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!