Sticky Yellow Reward Time

 

Honey Harvest is sometimes a stressful time of the year. Lets face it, the beekeeper comes in and starts stealing their hard work, their summertime effort and quite frankly their life savings.  This is the stuff that is supposed to get them through the winter.  Without knowing what kind of a Fall we are going to have, for me, it is always a gamble on how much to take.

Supers waiting to be harvested

Some bekeepers just take it all and will feed their bees sugar and or corn syurp. I don't believe in that. I try to take what is extra and at least leave a super or two (deeps) for the winter. I think my Carniolans could easily make it through a winter on one deep full of honey. But the Italians and Minesota's probably not.

 

Wax Cappings from the frames                                    Here is our little extractor

              Almost half way fulll of Honey!                   Just stick your finger in and taste!

Our harvest this year was around 16 gallons.  That is not as much as last year but we had two issues this year.  I lost a queen and in the process split one of my hives so now we are at 4.  During that process we lost about 45 days of harvesting.  That really slowed things down.  The other issues is that it was not the best year.  Many beekeepers this year had a smaller harvest.  I just hope that we have a calm fall so that the bees can buildup and get ready for winter.

A poem On Bees

"Bees fly,
They fly and die and try and try,
To satisfy there queen.
For she is all they care about,
She's what they live for, fly for, die for.
And then when winter comes around once again they die for her,
But this time they don't fly.
This time they squeeze so tight into a ball all day and night,
And who is in the middle?
There queen.
So like I said they live and die, the fly and squeeze and live there life.
Would I could I be a bee? Would I could I live and die, squeeze and fly all for the
Queen?
A bee could.
A bee would."
-Colors

Angry Bees or Lazy Beekeeper?

I will let you be the judge on that.  Last year I was certain that by smoking my bees less that I was not disrupting the hive as much and that by not being so intrusive that they were happier and less aggressive.

I have decided that is NOT the fact.  I had two hives last year (Carniolans) that I would RARELY if ever smoke.  Even when I stole honey from them I would simply brush them off and be on my way.  Sure, I would have headbutting and a few angry bees but no direct attacks (I will explain that later) or viciousness.

This last time out to the farm hives I packed my smoker and bundled up ready for an all out war.  I was convinced that I had the angriest hives in the west!  Let me explain why.  I have never seen a honeybee directly attack me without a warning.  Usually the warning consists of Angy buzzing around the bee keepers head or head butting.  Continual bouncing into the bee keepers veil and hat.  This year I have been stung twice by a vicious little bee that gave no warning and headed directly for my hand or arm slamming his stinger into anything that would take hold.  (I have not been stung through a glove before but if they are mad enough they can!) The viciousness therein is best described by what I lovingly call "Bum Bouncing".  The bee bounces his little rump around until the BARB TIPPED VENOM PRODUCING WEAPON OF MINI-DESTRUCTION grabs and holds.  When I saw this I couldn't believe my eyes!  They were on the war path and I was the target.  I have to admit that I was almost in a panic but mostly very upset that I had a few hives from the devil himself.

Well I was not going to chance this again so with sweats on over my slacks and a nice pair of Gloves and my smoker BOOMING with smoke with a small campfire going on inside I went for the hive. 

It is amazing what smoke will do!  They were Calm, gentle and ignored us entirely!  I still prefer not to smoke but I think I will have to from here on with my ungentle giants.  The name I gave one of them really fits - BRUNHILDA 

So here it is mid JUNE and I have just barely added the first medium honey super.  That is exciting but it seems like a slower year.  I just looked back at a few older blogs and it appears that we are still on schedule for a package of new bees.  But the hive in the backyard should be exploding and it is not.

I lost my queen and just recently placed a swarm cell in the hive to see if a new queen will take over.

Spliting the hive

A few weeks ago we split the hive in the back yard so know we have two little hives back there! We are still looking for a queen but other then that they are doing great! The first hive we have out there is are brand new beekeeper who comes out every once-and-a-while but the BRAND NEW HIVE dose not belong to anyone yet! 
   Mr. Beekeeper keeps getting stung there is a hole in his glove so that makes it even easier to get stung he has gotten stung 3 or 4 times know better not make those bees mad ;)
   Happy bee keeping!

Shake Shake Shake Senora

So, the Powdered Sugar Shake went awesome! It was quite a bit of work but I learned that it works 100 times better on individual frames rather than just shaking it between them or shaking it on top and letting it fall through. I did each hive 2-3 times and would have done more but it got too cold. I did Brunhilda and Reina but I did not do it to Carmody. This was Carmody's first year and I was only worried about my older hives.

WINTER - ah, the time I stress the most. It is hard to go into winter not knowing if the colony will survive because this is when you should be placing your order for a replacement. Alas, we get to wait until March or so to know. I am worried that they did not build up their stores in the fall since it got cold quickly and stayed that way for too long. I think they will do ok, they seemed to have at least 60+ pounds and I really attacked the mites this year.

WIND - We had about 104 MPH wind this last week and it was INTENSE. It blew one of my hives a little off the bottom board!! That is not too surprising because it has not been sealed by the bees...but still!!! crazy.

Bundle up and brace for a cold one!

Fall Totals and the End of a Season

As the season comes to an end I thought I would post our harvest totals and update some information on our little bee yard. We had a very good year and all of our Hives did amazing. I wish I knew exactly how much honey each hive did but for a small backyard beekeeper it is just easier to total how much honey we produced for the season. We only harvested twice early and a late fall, here are the numbers compared to last year:The chart is in gallons of honey. So for 2011 we had a very successful year. This is the first year where we had all three hives up and running with mostly comb from last year.

-Brunhilda is from a nuc and her first year was 2010 she had a great year for 2011
-Reina is from a nuc also from 2010 and was my strongest hive! She was 7 supers tall
-Carmody is in our backyard and 2011 was year one and she produced 3 supers of honey

I cannot figure out what happened but my strongest hive for 2010 died off in the early winter and the weakest hive last fall was Reina. She was my biggest hive and out preformed any hive I had. I think it might have been because of mites but we will have to see.



Time to kick out the drones!

Sometimes it is fun to watch a little bee drag out a gigantic drone and kick him out of the hive into the cold grass where he will starve and die. The drones are lazy and only consume honey so they have to be kicked out for the winter.

My screened bottom boards should get here today. I will have to do a powder sugar shake and let you know how it goes.

Honey for me, Honey for you! Let's eat honey in my big brown shoe!

We have had a wonderful year and I fear that our extraction efforts are not quite over. With our last extraction adventure we harvested another 11 gallons. (Some beeks like to measure in pounds but I like it in gallons because one gallon of honey weighs between 11.63 pounds and 12.05 pounds) Reina still has a medium super that I am waiting for her to cap and Brunhilda has a medium as well that needs to be capped. This is the season of waiting for those girls to get off of their little stingers and cap the frames so I can kindly steal them. It sounds evil but I always make sure they have enough for the winter.

So for the year we have harvested 18 gallons or about 209 pounds. I still have one hive to check. Carmody (the hive in our back yard) has been working on capping a shallow super so hopefully that is done and I can get them ready for winter. I always get nervous during the fall becuase you have to make sure the bees are ready for the big freeze.

Stupid Mistakes from the beginner

I am half tempted to rename my blog "Things I have learned the Hard Way" or "Stupid mistakes from the Beginner Beekeeper" or maybe "What not to do when keeping bees". We extracted several frames two weeks ago and I just put the frames in the garage to get them out of the way. I went in this morning to get some equipment and I saw something moving under the comb. Here is what I saw:


It was moving quickly from cell to cell but behind the comb. Whenever I would turn the frame towards the light it would take off trying to get away. I knew what it was instantly and thought that I was doomed. I checked each frame that I had in the garage and some were untouched and some were quite heavily damaged. I should county my blessings here because had I not checked them the damage could have been devastational!! To my surprise I only found four of these little guys:




I really was depressed and did not know what to do. My wife suggested freezing them but I was not sure that would destroy the eggs. I did a little research and found a very helpful formula.

Here is the formula:Freeze your frames 4.5 hours at 20 degrees F, 3 hours at 10 degrees F, 2 hours at 5 degrees F. Measure your freezer temp and decide how long you need to kill them. Freezing the frames will kill all stages of the moth.

I thought this would be an appropriate time to introduce my new favorite beekeeping tool.I can't wait to pick one of these up get it home and put it in the freezer and freeze each frame and be done with my new frenemy the wax worm! Oh and a note to self - listen to your wife.

Time to spin those frames once again!!

We were able to pull 21 Medium frames and 3 shallow frames off of the hives this year. We still have one hive that is a little behind becuase we started them this year but they will also have some to extract. So the calculation so far is from these frames we have 7 gallons of honey! 7! That still seems like quite a bit especially when you see the thick yellow gold collect on the sides of the extractor and it feels like it will be forever to make it to the bottom and to the filter.

I took a look at last years numbers. We did not extract until about the middle of August so it is really hard to compare. I think that this year will be a better year for them if the weather keeps up. Last year we had about two whole supers of uncapped honey. That was fine becuase I fed it to them this year in the spring and I have not fed them ANY SUGAR WATER for 2011 which is very nice. I will try harder to keep track of the total honey extracted for the year and then compare it to last year.

are they ready?

So we took a trip out their and i found somethings out...

My hive is 7 box's hi about as tall as dad it has 2 deeps 4 mediums and 1 shallow wow! Dad's hive is 5 box's hi it has 2 deeps and 3 shallows!

bees are cool! we put another medium on dads.

And now for the question...

when can we bring honey home to exstract?... This week !!!!!!!!! yea!