Come and Get it

As the weather starts to cool off I started to feed my hives today. I went out early this morning to feed them. I think something is wrong with the family hive because I continue to see dead bees gathered at the entrance with a few larvae. I don't know what is going on but they need an intense formal inspection SOON.

I am going to try to not feed them too much because I have alread fed them 15 frames of honey that was not capped. Also we have had a VERY warm October so far. I still need to post our final honey harvest numbers and I will write after I inspect the family hive.

Fall Production and Season Finale

We have a had a very hot Fall this year and the bees continue to find nectar somewhere. I took another 10 full frames of honey that we will extract but I also took another 2 full supers that are full of honey but uncapped. I have never gone into a season ending with larger hives and so much unacpped honey.

I could extract it and feed it back to them but I have a friend that did this last year and it did not work out so well. I could also try feeding it back to them from the frame which would induce robbing and the hornets would find it so I really don't know what would be best. I think I will throw all of the uncapped honey into a nuc and then place it close to the hive. I will have to keep track of the dead bees because if the robbing is too intense then it will not be worth it.

I am slightly concerned about getting the hives ready for winter. I think winter is the most stressful time of the year for bee keepers. You want to do everything you can to ensure that they will make it through the winter.

I will keep things updated as far as the re-feeding and the robbing goes.

Honey Season Finale

As the season comes to a close I feel grateful for how well the bees did this year. It was two of the hives first year so to get any honey from them is quite exciting. I think that when it is a nuc you can expect to get honey your first year but with a package of bees you may not expect to get as much. The only problem now is that we have many frames of honey that the bees have not quite capped yet. I will have to do some major rearanging before the fall ends so that we can make sure that the hives are not TOO TALL.
This is a photo of the beehive installed at the White House. Michelle Obama wanted it for her organic garden. You can see that it was successful due to how high it is however I believe they made a mistake putting it on such a high stand. Notice the racheting straps they had to use to keep it secure. I would love to see them trying to work the hive with a ladder. I think many beekeepers would agree that the stand is just too tall.


Our total from the hives for 2010 was 16 gallons. Most beekeepers report their harvest in pounds so if you need that it should be around 192 Lbs give or take a few. And not including what was spilled down the drain or what leaked on the floor or what the beekeeper ate whilst harvesting. MMMMMM COMB!!!

That is about 5.3 gallons per hive. That is probably just around normal with the crazy super wet spring we had. It was so wet that the bees could not get out and work the fruit trees! I am not complaining, last year we had 2.5 gallons and this year we have 16!!!

Next Step = get ready for winter!

Mistakes from the beekeeper

Have you ever heard of an Alarm Pheromone? Well, it exists and it closely resembles the smell of Banana. For breakfast I had a smoothie which contained banana. This may sound foolish but I actually had a goal to never be stung as a bee keeper. That is probably just like a truck driver having a goal that his truck will never experience a flat tire or a milk man never spilling milk. Well, today it happened! My record was smashed! OUCH! So I thought it would be nice to list my mistakes so that I can learn better what I did wrong.


In A Hurry = Bad Idea #1
I made the family hive quite upset today. Have you ever heard of an Angry BEE?

Well, they were very upset. I probably had 200 out of the hive covering me and my gloves and my arms and just MAD MAD MAD. I don't really blame them though because they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. PROTECTING THE HIVE. And my banana breath did not help. I was going a little faster than I should and BAM!! I got it right in my thumb. One of them stung me right through my glove. It hurt and itched but not as bad as I thought.





SLACKS = Bad Idea #2
I went to the hives right from work and I was in my work clothes. Slacks are not good for bees if they wanted they could easily sting right through them. I will remember to bring a change of clothes next time.



Exposing your legs = Bad Idea #3
I have really never had to tuck in my pants into my socks. I did the very first time I hived a package of bees but I have never worried about it. I actually had one get up my pant leg and sting me in my calf. That was not fun. So I had to walk back to the car and tuck in my pants. The sting continued to bother me the entire time I was out there and I was ready to be done.



This is a picture of a Stinger.
You can see the barb connected to the venom sac. The venom sac has a muscle attached to it that continues to pulsate and pump venom into you after the bee has stung you. Nice isn't it? That is why when you get stung by a bee that you need to scrape the stinger off instead of pulling it out or hitting it.

I will mention a few things I am grateful for even with the stinging.

-Not allergic to bee stings. I have never really known but I know now that I am not.
-All three hives still doing very well.
-Honey Harvest is almost to an end and we can get the hives ready for winter.
-learning. Beekeeping is a continual learning experience. And I have more to learn.

Do you like sticky feet?

I would like to pass on this little bit of information. It does not matter where you harvest your honey everything will get sticky - even your feet.



Everything you touch, the floor, the handles, the sink, the floor, the table, the knife, the floor, parts of the ceiling, the grass, the hose, kids, wife, watch, hands, forehead, hair, you name it... especially the floor.








I found a picture that helps explain the way your loving wife will feel if you intentionally turn her kitchen into what they loving call the "Honey House".

The honey house stores your extractor, the frames needing extraction, wax cappings and sticky sticky honey. I failed to mention bees. We had 3 supers and only 2 bees. They were so stuffed with honey that they could barely move. I was going to kill them but I was instructed by the wife to just release them outside.

It was a slow going process until we cleaned the filter. We are up around 8 1/2 gallons. That is about 102 Lbs already harvested. I would be willing to guess that we are not quite half way done but Monday will tell. We still have to get more supers off the hives. Sticky feet here we come!

out at the hives

Hello i am Mister Bee Keepers assistant I finely got a chance to go out to the bees yea!!! But as I was their I was just working with them and I heard a very close buzzing by my ear but I thought nothing of it then I looked down in my suite well I saw a bee in my suite that was pretty scary course that had never happened before and Mister Bee keeper smashed it in side my suite WOW then when we got home we found the Bees stinger in my shirt stuck their but it had not got me YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why should you eat honey?

Well, I will tell you. There are some amazing things about honey that many people are not aware of.
Did you know that Honey (if stored properly) will never spoil? It may harden and cyrstalize but all you have to do is warm it up and it will be good to go. They have found honey in some of the tombs in Egypt and it was still good!
Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances to sustain life including water. Here are a few more amazing things about HONEY!



1. Honey is the only non man-made sweetener which also is considered to have healing effects.

2. Honey has a pH level around 3-4 and consists of roughly 18% water. Because of this honey is a very stable substance and can last hundreds of years if properly stored.

3. Honey can reduce fat deposits found in our cardiovascular system.

4. Honey will not ferment in your stomach like refined table sugar or sucrose does. Because of this it does not subject you to a risk of bacterial infection.

5. Honey is the simplest possible molecular form of sugar, which cannot be broken down any further. This allows it to travel directly from the small intestine to the blood stream while not causing any problems to the digestive system like sucrose.

6. Honey is a top choice as fuel for burning body fat during sleep since it has an equal ratio of fructose to glucose.

7. Honey is the best substance to use to treat burns. Honey can effectively subdue pain while quickly healing a wound without scarring.

8. Vitamins as well as antioxidants are found in honey. One special antioxidant known as ‘pinocembrin’ is found only in honey.

9. Honey is known to be a very effective and safe solution to children’s coughs, even more so than over-the-counter medicines.

10. Some recent studies have shown that athletes who consumed honey before and after physical activity have recovered faster than those athletes who did not consume any honey at all.

Given your new found knowledge of honey, now hopefully you can use it’s health benefits to your advantage. Keep in mind, the more natural the honey, the better. The honey found at your local fast-food chain is not going to give you the same health benefits as fresh natural honey straight from the bees nest. Start adding small amounts of natural honey to your meals to enjoy the health benefits it can offer you.

1-10 by: Matt Boraz

Sneaky Sneaky

I think those bees underestimated my sneakiness.... [insert evil laugh here]
I don't know how many of you have seen Mr. Deeds but it reminds me of this:
(click on play)





We ventured out into the great farmland of West Layton once again to get more of the golden goodness. They have been doing quite well bless their little bee hearts! I am surprised how much time it takes to get a super off. I planned for about an hour to get at least two or three supers off and we only were able to pull about 14 frames or so.



Here is a before picutre that I took back in the spring. This is just after the nucs were installed into the hives. My assistant has her hand on her hive.




And here is an after photo. This photo really shows how well the hives did this season. For those of you with less than a green thumb. That is wheat in the backgound. It starts off a lush green and then when it is ready to harvest it is tall and yellow. It has already been harvested in the After Photo. I think I would purchase nucs again. They seem to do really well for their first season. Installing them with 5 frames of drawn comb really gave them a jumpstart. We could have done slightly better with two really strong nucs but I think we did quite well. The nucs had to work slightly harder than the family hive because they had to comb most of their frames being that they were all new. Next year will be crazy becuase we will have many frames all combed out and ready to go. It takes quite a bit of nectar to make wax. I will keep you posted on how much honey we get when we harvest it.

Daffy Duck and the Golden Goodness

I have to admit I felt a little like Daffy Duck the other day when he said, "It's mine, you understand? Mine! All mine!" You may or may not recall the famous cartoon called ALI BABA so I will post it if you need a refresher...







Here is The Queen uncapper doing her best. You have to watch those fingers and hold the knife just right. After the bees fill the cells with honey they cap the cells with a thin layer of wax called capping's. These capping's need to be removed before extraction. Both sides of each frame are uncapped with a hot knife and then added to the extractor while we continue to control our saliva glands.





The frames are added to the extractor and then the spinning begins. My arm actually started to hurt so eventually we are going to want a larger extractor. I think a 6 frame extractor would be quite nice.





We had a small glass brownie dish to catch all of the capping's. Here you can see a beautiful frame of fresh honey ready to extracted. Things tend to get quite sticky around harvest day. But it is all worth it!





Here is the honey team. (not pictured was my main assistant who took the photos) Working together really saved time. When extracting you want your "honey house" to be hot so the honey runs out of the frames better. My son was quite hot so he removed his shirt while he was assisting us. He would hold the frames while they waited to be extracted.





I wanted to throw this picture in because it gives you an idea of just how heavy the frames are. Mr. Frame Holder here is making a face because he was plum tuckered out of holding and balancing the frames before they were placed in the extractor. I just love his worried expression. He was so tired and was worried that he would drop one of the frames and ruin them.





Aromatic waves of fresh honey fill the room while our work continues. Just seeing the honey run from the extractor into the filter made me drool. You can see the honey running from the extractor into the filter here. The honey is then stored in a 5 gallon bucket.


It was good hard work but well worth the payoff! The bees worked hard to collect all of this honey and we should be grateful for their efforts. Out of the one super we collected 2.5 gallons. We probably have 3-4 more supers to go but they are not all the same size so I will keep a running total for our 2010 season.

STOP! THIEF!

The girls have sure been busy. Becuase of this the family hive has grown to quite the little tower. They were quite desperate for more room but I did not want it to topple over becuase it is starting to resemble the leaning tower of pisa so I decided I would "steal" some honey today.


This is a fume board. It has felt on one side and a metal cover on the other side. It fits on top of a standard hive. The idea is that you set it out in the sun for a few minutes and let it heat up. Then you spray some bee quick on it hitting the edges and making sure you do a zig zag pattern and then you place it on the hive.



While you are sweating to death and counting in your head to 5 min or so you try to contain your excitement while the bees remove themselves into a lower super. It actually worked quite well but I don't know if I waited long enough. There were still about 10-15 bees down in the lower end of the super and I believe they may have hitchhiked home with me. I thought that it worked so well that I would do it again and get a second super off the hive. Well, that is when the greed got to me becuase I forgot that I had an upper entrance. That means the bees had an alternate escape route. When I put the fume board back on the next super down instead of moving down the hive to the main entrance they started piling out this upper entrance. And then they started to congregate on the box. It looked something like this:
but a whole box or two higher. They were on the box that I wanted to take home and even after gently brushing them they were not interested in leaving. I decided it was not worth it at this point and decided that I would let them be. I started hearing the LOUDEST HUM EVER. Every single bee was humming in unison. Once I started putting the hive back together they started flapping their wings in an effort to ventilate it. I don't blame them. I think if I had my assistant with me we could have got it.

Here is a small update on the hives.

Tatiana - She has currently filled the newest shallow I gave her but it still needs capping. I probably could have taken 6 frames or so because they were 100% capped. I gave them a new shallow.

Brunhilda - She is doing very well. She has 3 frames in the top shallow that were not combed and 2 frames in the lower shallow that were not combed. She may need a super in a week or so depending on the weather.

Reina - She is also doing quite well. She only has about 3.5 frames that are not combed. She could have had a super today but I will give her another week or so. Her hive seemed quite strong as she had many bees coming and going. She has done excellent for her first year!

Typically if you start with nothing a new hive may or may not produce honey that you can "TAKE" in the first year but I think we will probably take honey from all three hives this year!

To smoke or NOT to smoke, that is the question

Personally I have never smoked. It causes lung cancer and just smells horrid. However I have smoked my girls now and again. I am trying not to smoke them every time I take a peek. Today when I went out I wanted to disrupt them as little as possible. I don't really know how much it disrupts them, does it set them back a week? A few days? Who knows for sure but I know that it causes them to gorge themselves on honey and then they have to put it all back. Surprisingly I was not attacked too much. I only had one headbutting experience and she was not around very long. Some beekeepers have started using liquid smoke. The idea is that it is easier on the bees and your spray bottle never goes out. I might try this just so I have a comparison.

Here is a photo of the bees and something they love to do. This is a picture of the outer cover. They just love working the top. It doesn't ever turn into much. The outer two rectangles are propolis.




Here is a good photo of how they are working the frames. You will notice how the right five frames are still empty. Usually they work the middle and go out but in this hive it looks like they prefer the left.


They all seemed to be working a little slower this week and last week. I don't think I will have to put on any more supers for at least one more week or so. I will probably check them again in a week to see if they need anything.

It is time to start getting ready for the big harvest. I purchased a 400 micron filter that fits in a 5 gallon bucket. It is reusable and should really help a ton.

The Bee Yard

I went out steal a frame of eggs and brood today to give to my friends hive. He was there to help because some of the supers are very heavy and many are sealed together. I have been worried about a honey bound hive because it happened last year and I have been anxious to check the lower deep of the family hive.


The one on the left is Tatiana the family hive. The one in the middle is Reina(my assistant's hive) and the one to the right is Brunhilda.

We pulled two frames of larvae and eggs out of Tatiana and put them in a nuc. We must have upset her pretty good because bees were everywhere! They were not honey bound and I gave them two empty frames so they can comb them and that will give them more room. By taking two frames out hopefully it will slow her down to the point where I don't have to worry about her swarming.



Here is a close up of Tatiana's hive. She is a booming hive with great activity. She was not as busy this week because she was not ready for another super. I think the nectar flow has slowed compared to last week. Maybe we need some rain to get things going again.

I gave a shallow to Brunhilda because she was ready. I will probably go out in a week or so to see how they are coming along.

7/10/2010 Just Plain Busy

I had some time to run out to the bee yard once again to check on their activity. I was prepared this time with 2 more supers. A med and a shallow just in case. This is the VERY first thing I look for. Pollen! If the bees are bringing in pollen it means you probably have a laying queen. Pollen is needed for the larva.

I went to take photos this time but left the card at home so I have nothing cool to show you but the family hive was ready for a shallow. It was a little early I admit but they only had 4 frames to go so I will have to watch them closely.

Brunhilda is about 6 frames away. I could throw one on as early as Wednesday but I may wait till Friday.

Reina (Meg's hive) was ready for her first Honey super. We gave her a Med and hopefully she will really start to take off. I will try to get some good photos of the bee yard and some activity from the field.

How many bees are in a typical hive?

I thought I would use this blog to help educate others and pass on things I have learned. I also hope to generate an interest in bees because they have started to decline over the past few years and we need more bee keepers! This is one of those questions that I frequently get or have gotten in the past. Honestly it is a difficult question to answer. For a typical hive it depends on a few factors such as diseases, if it is Fall, Spring or Summer. They are also impossible to count. I asked them to hold still once and they didn't listen. It goes back to that old adage that bees are not truly domesticated. If they like what we provide they will use it. If not they will find somewhere else to live.



When you purchase a package of bees you typically get 9,000 to 11,000 bees or so for a 3 lbs or 4 lbs package. It is a great way to start because you learn a great deal from starting from a package. A hive during the summer honey flow will have as many as 50,000 to 80,000 bees. Remember that a good laying queen will lay 2000 eggs a day and a hive grows quite quickly.

Why Carniolans?

Well, I will tell you. For many it is a preference. I have a good friend who prefers Italians. If I had it my way it would be British but we are not talking accents we are talking bees. I created a helpful little chart that might help you decide which strain of bee is right for you. I also attended a small bee class and the bee keeper in charge preferred Buckfast. It is all up to you and what you are trying to accomplish. We currently have 2 Carniolan and 1 Italian.



I am not going to say that Carniolans are the best but they seem to work good for me. I also believe that they overwinter very well. I am dying to try a Russian queen out. Maybe she can teach us that famous Russian Cossack Dance!

Honey Already???

7/3/2010 I finally had some time to really dig down deep and check on Regina. I was going to wait but it is a good thing I didn't. The weather has been decent and they have been working quite hard. I noticed that the honey super I just placed was COMPLETELY full! It was even capped. I am now trying to decide if I should harvest it or just leave it on. I gave her another super but it had all new frames so they will have to comb it and get it ready. I put the new super on top and probably should have put it in the middle.

Brunhilda has also been very busy. She is about 3.5 frames away of being full so I added a super for her as well. She has a very strong colony and should do quite well in the next 2 months.

Reina is getting there but probably needs a week or two before she is ready for a honey super. This is my assistant's hive and for some reason it has been slower from the beginning. We will have to keep a close eye on her to see if she catches up. I think the nuc she came from was slightly weaker than Brunhilda.

All three hives were VERY gentle. I had little to no head butting and they were too busy to follow me to the car. I guess they did not want to come home with me for ice cream. Oh Well.