5. They also suggested shaking some extra nurse bees into the split, as many of the forager bees will return to the original hive unless you set up the split 1 or 2 miles away. Make splits during the swarm season.
Several splits (nucs) can be made from one strong colony.
Fumagillan is the only effective treatment for Nosema
If you put a swarm cell in a nuc you want no eggs in the nuc (or they may start another queen cell)
Virginia queens - www.sustainablebees.org

I know there was lots of other stuff, but this is what was useful to me. Hey and I won a hive tool as a door prize!

I think I'll post my hive update as a seperate post...

Split = 4 Hives ?

2009-04-10T20:41:00.002-04:00

Well I am about to learn something, it may be a positive learning or a negative learning.

On the advice of my mentor I went ahead and split Hive #2. However, I made two big errors which may or may not be very bad.

So, I will back up. Hive #2 was my very successful hive. I got home a little early today, 80 degree weather and dug into it. The hive was still going strong, bees all the way to the top (4th) box. The top box was mostly frames being drawn and honey stored. The bottom three boxes were each 3/4 filled with brood frames, many had larva and eggs, many with honey around the edges. So, I decided to go ahead and do the split. The reason for the split is essentially a controlled swarm. The bees want to swarm when they get this big, so instead of letting them, the hive is split so that two hives now exist.

I looked at every frame, one by one, both sides several times - and I could find no queen :( I know she is or was recently in there bacause I clearly saw eggs. So, I had a decision to make, go ahead with the split or not? I decided to go ahead, not knowing where the queen was. I took boxes 1 and 3 and left them in the current position. In box #2 there were some swarm cells (queen cells at the bottom of a frame), some were empty, one had a larva in it. I put boxes 2 and 4 in the new location. So error #1 was not knowing were the queen is.

But, lets talk about that. If I did know were the queen was I would have made sure that she was with the boxes without the queen cells. But not knowing she may be in either place (or perhaps she got lost in the opening and transfer). My hope is that werever she is, she will survive and thrive and that in the other hive they will make a new queen. Anyway, I now have a new Hive #3 - I hope.

But - Error #2, I put the new hive in the same yard as the old hive. This could be a problem because the bees may simply return to the old hive and then there would be no bees to in one of the hives and potentially an overabundance in one hive - aargh.

In addition to the massive manipulation above - I was not done. I also took some frames of foundation and inserted them in between the frames that had the heaviest load of brood. Again, I am trying to give them room to grow the brood chamber so they will not think about swarming.

OK, on to Hive #1. Again this hive did not have any activity going on in the top box (it is a deep and a medium only). Down in the deep there was some brood, but not a lot. There were also some supercedure cells [queen cells on the face of the frames] so I am hoping they are fixing their own problems.

Hive #4. This hive is still staying at one box, although they had put some honey in the upper box. I put some empty frames down in the brood area to give them some space there, but not really sure what is going on with this one.

Well, that's it. As always comments are welcome.

3 Hives and holding

2009-04-05T15:38:00.003-04:00

Went back into the hives today to see what was going on.

Hive #2 still going strong, four medium boxes high. Brood in three medium boxes, larva and eggs visible. Honey being put up in the top box.

Hive #1 was three boxes, a deep and two mediums. The top box was empty of activity or stores. The middle box had some honey, but not much. The deep had all of the activity. I did pull up a frame and it had larva and eggs so, I'll leave it alone for a while. I did remove the top box til they start getting busier.

Hive #4 was similar, it is two medium boxes high. Some honey in the top box, but all of the bees in the bottom box. Again, I pulled a frame and saw brood, larva and eggs, so we'll see.

I went ahead and put syrup on all of the hives. I did not see any queen cells. There were a good number of drone cells (a whole frame of them in #2).

So, I am a little worried about #1 and 4, perhaps a more experienced beekeeper would have replaced the queens - I'll wait and see, unless I get other advice...?

A good check-up

2009-03-28T22:52:00.002-04:00

It warmed up over 60 today and the sun came out! So the bees were out and about.

All of the hives had bees buzzing around the entrances, obviously new bees orientating. I peeked in the top of each - Hive #2 was still going strong, some honey already in the top box, I replaced the syrup. Hive #1 seemed much better than last week-end, lots of activity. I had put a bowl of honey covered cappings (from the extraction last week) on top of this hive for general feeding and unfortunately it got filled with water from the rain and drowned some bees. There were bees in the top box cleaning up the empty frames I put in there last week - this was good. Hive #4 also seemed to be doing well, lots of activity and they were all over the cappings I put inside the hive.

So, all in all a good visit!

Hmmm

2009-03-23T23:19:00.003-04:00

It warmed up again so I went into the hives yesterday to mixed reviews. Hive #2 again was doing very well, three boxes full of brood, larva and eggs! This one is looking good.

Hives #1 and #4 did not look as good. Hive #1 seems to have decreased in size. All of the bees were in the bottom box on only about four frames. I did see the queen and there was brood and larva, but I don't understand the size. I did not see any swarm cells and it really seems to have been too cool to swarm anyway, but I am not sure what is going on with it.

Hive #4 was still only in one box (and a medium at that) , I don't understand why this one does not build up. I probably should have replaced the queen (I did see her) - but not sure what the trip point is.

We'll check again next weekend ...

First Extraction

2009-03-21T21:40:00.005-04:00

I had a friend going by the Dadant so I had him pick up one of the $100 Extractors and a honey bucket (with screens and valve). I had the frames of honey from the dead-out (the hive that died) so I thought I would give it a try.

The extractor came in a box without an English word on it, it was all in some Asian language, it was pretty much assembled however, so no issues. I had to put the valve on the bucket and I was ready to go. (I did have to do the dishes from the last few days, but that is beside the point).

I took the first frame out and began decapping - ie taking the wax caps off of the top of the cells that the bees put there for storage. Below is a picture of one of the frames with my decapping tool (a fork) in progress.

When I went to put the frames in the extractor I found that the unit was set up for full size frames not medium frames. After a little finagling, I found that the medium frames could be put in a little crooked and they seemed to work just find. Here is a picture of the frames in the extractor and some honey on the sides and bottom.

Finally, once all of the frames were extracted the honey is let out into the honey bucket. It is simply a white bucket with a screen over the top to catch the debris (wax, bee parts:) that came out with the honey. Here is the stream going into the bucket. I'll leave the honey in the bucket for now.

Clean up was not to bad, all in all - fun!

Dead or Alive?

2009-03-20T23:56:00.002-04:00

Well we had some cold weather while I was out of town so I got worried about the bees, and went out to look at the hives when the rain finally stopped on Tuesday. It was still cold so I didn't expect to see any bees - but I was very surprised to see the landing area of hive #1 full of dead bees :(

So on Wednesday the weather warmed up so I went outside to look inside. The first thing I saw was the same landing area was empty! Somebody moved all of those dead bees and I soon found out that it was the bees themselves. What I had forgotten is that I had put the frames with dead bees from the deadout hive in hive #1 and the bees on the landing board on Tuesday were simply the already dead bees that had been cleaned out of the frames. When I looked in the hives I found those frames empty of dead bees and in fact several of them already being filled with honey!

The other hives looked good, so I updated the sugar syrup and left them alone - for now...

Three out of Four

2009-03-07T20:56:00.010-05:00

It was a beautiful day after a week of ice and snow. With prospects looking good for warmer weather ahead I dove into the hives.

Hive #2
This hive was busting out with bees, brood, honey, and pollen. It looked more like the end of March than the beginning. It is composed of three medium hive bodies. As I took off the top, bees were boiling through the inner cover. I went down through frame by frame. Frames 3-7 of the top and second box looked like classic frames - bees and brood in the center with pollen and honey around the outside. Here is a typical picture.

Frames 1 and 2 were mostly full of honey. Frames 8-10 in both boxes were mostly empty, some honey, but mostly empty. I am wondering if they prefer the warmer side of the hive (facing the sun). Down in the bottom box, was a different story. The box was completely empty - nothing at all, just empty comb.
So, I moved the bottom box to the top and moved the other boxes down. If this hive continues as it is, it should be a strong producer in a month or so.

Hive #1 (I am writing about these in the order I worked on them)
This hive is composed of two deeps. It was my first hive that I got as a Nuc. Again, as I went into the top box, lots of bees, lots of stores and a healthy batch of larva and brood. Here is a typical frame:

As I went to the bottom box, again it was empty for the most part. The only thing left in the box was a couple of frames of what looked like old pollen. It looked kind of cakey. Here is a picture - if you recognize it, let me know.

But again, the hive looked healthy and I am looking for good things!

Hive #3 (RIP)
I have to admit that I have been surprised that all of the hives have made it through this winter. Unfortunately, this hive did not. As I took the top cover off there was no activity. It also had three boxes (that used to be teaming with bees :( The top box was empty, a little honey over in frames 8-10 but nothing else. Down in the second box was the bad news - dead bees, lots of them, some huddled in little groups and some with their heads down in the cells. Below is a close-up of a lot of bee butts - the bees are down in the cells trying to find food.
Unfortunately this means they starved to death (as did the bees last year). They were mostly clumped in frames 1-6. As I went through the frames I found two very full frames of honey in frames 9 and 10, with some honey also in frames 7 and 8. The food was in the box, but obviously when it got cold they hunkered down in the first 6 frames and could not get to the food. It is possible that if I went into the hive before the freeze and moved the honey around they might have been able to reach it - but who knows. Well, I have a full hive now for the first swarm :)

Hive #4
This is the hive I have been the most worried about. It never got over two medium boxes all of last year (it was my last swarm capture) and seemed to shrink down as the winter progressed. As I took off the top cover - not much activity, a few bees, but essentially empty comb, a little honey, but not much. This is the only hive that still had sugar syrup left on top. However, as I went into the bottom box - lots of activity, a good quantity of bees, stores, brood and larva! As I looked further I spotted the queen, she is in the upper middle of the picture below.

So, I am still hoping this one will perk up as the spring progresses. It just may have an old queen that doesn't produce very much. I may look at replacing her :(

So, all in all I feel pretty good about were I am at this point. Three out of four seem pretty good if we can keep them going. Thanks to my son for taking the pictures.

A couple of more things I did, that I forgot to mention. In the brood boxes I moved some of the semi empty frames from the edges of the boxes to the center were the brood was. This was an attempt to "open the brood area". There are those that believe this will keep the bees from swarming by giving the queen something to do (ie fill up the empty frames with bees) rather than go and start a new hive (a swarm). After I did this I got a message from one of the other beekeepers that indicated that I might have done this too early which could result in "chilled" brood (ie I might kill them if we get a cold snap).

From the hive the died, I took the frames with dead bees and put them in the healthy hives to hopefully get them to clean them out so I can use them for something else. Again, I got mixed information on whether this was a good idea or not :\ I also ended up with four frames with some honey which I went ahead and took in the house.

Bees in the Snow

2009-03-02T12:59:00.002-05:00

We had a weird March storm that dumped our first snow of the year! Here are the hives covered with the white stuff. Hive #1 is on the right and Hive #2 on the left.

Here is Hive #3
And finally Hive #4
It is supposed to get bitterly cold tonight, so it looks like the bees will have to go through one more winter freeze. Hopefully I will not have the same result as after last years snow. BTW - I did clear out the snow from in front of the hives in case they want to get out, and to give them some ventilation.

Back to Syrup

2009-02-15T22:38:00.002-05:00

So it looks like the bees did not really like the sugar on top of newspaper trial. They just left the dry sugar untouched. I peeked in the hives over the weekend, it looks like they are still OK, but I did not want to leave them without food, so I went ahead and made up some sugar syrup and put a jar on all of them. We'll see...

Mid-Winter Check-up

2009-01-25T16:18:00.003-05:00

After my last post, checked the syrup one more time in December and then left town. It has been sub-freezing (20's) here since I returned to town so I haven't had the chance to check on the critters.
I will admit that I am using the lazy beekeeper strategy. If people in northern Illinois can keep hives over the winter with little intervention, I am going to try the same. So I fed the bees heavily in the fall hoping they would build up sufficient stores to take them through this tough winter. I did not wrap the hives or put any insulation in the top. I did not even put any additional ventilation in the hives (although this is the one thing I wish I had done).
Hive #1 had not been taking any syrup through out the fall, so I had some crystallized sugar that I just dropped in on top of the inner cover to see if they would take that. It may be that they simply had enough stores and were not interested in any more.
Well it warmed up to 49 yesterday and the girls were flying so I took a couple of peeks inside. Amazingly all four hives are still alive! I am surprised, particularly hive #4, it is essentially in one medium super, and I would still not be surprised if another cold snap wiped it out. With the weather being soo cold, I did not feel comfortable putting syrup back on the hives so I tried the newspaper method of feeding. I put down a single sheet of newspaper and poured granulated sugar on top of the newspaper. In hives 3 and 4 I put the newspaper right on the top frames. In hive #2 I put the newspaper over the inner cover. In hive #1, there was still about half of the crystallized sugar left on top of the inner cover, so I just left it alone.
From the activity in the front of the hives - the most active was hive #1, #2, #4, #3.
So, so far so good. I am sure we will have another deep freeze before the winter is over, so we'll see.

Getting ready for Winter

2008-11-29T19:57:00.002-05:00

Did some cleaning up to get ready for winter. I went into the top box of the hives to see what was going on. A fellow beekeeper recently reported a hive collapse, so I thought I should take a look. I had put additional supers on a few months ago to give the bees some room to put up additional stores. It seems like they did not take advantage of the space. I went ahead and took the additional supers off of Hives 1 and 4. They had not put anything into these supers and there were only a few bees hanging around in them.
Hives 2 and 3 both had lots of bees up to the feeder in the top box, so I left them there.

More Feedin'

2008-11-08T16:52:00.001-05:00

Went out and checked the syrup today. Hives 2,3 and 4 were all empty. Hive 1 still had a full jar - no clue. Everybody looked fine from the top.

Feedin' and hopin'

2008-10-30T21:52:00.002-04:00

Seems like I am doing OK at the present as a beekeeper, but not so well as a blogger.

In the last month we had a little run-in with the mosquito sprayers. I had just returned to the house with empty sugar water jars when I heard the plane fly directly over my house. I went out to the hives and added a little cover, but you could already taste the pesticide in the air. I left them alone until the next day and found piles of bees outside each hive :( The next day I went back out and the bees had cleaned up their dead and I put on full feeders.

Last weekend I went back in for a full inspection and things looked amazingly well. There was brood and honey in good quantities across the hives. Of course hive 4 was still smaller, I am not sure exactly what to do with these guys. I checked the syrup jars this afternoon and found that Hive 2 was empty while Hive 1 was full - no clue. Hive 3's jar had clogged to I unclogged it. Hive four had only taken about a third of their syrup. It is amazing how different they are.

That's all for now.

Fall is here!

2008-10-03T19:52:00.004-04:00

Well I am back from my trip, and there is definitely a cool down in progress.

I went into the hives to see how they were doing. Generally, hives 1-3 are in similar states. The top box has a little or no honey, the next box down has about 70% honey and brood begins in box two. I did not go any lower but assume box one has mostly pollen as it was a month ago. Hive 4 is still only in two boxes with mostly honey in the top box and the brood in the bottom.

So, I decided to go ahead and begin feeding these buggers to get them set up for the winter. I really do not have a good idea how much honey they need to get through the winter, but since there is room, I'll give them the chance to fill it up.

I got quart jars on two of the hives then ran into a snag on the other two. I had made inner covers for these hives, but had not included the normal lip. The resulting box was therefore not tall enough to cover the jar - I'll have to fix this tomorrow to get the other jars on (or maybe I'll just put on pint jars...).

The Lazy Beekeeper

2008-08-31T15:34:00.010-04:00

Do to a variety of circumstances, I have really not gotten into the hives in nearly two months. I did a couple of honey checks in early July, but have not really looked further. I must admit to liking Michael Bush's suggestions more and more - http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm

So, I went into the hives yesterday full bore not really knowing what to expect. There has been a lot of talk with some of me fellow beekeepers about hive beetles and summer feeding. I have been watching the entrances to see if they looked weird (not that I am sure that I would know). I also put up some beach umbrellas to try and protect them from the summer sun.

Hive #2 is in three mediums (on left), the top box had about 50% honey and the rest empty, the bottom two boxes were a mix of brood, honey and pollen. Seemed to be in pretty good shape. Perhaps they could use some feeding, don't really know if the "fall nectar flow" will take care of them or not. The lazy in me says that if they made it through the hot summer, certainly they will make it through the cooler, more flowerful fall.

Hive #1 (2 deeps, 1 medium, on right above) was unusual (as usual). The top box was nearly empty (this seems to have been the pattern even through the honey flow). Interestingly the bees had joined four of the foundations together in a zig zag pattern. I think they were just playing around up there. The top deep box was jam packed with honey and brood. It weighed a ton and seemed very healthy. The bottom deep, surprisingly to me, was full of pollen. Row after row of pollen. Is this good or ?

Hive #3 (4 mediums) had a completely empty top box. I went ahead and pulled it off. The next three boxes were very similar to hive #1. Partially filled top box, followed by a heavy honey/brood box, followed by a box full of pollen. Well, maybe this is how they like it! (picture is after I had moved the empty box)

Hive #4 (2 mediums) looked as good as I have ever seen it. They had essentially filled up the two boxes with honey, pollen and brood. The patterns looked good and all seemed well. I went ahead and put the box left over from hive #3 on top of this box to give them some more room. I'll probably need to feed these guys at some point to help them pull out comb in that top box.

Some other notes:
I must also say that Hive #1 is the feistiest hive that I have, it is where all of the stings that I have gotten (save one) have occurred. As I worked the hive yesterday I had a group of bees around each hand and had to walk away several times to catch my breath. My heavy gloves have been worth every penny.
I used the smoker yesterday and was able to keep it lit pretty well. Used paper in the bottom and a cut up old mop on top. I am still, however, not sure about its usefulness. It is definitely useful to move the bees, i.e. if I want to get them off of the top bars, the smoke works great. But it certainly does not seem to quiet the bees, in fact every time I use it the noise in the hive goes up, indicating to me that they are aggravated, not quieted.
I also saw (I think) my first hive beetle in the hive. It seemed bigger than I remember, but I squished it anyway. It was in Hive #2.

All in all, my lazy beekeeper style seems to have paid off :) I am about to go away for about another month so I am hopeful that they will be fine. I assume I will be readying them for the winter by then.

The end is near :(

2008-06-26T19:24:00.002-04:00

I got the honey back from my extractor helper - 3 more quarts. This honey is darker than what I have gotten up to now. We'll see how it tastes.

I put the empty frames back in the hives. I only found one full frame of honey that I was willing to take - this may be the last for the season.

Honey and mix-um up

2008-06-15T21:08:00.002-04:00

Into the hives again. It is the end of the nectar flow in this area so I also decided to take a look all the way down in the hives to see what was going on.

Hive #2 & 3. I took one frame from hive #2 and four frames from hive #3. When I went through all the boxes I found that the bottom box in both hives were essentially empty. They had pulled comb but not much of anything in them. So in both cases I swapped boxes 1 and 2 and put the brood filled box on the bottom. I hope this makes sense, I'll check with some of the experts and see what they say.

Hive #1 has essentially mixed brood in with all of the honey. There is a lot of honey in the box but I am not willing to sacrifice the brood to get it.

Hive #4 is still a small batch of bees, they are still mostly in one medium box. If they do not start to grow I will probably need to combine this hive with one of the others at some point.

From last weeks honey run - we got 6 quarts of honey! All of this is now in cute little bears.

Bears and more honey!

2008-06-08T22:44:00.003-04:00

I took the honey that we had been temporarily storing in quart jars and put them in 8 oz. plastic bears. I bought a case of 396 bears and after today am glad I bought that many! The jars I had on hand filled up over 30 bears.

I also went into the hives an removed 8 more medium frames of honey. Probably two of them could have stayed, but I pulled them first before getting to the heavy ones. One of the frames I cut out of the frame for my family to use for comb honey - yummy!

For the record, I got five of the frames from hive #2. The heavy ones were down in the second box The other three frames came from Hive #3, again down a box. I didn't get anything off of Hive #1, but there was a mess of brood in there. I think they are a little off normal timing after the swarms. I also took a look in Hive #4 and found that it had not changed or grown much, it may still be a little early. We'll keep watching it and see what happens.

Bottom Boards

2008-06-07T23:32:00.002-04:00

I have two different bottom boards (the boards on the bottom:) on my hives. Simple solid boards and screened bottom boards. Supposedly the screened bottom boards are good for two reasons: they allow for better circulation in the hive and they allow any "mites" to fall through to the ground and therefore it is more difficult for them to climb back on the bees. Here is a picture of my two hives on the stand with two different bottoms.

The one on the right is solid and the one on the left is screened. Notice that the bees are huddled near the entrance on the right - they are actually trying to cool off the hive in the blistering heat we had today. So - it looks like the screened bottom board is working!

4 more quarts = 5 more stings!

2008-06-04T23:07:00.002-04:00

Well I have to fess up and admit that I have not used the smoker the last two times in the hive. It is a pain for me to get going and I have read that it may cause the honey to taste smoky. But, of course, this could be the reason I have become a human dart board.

For the records I got 4 more quarts of honey from the last pull. This means from Hive #1 I have gotten a total of 6 quarts of honey and from Hives #2 and #3 about a quart a piece. This is actually pretty amazing to me as folks had lowered my expectations to the point that I thought I might not be geting any this year.

Fortunately, I have a near infinite supply of quart jars. I have ordered some plastic bears to put the honey in - it will be our gift of choice this year if we get enough to go around :)

Back to the hives - In hive #1 I had put in two medium frames were I took out the deeps to extract the honey. On the bottom of one of the medium frames they had pulled the most beautiful comb in just four days! They had it partially filled with honey. This is were I got in trouble with the bees. I was afraid to shake the bees off too aggressively for fear that this comb would break off and fall into the hive. So I decided to just brush them off. They didn't like this one but. Three of them got me on the back of the hand again simultaneously. I yelped and jumped a few feet all the time brushing the rest of the bees off of the comb - it would have made a good video :). If I had been smarter, I probably should have just cut the comb off the bottom of the frame and shook the remaining bees in the box.

I got into similar trouble in Hive #3 when replacing the emply comb and got stung two more times on the same hand.

OK, so smoke next time and minimal brushing.

Again, fortunately, the ill effects from these stings have been nonexistent after the first 30 second - ouch. But the honey is goooood.

Stung! but more honey :)

2008-05-29T22:46:00.007-04:00

Well, I finally got stung, I knew it was just a matter of time. She got me right through the cloth part of my glove. It hurt like heck for 30 seconds then essentially went away, it was red later but not for long.

Well, I collected honey from three of my four hives.

Hive #1 produced two more deep frames. Last week we pulled four frames from this hive. I replaced the empty frames with now pulled comb back in the hive last Friday. Two of these were already full! Here is a photo of these frames in my cooler.

Hive #2, my captured swarm hive, produced three mediums full of honey. Here I am brushing away the bees from the frames so I can put them away.

Hive #3, the hive produced from my first swarm, produced two frames of honey. Here is one of the frames set in an empty box for transport. Some of the honey is already capped.

Finally here is what is going on inside Hive #4, the last swarm hive. If you remember I described the comb that the bees pulled from the top cover that we placed in empty frames with rubber bands. Here are two pictures of that comb in place. The bees have already attached the comb to the top and bottom and filled it with brood and honey - good work girls! Not expecting any honey from this hive this year, just hoping they continue to thrive.

Honey!

2008-05-21T22:06:00.006-04:00

What a turn of events. I asked my mentor to come over and see what was going on with my hives.

We started with the Nuc swarm (Hive #4). When he pulled the top off of the Nuc there were two full length combs pulled from the top cover! They were beautiful white perfect comb. Unfortunately, this is where I had put the syrup jars. But the bees did not care, they just built the comb over and around the jars. In fact, when he pulled up the top and comb the jars came with it. It was a real sight, unfortunately, I did not have my photographer :( Interestingly, the bees had not used the bottom box at all, they were laying eggs and storing honey only in the top box with the mess. Anyway, we moved all of the frames from the Nuc to a new 10 frame box. We took the large pieces of comb (which had some eggs in them) and put them in some empty frame with rubber bands. I'll try and get some pictures of these tomorrow. There were some pieces of hive that we could not use back in the frames, so we collected them. One chunk of comb was full of honey - woowe it was gooood :)

So, Hive #1, the trouble maker. It seems the more I learn, the dumber I feel. This hive is doing just fine! My mentor has much better near sight vision than I do and could see a mess of eggs on several frames. In fact the frames that I thought the bees were storing honey in they were actually laying eggs in. In addition, there were several frames that were packed out with honey.

OK, so a major learning from this interaction - my mentor pulls honey from the hives as soon as it is put in, he does not wait for the bees to cap it. So, we took four full frames of honey from this hive, about half of it was capped. Normally the bees cap the honey after evaporating water from the honey to make it the right consistency. This means this honey will have to have some water removed before it is good honey. My mentor is set up to do this, so he agreed to extract my honey using his process. I'll take this extracted comb and get it back on the hives to hopefully collect some more honey!

Here is a shot of the three quarts of honey we got! Our first yield. (The middle one has been tasted :)

After vacation update

2008-05-19T13:39:00.000-04:00

So part of what I need is a reset on my expectations. When I hear people talking about harvesting honey it makes me wonder what I should be expecting. Since I do not have drawn comb and my bees are having to draw comb and collect honey should I be expecting to harvest honey this year or just be happy to have drawn comb for next year?

I did go into the hives on Friday and this is the status.

Hive #1 (the split I got from my mentor) is still in a no expansion mode, they seem to be holding their own, but no expansion. There were open queen cells (from which I assume the swarms I captured came from but I do not see eggs or larva. I have not seen a queen, but that could just be my own inability. There is still some capped brood but it is split up – in other words there is a frame of brood than a frame of honey than another frame with some brood – it just seems odd and certainly would not look healthy if I were going into winter. There is empty foundation that has remained empty for several weeks now with no drawing going on. So I am worried that although this hive has two queens earlier in the season that it may not have one at all now? This is the hive I am most worried about.

Hive #2 (the captured swarm from a co-beekeeper). This hive seems to be doing fine, expanding brood area, lots of larva, lots of nectar put up, but not much of it capped. In fact there is not much capped honey anywhere in my hives. Is this because of them pulling comb or ???

Hive #3 (my first swarm). This one is almost of replica of Hive #2 seem to be doing well.

Hive #4 (the latest swarm in a Nuc box). I have made a mess here. I put 5 frame in he lower box and three frames in the upper with two jars of syrup in between the three frame. Well the bees have been pulling comb all over the place, from the top cover , from the jars.... So, I am still assembling, sealing boxes to hopefully transfer these bees over later in the week. This is like the dirty closet I don’t show people :)

On vacation

2008-05-11T20:43:00.002-04:00

Well, I am on travel for a week and cannot check on the girls :( Before I left on Saturday I checked in the hives.

Hive #1 is still looking funky, there seems to be a bunch of brood in the chambers, but the patterns were weird, there were full frames of nectar in between frames of brood? I am beginning to wonder if this brood is chilled (dead). There also seemed to be an inordinate number of drones and several open queen cells. Although, I have checkboarded it they still are not pulling our any new comb. I am also not seeing any new eggs/larva. So, I am wondering if this hive that once had two queens now doesn't have any? This has certainly been my problem child hive :)

Hive #2 seems to still be doing well, they are pulling lots of new comb and filling it with nectar. I am not seeing a lot of capped honey (some around the brood, but not much in the upper supers) in any of the hives but I am being patient. I left this hive with a mostly empty upper super.

Hive #3 also seems to be doing well, lots of new comb bing pulled, stores bing put up.

Hive #4 (the Nuc swarm) is a mess. It has a five frame deep in the bottom which has five medium frames. I wanted to have the medium frames for when I moved this to regular boxes. I did not look into the bottom box, but I am sure they are pulling all kinds of stuff below these frames. In the upper box (a medium) I put three frames and two jars of syrup. Well the bees are trying to fill the whole box with comb, incuding all of the spaces between the jars. This box will be a mess to clean up when I get back in town.

Well, I hope they have nice vacation :)

Hive #4!

2008-05-07T10:00:00.002-04:00

Believe it or not another swarm in the back yard. I am thinking at this point that it is again from Hive #1 - they decided to swarm a long time ago and are continuing to fulfill that mission.

Unfortunately I am out of boxes! I quickly assembled a makeshift hive from a couple of unfinished mediums and some plywood boards. The bees were in the middle of one of my blueberry bushes :( which I had to cut up a bit to get them out. They did come our rather easily and I dropped them in my makeshift hive. Since I had no real bottom board, I just put a stick under the top piece of plywood to make an entrance.

Meanwhile, I contacted my co-beelaborer who lives nearby and borrowed a Nuc to put these girls in for at least a little while. This morning, I went out and transferred the bees from my makeshift box to this Nuc. The bees were already distributed across several frames so moving them was pretty easy. The Nuc has a bottom entrance so they were looking a little confused about how to get into the box, but enough were figuring it out that I assume they will spread the word.

I went ahead an bought another top and bottom board and a couple more boxes - I have got to spend some time putting all of this together!

BTW - I also checked on the other hives to see what was going on and Hive #3 (the first swarm I captured) had completely filled their boxes! I went ahead and put another (unfinished!) box full of foundation on top. Well, even if I do not get a lot of honey this year I should have a bunch of comb ready for next year!

Thats all for now...

Major Manipulation

2008-05-03T23:50:00.005-04:00

Well I continue to learn and I will certainly learn after today. I had two problems which I tried to solve simultaneously - we'll see.

First, to go back, it looks like the swarm I captured may, in fact, have been from my hive #1. As I have noted before, they have been reticent to move up to a new box and got brood bound - in other words they had no place to lay their brood, therefore they had to swarm to continue to reproduce. So swarm they did.

As a result I have been thinking about how to break up the brood area. One method is called checker boarding - this is when you make room in the brood nest by taking out some of the frames of brood and replacing them with empty foundation or comb, this gives the bees something to do instead of swarm. Usually you would take the removed frames and put them in a box on top of the brood box and thereby expand the brood into the upper box. However, in the set-up that I had the upper box was a "medium", and the bottom box was a "deep", ie they were different sizes, therefore I could not move the frames from the bottom to the top box - they would not fit :(

Problem #2 - Hive #2 was from the first captured swarm but was also originally on a deep. However, this deep had a mixture of deep and medium frames (the medium frames will fit in a deep but the deep frames will not fit in a medium). These bees had already pulled and populated a full medium with brood, pollen and honey on top of this deep.

SOoo, what I did today was take the deep box from the bottom of hive #2 to the top of hive #1 thereby making the brood nest for hive #1 two deep boxes. I only transferred over the deep frames and brushed all of the bees off first. I also did some checker boarding with the bottom box so hopefully the bees will have plenty of room to expand the brood.

Then, I took the full brood box(medium) from the top of hive #2 and made it the new bottom of hive #2. I added the partially drawn medium that was on the very top of hive #2 and the medium frames from the deep that was the bottom of hive #2 and this became the top brood box of hive #2. Now in doing all of this I tried not to confuse the bees. I brushed all of the bees into their respective hives regardless of what frames they came from. There will be bees that emerge from brood cells that came from the other hive, but I am hoping they will adopt them.

My real worry is the queens. I looked as I was going (but I did not want to take the time to look real hard) but I did not see them. As I said, I brushed or shook all of the bees into their respective hives, so I am hoping that they are where they belong.

Honestly, I have no idea what confusion I have caused. Either I did a really good thing or a really stupid thing - we'll see...

Here is a picture of the hives in their new configuration. Hive #1 is on the right and hive #2 is on the left.

Here by the way is hive #3 - the captured swarm - they have been building like crazy - but I have yet to see any brood. Aargh, I still don't get these bees! :)

Swarm = Hive #3!

2008-04-24T23:32:00.013-04:00

I got a call from my wife that there was a swarm of bees on one of our camellia bushes in the back yard. Yikes - was this my bees leaving the hive?

So I got home and found a beautiful swarm embedded in the camellia bush, I decided to not worry about where it came from until later, right now I needed to get this swarm boxed. Well, I did have some more mediums, and some foundation (no drawn comb - this could make it less likely that they will stay), and a bottom board, but no top. I improvised and then went over to our favorite wooden ware guru later and got another top. Here is a picture of the box next to the camellia. I had strapped it thinking I was going to move it and then decided to leave it right were it was. The box had frames in the bottom box, but had an empty super on top to catch the bees.

Here are a couple of pictures of the swarm. I am cutting away the branches around it so I can get the branch out with the bees on it.

So, it is a mass of bees! As I am cutting all of a sudden half of the swarm drops and almost falls to the ground - there were two branches in there! So I took a small portion of the swarm and dumped it into the box. This picture show the swarm after the branch dropped off and almost split the swarm in half.

After I cut the main branch that contained the swarm I jerked the branch over the box and the bees fell neatly into the box (it was amazingly easy). The picture below shows the bees right after jerking the branch.

As I was getting the smaller branches with a few bees still hanging on the bees began collecting in one corner - I am hopeful that they were collecting around the queen (meaning I got the queen!) - see the picture below.

I then took about 6 frames frames of foundation and placed them in the top box. I only had six left made up, plus I did not want to squish the bees collected in the corner. I then put a couple of jars of sugar syrup right on these frames (I don't have another inner cover either) and closed them up.

Oh, yeah and so you know I really am a beginner, we at first had the screened bottom board on upside down and it just looked funny - we finally had to lift the box and flip the bottom board to get it right. Hopefully I did not completely freak the bees out.

Now to wait and see if they like there new home or they keep looking.

I did go into my other hives to see if these were my bees looking for a new home. My hives were still full of bees busy working. As stated last time Hive #2 is still the most active hive just about filling up the upper second box with brood and some stores. Hive #1 still seems strong but content in their bottom box?

So it looks like I got a free box of bees (if they stay).

Hive #2 is winning!

2008-04-18T17:41:00.007-04:00

Beautiful day so I dove in to see what was going on.

Hive #2 (the swarm hive) is doing great. I checked the top box, they had pulled out most of the frames with comb and there was brood in many of the frames. I even got to see larva (I know old hat for many). If you blow up the picture below you can see what looks like crescent rolls inside the cells - these are larva or bees in development.

The picture below is the same frame from a broader view. You can see the capped cells on the left side. This looks like honey cells (nice and white) but it is surrounded by these larva? It will be interesting to see what this looks like in a week.

Since most of these frames were pulled and many filled I went ahead and put a 1/4 queen excluder on top of this box and added another box on top for hopefully honey! I used normal foundation in this box (foundation discussion to come...).

Hive #1 (split hive) still seems to be "holding its own". It is not really growing, but seems healthy enough, lots of bees, lots of stores and brood. They have still not pulled any comb on the top box although they are walking all over it. The single frame of pulled comb that I moved over they have put nectar in but that is all that is going on. Lots of activity going in an out - don't know?

Here is what my bee yard looks like now.

Update

2008-04-10T21:34:00.003-04:00

Nice warm day - went into the hive to see what was going on.

Went into Hive #2 first (the swarm hive). Things were going well. I checked in the upper super and they were pulling comb like crazy. I didn't check all of the frames but there were at least 6 of them being pulled! I closed it up and let them keep working. I thought this was a pretty picture of some of the freshly pulled comb.

I then went into hive #1. There still was no comb building going on in the upper super :( So, I went down into the brood box to see what was going on. I just looked at a couple of frames, but they were packed with stores and brood. Well, I was worried that these buggers just would move up and may start thinking about getting out of the box (swarming), so I took off the 1/4 queen excluder to give them unrestricted access to the top box. I then went back over to Hive #2 and "stole" a frame of the freshly pulled comb and put it in Hive #1. The hope is that that will get them started in the upper box. We'll see! Here is a picture of a frame of brood in the bottom box.

A new body

2008-04-04T23:29:00.003-04:00

So my swarm catcher friend wanted his box back, so I had to transfer the bees from his box to my box. This wasn't very hard, but was a little intimidating, especially when I had about half the frames in the old hive and half in the new and bees were everywhere. They were pounding my veil but I did not get stung - yet. I also had a hard time keeping the smoker lit with all this going on. But, I got them transferred and they spent the rest of the day reorienting - again. Here is the set-up tonight:

Building up

2008-04-02T23:35:00.004-04:00

So, I went out this morning and added a super with frames and a feeder box to the new hive. The hope here is that the bees move up from the plastic foundation onto my wax foundation so I can give the plastic foundation back to the swarm catcher.

He came over this afternoon and we replaced four of the plastic frames, that the bees had not done much on yet, with my frames. I put in medium frames as I'd like to get this hive onto mediums eventually - just experimenting. I have also used 4.9 mm foundation on this hive to try to help with Varroa (I'll 'splain when I'm not so sleepy). The bees were definitely out and orienting!

We'll see!

Hive #2!

2008-04-01T21:05:00.006-04:00

Well, I got a call from a fellow club member that had captured a swarm and wondered if I wanted it. Well, of course!

He had been called to a school that had been having some bee trouble. Not being able to find any nest at the school, he decided to put a hive on top of the school an see what happened. In about a week when he went back to check on it a whole swarm had taken up residence.

So, we went over there tonight, covered the entrance and brought the box to my backyard. I'll let it set tonight and then put a medium and feeder on top in the morning. That will also allow me to take a peek inside and see what is going on. Here is a picture of the box and its big brother. Notice there are a bunch of bees at the entrances even at 8:30 at night.

Earlier in the afternoon I also took a peek inside hive #1 (now I have to name them :). They still had not drawn anything on the super on top. I did check a few frames in the bottom box and they seem to be doing fine. Lots of pollen, nectar, capped honey and brood. So, I just buttoned them up and let them bee.

Update - A Discovery!

2008-03-22T20:33:00.004-04:00

Well, let me first admit that I am obviously still learning!

After putting up the previous post, I described the situation to my mentor. He asked in the nicest way possible - do you really know what a queen cell looks like? Well, I don't. The cells I was seeing were actually drone cells!

Anyway, I went back in the hive today to take a second look, and I am feeling a lot better! The frames were covered with bees, many more than I saw a few days ago. We took some pictures - and have some new questions:

First, I had a new helper, he was deathly afraid of bees, but once he donned the superman suit and took hold of the camera, he was invincible.

As I said, when I started pulling the frames they were loaded with bees, here is an example.
Here is that frame, notice the yellow bulbous cells - those are drone cells, yeah, I know, it is obvious now.

Here is another one - we'll come back to this one in a minute :)

So, as I was going through the frame - I saw the queen again, this time on a frame full of bees, looking plumper and busy! Here is the frame picture, see if you can spot her!

Well, she was camera shy and ducked under some workers when we went to take the pictures - so I have blown up that section in the picture below. If you see the bee with the pollen on her legs, the queen is to her right somewhat covered by other workers. She is much longer than the others, has a more pronounced larynx and shorter wings. I have been surprised how much different she looks from the other bees, easier to spot than I anticipated.

So, all in all a good visit. When I got done I went ahead and put a medium super back on top since they were obviously doing well.

After closing everything back up and coming inside to take a look at the pictures I found something very interesting. If you look real close to the second frame I have displayed above, you will see what looks to me like another queen! Since I made such a blunder last time, I have blown up the area and I ask for your expert eyes to take a look. It was certainly not the same queen, as it was two frames away from were I saw the other queen.

So, if this is another queen - now what? Is it OK to have two in there? Will it encourage swarming? Will they fight? Or will they produce twice as many brood?

More questions . . .

Hmmm

2008-03-19T19:56:00.003-04:00

It was 70ish today so I came home early to see what the bees were doing. I began by taking off the two top supers. First concern, neither of the boxes had any activity, no comb being built here. When I got down to the brood box it looked OK from the top, bees roaming over the top of the frames. The first frame I took out was an end frame, there was some comb drawn on it but not much else, some pollen on the inner side.

The second frame, however, was a big surprise - it was loaded with queen cells! They were bright yellow, sticking perpendicular to the frames, probably half a dozen on both sides of the frame.

As I went through the frames there were several others with queen cells scattered about - and one of them open! I also saw a queen on one of the frames, she seemed to be wandering around, without any attendants watching after her - this seemed strange. She also seemed skinny, not that I have seen a lot of queens before. There were also a bunch of drones bees in the hive.

There were also a bunch of cells that were only half filled with something. It was off white and looked pasty. I talked to another beekeeper and he suggested that perhaps it was pollen. All of the pollen I have seen up to this point has been yellow or even orange. ?

I also did not see eggs or larva or much stores! This could be my inexperience at spotting them.

So, I am guessing that the first queen left, or gave up, or was killed in the transport, or the bees started building queen cells when the queen was trapped for the split. I am guessing the queen I saw was a new one (is there any way to tell?) perhaps a virgin queen?

So, because there were little stores, I went ahead and took off the two supers, put the inner cover right down on the brood box and put on two feeder jars. I know I have a chance of crowding the bees with the one box which could cause them to think swarm, but I have to worry about them living through the next couple of weeks. Hopefully one of the new queens will mate and get to work laying eggs!

I'd love to get some feedback!! (sorry for no pictures, my helper was at baseball:)

Out and about

2008-03-15T21:29:00.003-04:00

The bees took advantage of the nice weather to get in some orientation flight. It looked like we might need an air traffic controller at some points.
I also added a syrup feeder inside an additional super. It is supposed to turn chilly tonight so I put the entrance reducer in at the end of the day to keep out the wind.

The Bees are back in town!

2008-03-14T21:09:00.009-04:00

Well we start again.

After a couple of months of build up at my mentor's abode a new colony has returned to an old location.

I must admit I did not understand what was meant by "a split" until I saw it - and it was pretty simple. He had assembled a double brood box with my box on the bottom. He found the queen and put it in my box and we simply sealed it up and I took it away. He took the other brood box, and it became the bottom box - that's it, they were split. He will be looking for the other brood box to produce a new queen for themselves.

So, here is my box in transport mode. The top was replaced with a screen covered inner cover. This allowed the colony some ventilation during the transport. He then just stuffed a rag in the entrance and I was off.

Once at home I added a quarter queen excluder* and put two medium supers on top with bare foundation. With any luck they will begin pulling comb in the supers and filling them with honey! Yahoo!

*Oh yeah, what is a quarter queen excluder? He told me to get one, so I searched on the bee supply sites and no one sold such a thing so I went ahead and bought a normal Queen excluder. Well, when I got to his house he showed me a quarter queen excluder - it is simply a normal queen excluder cut into fourths -- quarters. The purpose of the queen excluder is to keep the queen down in the brood chamber. The problem with a full excluder is that sometimes it not only keeps out the queen but also inhibits the workers from moving up to the supers. So, the "quarter queen excluder" sits over the center of the brood chamber were the queen spends most of her time and so for the most part keeps her in the brood box while allowing the workers to come and go as they please - marvelous! So when I got home I cut (gulp) my brand new queen excluder into quarters.

And for the record, I had a discussion on BeeSource about foundation - in which I discussed a variety of foundation purchased for the supers. The supers I put on this hive contained Mann Lake "thin surplus" foundation.

Waiting and Building

2008-02-25T23:24:00.003-05:00

Well, according to my mentor my hive is doing well over at his house - new brood is building up.

Meanwhile, I am putting together boxes and frames for honey supers and a new hive so I will be ready in just a few weeks!

Here I am (JMU sweatshirt) at the Colonial Beekeepers Club workshop last weekend - putting together some frames with their jigs and powered staple guns. Guess I'll be making another purchase . . .

A new start

2008-02-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

Well my mentor took my hive to his house to clean it out and start over. He has another nuc that he will begin placing my foundation in to transfer some new bees. Once the weather warms up for good I'll get the hive back and enjoy watching the bees play.

Meanwhile, I have purchased another hive box and will be populating it with a cut-out (bees currently in a tree that the owners want removed) that another friend will be collecting in the spring.

So for now we wait and read and learn.

Death of a Colony :(

2008-01-30T18:25:00.001-05:00

Well with the warming of the past few days (50s) I expected to see some activity around the hive - alas none. So my mentor suggested I take a look inside to see what was going on. Well - bad news the bees are all dead. I have posted some pictures to hopefully get some help in diagnosing what happened.

The first picture is a close-up of part of the brood frame. If you remember from the previous posts the bees were really only growing brood on this one frame. If you zoom in on the center of the frame you will see a lot of bee butts because their heads are down in the cells. If I have read correctly this is an indication that the bees have starved. When it got really cold they clustered and could not reach the syrup I had on top of the inner cover and ran out of the stores they had put away on the comb.

The second picture is the opposite side of the brood frame. It does look like the bees went up to find food but the syrup did not fit the bill for them.

The third picture is of the comb that they had pulled on the next frame. They had put syrup in these cells and it looks like they went through it before running out.

The fourth picture shows the opposite side of the same frame. It looks like they had stored some honey over there, but didn't make it there when it got really cold.

The final picture looks down into the hive from the top and show the bees piled up on the bottom board. The other reason for showing this picture is to note the liquid interspersed with the bee bodies. If you were a keen observer you would also have noticed some liquid on the top bar in picture number one. I am assuming that this is syrup that has leaked out of my feeder jars. Obviously this could have had a deleterious effect on the bees if they got "wet" and then the cold weather came in. I think that I have read that the syrup jars will begin to leak when the temperature gets really cold (ie it reverses the pressure in the jars).

So this is all speculation - I would really appreciate some "expert" diagnosis on what happened here and what I should do next time to keep this from happening!

I hope to replace the bees so I can still continue to learn this spring.

Let it snow . . . .

2008-01-20T22:54:00.001-05:00

Well we got a little snow and some very ccccold weather. Supposed to get down in the teens tonight. I wrapped a plastic coated tablecloth around the north and west sides of the hive to keep out the wind. I hope the bees have their long johns on!

A quick peek

2008-01-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

It was getting dark, but we took a quick peek in the hive late this afternoon to see how the bees were faring after the deep cold we had. Well, they were doing just fine thank you! There were a bunch of bees in there. The brood area looked healthy, lots of new uncapped brood. Comb being pulled and stores laid up.

However, one thing my mentor said on the way out - this was not the time of day to get in the hive. The bees were really aggressive - several were whacking my veil and one got inside of his (a little beekeeper dance got rid of it :)). Even as we walked away the were dive bombing us. Another lesson!

Moving Day

2008-01-01T18:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally got around to moving the hive. The place I had it, had a great wind block and was hidden well from onlookers, but unfortunately was always in the shade, so it never got any sun, particularly in the winter. So, last night, after dark, we covered the entrance and moved the buggers.

So, the new spot faces the sun rise and gets sun most of the day. In the summer a large oak should shade it so that it does not get overheated. I may have to put up a wind block, but I think it will be a better place.

Today, it was reasonably warm (55ish) so the bees got out did some new orientation flights and seemed to spend more time outside, I take this as a good sign. There were some bees wandering around the old hive site (about 12 feet away), but hopefully not too many got desperately lost.

Status Quo

2007-12-29T13:50:00.000-05:00

Again, a warm day (low 60s, overcast/drizzly)so we went into the hive. Things were not very different from a few weeks ago. The queen seems to still be laying fine but only in the old comb. She does not seem interested in using the new comb at this point. This is probably not a concern at this point since she is only laying a maintenance brood. Once "spring" starts she will probably jump over to the new frames (fingers crossed). The bees continue to pull new comb on the other frames storing nectar and pollen (picture below).

We did notice that the bees were not taking much of the syrup (almost none since I refilled last Friday). This could be because the frame that is now holding the brood was off center, in the box, and not under the hole in the inner cover. During the cold weather we have had, they probably did not want to move that far to get the syrup. So we moved the brood frame back to the center this time before closing.

Speaking of "spring", the bees will probably start building up the brood size well before spring actually arrives - as early as January/February - i.e. soon!

C-

2007-12-12T22:43:00.000-05:00

Well the girls did not do well on their test. Remember we split the brood frame with hopes that they would move the brood to the two new center frames. Well, they had other ideas. Unfortunately, it looks like they gave up on one of the brood frames and left the brood to die. My mentor said the brood were "chilled" meaning that they got too cold during the recent cold snap. This happens when it just plain gets too cold, or (probably in this case) when there were not enough bees to cover two separated brood frames and so the bees decided to just stick with one. Obviously, this is bad in the short run as we have lost some baby bees. :(

Also of concern is that the queen is still not laying in the new comb. She still appears to be active in the one remaining brood frame(yeah) but in none of the new ones. If she doesn't figure this out, we may be stuck with only one frame of brood over the winter, which would probably not be enough to maintain the hive.

The good news is that the bees are still pulling new comb pretty well and filling it with honey and pollen for the winter. Below is a picture of the new comb with some honey and pollen packed away.

In case anyone cannot picture the mason jar feeders - here is what they look like. Just fill-um with sugar water and turn them upside down over the inner cover hole.

Life after Death

2007-12-08T20:59:00.001-05:00

So I went out early this morning. It was still cold and bleak and I took this picture of the death porch :(

But, by the afternoon it had warmed up, even the sun came out briefly and walla! the bees were out and buzzing around. Very soon they had cleared the porch of their dead compatriots. Interestingly they did not just push them off of the porch but rather picked them up and carried them to the ground.

I replaced the pint feeder, it was empty, but the quart jar was still half full. They have certainly slowed down on the feeding. It will be interesting to see what they do this week since the temperature is supposed to stay pretty mild.

R.I.P.

2007-12-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

A dozen or so dead bees on the front porch this morning :( Hopefully this is just normal attrition. They have almost stopped taking syrup. Looks like some warmer weather coming this weekend - so we'll take another peek.

Putting the girls to the test.

2007-11-29T18:28:00.001-05:00

The temperature got up to 60 today so my mentor came over and we went inside again. Let me mention the the overall goal is to get the bees off of his comb and onto my frames/comb. When we opened the hive the frames were located as shown below.

The darker frames are the ones that we transferred over from my mentor's Nuc. Note in this picture the two lighter frames in between the darker frames. These are the frames that the bees are drawing comb on. At the end of the day we put these two lighter frames in the middle and moved the two middle frames outside of them. The hope is that the bees will move the main brood area to these two newly formed comb. That means the queen will have to begin laying in the new comb. At this point all that is in the new comb is honey and pollen - we'll see!
To complete the story, the outer two dark frames were removed from the bottom hive. One was completely taken out, the other was put up in the feeder box. Again, the hope is that the bees will move from this frames/comb down to the main hive and get busy on the new comb.

Here is a closeup the bees down in the brood area.

Below is a picture of the hive as we were moving the frames around. You can see that we have moved the two dark frames in the center apart and are placing the newly drawn combs into the center.

Also, we had to use the smoker today. I don't know if it was the chillier weather or what, but the girls were feisty!

Well, we will keep feeding and hope for the best :)

Just Feedin'

2007-11-25T22:51:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday before leaving for Thanksgiving I replaced the pint feeder. Today, I replaced both of them. They are still feeding well.

A little warm up

2007-11-17T22:26:00.000-05:00

Well it warmed up a little today (55) and the bees took advantage of it. They were out and about. My son had replaced the pint jar yesterday so I just replace the quart today - all seemed well.

Cold and Rainy

2007-11-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

We had beautiful weather through yesterday and the bees took advantage of it. The most activity I have seen at the new hive. Today, however is another story. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees and the rain came in. When I checked on the hive this afternoon it was completely quiet, no activity at the entrance and two dead bees laying there. I am assuming they are just hunkering down in the weather.

They had almost emptied the feeders, I will probably refill them tomorrow.

The bees are working hard!

2007-11-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

We had a bump of nice weather this afternoon, and my mentor came over, so we took a peak under the hood. Actually before he came I noticed that the bees were much more active today than I had seen them in weeks, lots of coming and going at the hive entrance.

When we moved the frames over from the Nuc we placed a new empty frame between some of the old frames so that hopefully they would pull some new comb. Well - they did. We had one side of the new frame almost fully pulled with new comb, they were also busy filling it with honey and even had some capped.

There were some new eggs, and the brood still seemed intact. All in all the bees were doing incredibly well.

We went ahead and moved another new foundation into the brood area to see what the girls will do.

Feeding time

2007-11-11T22:27:00.000-05:00

Just trying to keep track of when I am feeding them. Put in a quart and a pint of new syrup today. Filling jar a little more than half with sugar and then filling with water to dissolve. Bees were messing around outside some, but still pretty quiet.

Brrrr

2007-11-10T22:11:00.000-05:00

Well it has gotten chilly (50's during the day and colder at night) and the girls are staying inside. Very little activity outside. They are also slowing down on taking syrup. It must be winter!

Sugar High?

2007-11-01T17:46:00.000-04:00

Before my father left, we switched the single pint jar to a pint and a quart jar. So, I did not have to refill it as often. The bees finished the quart and the pint bone-dry in four days. I refilled the quart last night and they have not drink a fourth of it in a day.

They seem to be calmer. I am not sure if it is the colder weather that has hit us, the bigger hive, or the amount of sugar water we are giving them. I have only seen about three bees (outside of the hive) in this four day span, which seems quite odd to me.

The Son Rises

2007-10-27T21:05:00.001-04:00

I am Kevin, the son of the one who has been recently posting this blog. As he stated in his last post, my father will be leaving for two weeks. I will keep everyone updated while he is away and give you my perspective on beekeeping. I know that he has never mentioned me before but I have always been learning right with him.

I, as my father, am also quite interested in this "hobby." It may sound odd but it is quite interesting to watch the bees fly in and around the hive searching for ways to store up for the winter. Today was the first time that I have gotten the chance to actually look inside the hive because my father just recently ordered me a suit. It was quite interesting.

As you can see from the pictures, on each frame there are an amazing amount of bees. My father told me that there were an excessive of 20,000 bees in the hive but did not see how that was possible. I only saw the few bees when i change the sugar water. We also saw the queen bee, which was quite noticeably larger than the others. She was amidst all the others but was much larger than the others.

I will post a blog on here quite often to keep you and my father aware of what is happening on "Antcliff Farms."

Goodbye old Nuc

2007-10-27T20:06:00.001-04:00

Well, my mentor came over this afternoon and we transferred the bees from his Nuc to my hive! Here is the setup of the two hives before we started.

My son Kevin is always there to take pictures and lend a hand when needed.

We opened the Nuc and began moving the frames from the Nuc to the new Hive. First he pulled out the end frame which was mostly honey.

This frame was the first one put in the new box. We put three frames of new foundation, then this frame, then another new foundations then the next three old frames. The next frame was the one I added last week, it had a lot of newly deposited eggs, but nothing capped yet. The bees were busy on it.

The two remaining frames were still full of new and capped brood, these were moved over next, followed by the last two frames of new foundation. We then put the inner cover on, followed by the open box with the four remaining new foundation frames in it, followed by the telescoping cover.

We did slide the new hive over in the position of the old Nuc to help the bees find "home." Here are a couple of pictures of the bees trying to figure out this new hive.

Interestingly we did not use a smoker, the bees were all around us most of the time, but they seemed pretty tame and unfazed by the massive disruption. There were a lot at the end buzzing around in circles at the front of the hive trying to figure out which way was up. None of us got stung, not even my son who did not wear gloves.

I will be out of town for two weeks, my son will be feeding the critters. We are going to up the concentration a bit to help them (hopefully) draw some comb. I will look forward to see what is inside when I return.

New Hive

2007-10-27T19:48:00.002-04:00

Welllll - putting together a hive from a box a parts is no small task! Several nights of pre-drilling, gluing, nailing, sanding and finishing have reminded me of early model building projects. I decided to go with a natural finish and used an external Minwax polyurethane for the outside coating. I am pleased with the natural color result. I put the last coats on Wednesday to give the hive some time to breath before the bees go in (I am posting this a little late).

One problem I ran into was that one one of the boxes had an end panel that had the rabbits cut upside down. Fortunately it was on the second box so I didn't think I was crazy. I called Dadant the next day and they FedExed me a new part over night, so I was able to complete the boxes on time.

There were no instructions for putting the foundations in, so I just remembered some stuff that had been talked about on the forums and gave it a try, once I got the hang of it, it went pretty fast.

Here is a picture of what the bottom hive looks like.

Another purchase

2007-10-19T23:34:00.000-04:00

Well, as intimated earlier, I had to buy some hive equipment so we could transfer the bees from the Nuc to "my equipment." So I went ahead and got a minimal set of hive parts to get started. I ordered all of the stuff from Dadant because - I like them, and they have a store in Lynchburg and I got a friend to pick the stuff up for me (i.e. free shipping). Here is what I bought:

B51101 Hive Body with Frames
Seemed like the best deal for buying just two hives. They are the standard "deep" hives with the frames - some assembly required!

F35010 10 SH. WIRED 8 1/2" X 16 3/4
These are pure wax foundations with crimped vertical wires. They come in boxes of 10.

B91101 BOTTOM BOARD STANDARD C/1
Just a standard solid bottom board. I may replace this with a screened board later.

B11101 COVER TELESCOPING METAL W/INNER COVER C/1
Combination Telescoping cover and inner cover, seemed like a reasonable deal. I am not going to be moving the hives, so the telescoping cover seemed like the right choice.

V01200SIZE DADANT COTTON/POLY ZIPPER VEIL HOODED JACKET
Well, you have got to have two sets of protection gear if you want to show anyone else what the bees are doing - so here is jacket #2.

So I called and ordered this stuff on Monday. My friend went up on Friday and picked the stuff up and returned late this evening! Looks like I will have some work to do this afternoon.

Expanding the Nuc

2007-10-19T23:09:00.000-04:00

As reported last time, we needed to add some space in the hive for the bees. My mentor brought me a fully drawn comb to replace the super frame that they were essentially ignoring. He suggested I put in between the brood frame and the stores (honey) frame.

So, back into the hive by myself. It was a little overcast so no chance of seeing eggs or the queen. I got the smoker working well (paper for starter, cardboard and wood chips for fuel). I smoked them, popped off the top and feeder box. [One thing I noticed when my mentor came over is how slowly he worked as to not disturb the bees, so I intentionally slowed down and it seemed to go smoother]. I then took out the short frame and set it beside the box. I then took out and examined the remaining frames.

Two of the frames were almost identical with lots of brood on both sides. The third frame was filled with mostly honey, nectar and pollen (and a little brood). So, I put the empty comb in between the brood and honey frames. The half frame still had a bunch of bees on it. Not having a bee brush (several folks said I did not need one), I decided to shake the bees from the short frame into the hive. Well, they seemed to come off OK, but they sure seemed aggravated (lots of buzzing around my head). Perhaps this is normal, but I may reconsider a bee brush.

Anyway, with the short frame clear, I closed up the box, put the feeder back on (only a 1/4 jar left) and closed it up. I propped open the top to allow some circulation, because we are still dealing with unseasonable heat.

One mistake I made afterwards, was to leave the half frame on the table on my back porch. When I came back later, I found a dozen or so bees had found it. So, I had to shake these off the frame (having removed my bee jacket at that point). Fortunately, they were nice to me and I didn't get stung. I took the short frame, wrapped it in plastic and put it in my freezer. I'll return it too my mentor later.

In the Hive again

2007-10-13T19:04:00.000-04:00

The bees had really slowed down on the syrup, for the last two days they had not taken any new syrup.

My mentor came over today and we went into the hive to see what was going on. Well, my little queen has been busy! The first half frame still looked a little funky, the other full frames were full of brood and eggs. We are going to add another frame to the hive to give the girls some room.

He also suggested I go ahead and get a full hive to put these bees in - they will soon outgrow the Nuc. So, I'm shopping again...