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!

Busy is an understatement!

Last week we added a super to Carmady's hive. Carmady is the name we selected for our new package at the house. So she is now at two full deeps both for the brood chamber. They are taking off slower than I would like but it is still progess.

Reina - I have been watching Reina very closely because I thought she had swarmed on me. I don't really know if that is the case because there are tons of bees and they are doing very well. She has two supers full of honey (mediums) and I went through and checkerboarded her again. I did this about two weeks ago but it needed to be done again. The idea is that you focus on the super directly above the top brood chamber. What you do is take it and put a frame of honey and then and empty frame and then a honey frame and continue in that fashion. Then on the super on top of that you do the opposite, empty frame and then honey and so on. Basically it tricks the bees into thinking they are not strong enough to swarm. I will let you know if it works. Since they are a pretty strong hive and things are going well.

Brunhilda - who was the strongest hive going into winter is now the weaker of my two colonies that survived. She is doing well and has about a super full of Honey ready to go. I am afraid that I am going to harvest sooner than expected.

At this point (after last year) I would almost say a slightly weaker but healthy hive seems to be the best for over wintering.

If you build it they will come!

My good friend dropped off my package of bees this morning. I have decided to keep a hive at the house and let my 10 year old son claim them as his own. He was not willing to install the bees into the hive so I did that with my Assistant (daughter) and things went quite smoothly. Probably one of the hardest things (for me at least) is waiting until the early evening to hive them. I will add photos and more later but I wanted to at least get this post started so the correct date was shown.




Here we see the newest beekeeper with his package. We kept them in the garage and he fed them every 2 hours or so by spraying sugar water on them until installation which would take place later this evening.





Here is the new hive in our backyard ready to go. We have not added the bees quite yet. We had frames that were already drawn with comb since we lost a hive in the early winter or late fall. We are quite sure that it was due to MITES.





Here is my seasoned assistant. She wanted to install the package by herself but I thought it would be a good idea to be there just in case. You can see we have a frame of honey from last year ready to go. We will put that in the hive and that should feed them for awhile.






Here she is spraying the package with sugar water and getting ready to "gently" shake them into the hive.






Here we are taking the sugar feeder out. This can feeds the hive until you are ready to install them. It was completely empty when we took it out and it was a bit of a struggle but we eventually got it.





Here is the queen cage. Probably should have zoomed in here for you but you can see it is just covered in BEES. I noticed how they were very calm around the queen so they were probably already accepting her as their queen. The problem is that I did not have a marshmallow at the time so I just installed her until Monday when we put the marshmallow in.





Here I am shaking the rest of the bees out. My assistant had done most of them but was getting a little nervous with all of the ones flying around. If you look closely you will see a huge pile of them.





Within minutes the bees QUICKLY moved down into the combed frames. I have never seen bees take so quickly to a hive! You can see that the piles have already dispersed! They were in and down and already exploring their new home.


We named this hive Carmady and hope she does well her first year in our backyard. There were still about 50 or so bees that did not make it into the hive so we will have to watch them and see if they make it in. The heavy rainfall has not helped in this regard.

Extra Early Spring Check

I checked the bee yard today and was pleasantly surprised that they were flying about and checking things out. I decided to get closer and see if I could tell what they were doing and this is what I saw... I was very excited to see that both hives were out gathering pollen. I called my dad to see what in the world would be in bloom this early and he said "NOT MUCH". I even went to the nursery next door and asked them about pesticides and what things they had blooming and the manager said nothing. The trees and flowers outside are bare. So, I don't know where they are scavenging but it must be near by.

I just found out my Friends hive has mites. I wish I knew better how this happens. He suggested that maybe this is what our family hive had this year and maybe what killed them off. That could be true. Maybe I can dig a little deeper in the dead hive.

Happy Early Spring!!!

Our First Loss

As reported earlier we have our first dead hive. I did not do a proper fall inspection as I should have beucase I may have been able to find the problem. At first I was thinking it was FOULBROOD!!! yikes! A foulbrood spore can last for 70 years!!Foulbrood is a bad bee disease and when or if you get it you have to burn your frames and scorch the hive to kill it. I called up an inspector I know from a friend and he told me a few things to check for. I did what he said but I did not see any sings of foulbrood.

HOW DID THEY DIE?

I really wish I could answer that question... the only thing I can come up with is a failing queen. She wasn't a very old queen but she was an emergency queen. I lost my queen in year one and had to trick my bees into making a new one. They did and she did great but did not last long.

I am going to get another package of bees. I found a site selling them for $66 or so. It is only 2 pounds of bees but that should double in a week. If I give them all the old comb with some pollen and honey they should take off like crazy!! It is sad to have your hive die but Brunhilda and Reina are going strong. I checked them on the last warmest day (44 degrees or so) and they had plenty of food and were doing well.

The end of winter causes a beekeeper the most stress becuase you never know if you hive is going to make it and you have to place your orders for bees before February.

Any bees???

We just found out the other day the family hive is dead :( we will have to find out what the problem is.

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!