A Hobbyist's Beekeeping Adventures

Honey Harvest

2008-04-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to harvesting everything that had been stored up from all of 2007. The italian hive hadn't drawn out quite what I expected from their new super (added to the bottom, just above the brood chamber) so I only took two supers from it. However, at the russian hive, I was able to take three supers of solidly capped honey. While over there, I managed to get a few decent pictures, ranging from the entrance activity to the bees boiling up following three supers having been removed. There were two bees wrestling at the entrance, probably a guard repelling an intruder. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of it, but I'd say the pictures were decent nevertheless.

Notice the single honey bee flying back to the entrance, carrying a load of pollen.

This is the entrance after two supers have been removed. The bees are gradually being repelled and flooding out the entrance.

This is the entrance following all supers having been removed. It's not so much that there were too many bees for the space allowed, but they were being rushed out a bit quickly. I might have used a little too much bee quick.

The last interesting photo, a close up of the bees boiling between the top bars after all the excess supers have been removed. One interesting note is that the center of brood, a box below that, actually corresponds roughly to where the most bees are. That hive's always been a tad odd with how it draws comb.

After driving all the three supers back home, pulling two off of the italian hive, and having them all stacked in the kitchen, the real work began. As usual, it's the relatively annoying process of uncapping each side of the frame, dropping it into the extractor, pouring what piles up after a few frames into the bottling bucket, and repeating. Of course, everything gets sticky and it becomes difficult to maintain a grip on anything. Anyways, with some frustration, the gallons began to just pour out. I actually ran out of lids initially, and then jars, and ended up making a trip to albertson's to pick up two packs of quart jars, with each back having a storage capacity of 3 gallons. All in all, it proved to probably be about a 12 hour process from initial cleaning, to removing the supers, extracting, replacing and cleaning up. Truth be told, I still haven't cleaned out the extractor; giving the bees a bit of a chance to reclaim the spillage first. Of course, that's just a good excuse for being lazy.

After all was said and done, I put three of the extracted supers back onto the russian hive and in the name of laziness, skipped the jacket and smoker, just popping the top off, and placing the supers on one-by-one. I suppose they really are more docile than I give them credit for. A few minutes after that was done, and after I had walked the 20 yards or so back to the driveway, following standing around for several minutes, a bee actually fell out from my pant leg. Hadn't quite expected that one. Oh yeah, I was too lazy for socks as well.

Photographic Evidence!

2008-04-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

As I had noted before, there seems to be a pair of Carnals which hang out around my hives, and snatch bees as they pass by. Today had been raining, so I figured there wouldn't bee too much activity in the apiary, allowing me to get close for a photo without having to bother with the usual veil. (A sting to the scalp is quite painful...) I heard the cardnal peep and looked to see it perched in the lime tree. It hopped and glided over to about 9 feet from the nuc, hopped its way through the mostly-dead bleeding hearts vine, and stopped less than a foot from the entrance to the Italian hive.

It paused there for a few seconds, before taking off and with a steep swoop upwards and back, it grabbed a honey bee just as it was either leaving or coming back to the hive. I figure any impact they'd make on the hive would be minimal, so why stop 'em? If anything, it's interesting to watch. Also, for the sake of comparison, I took a photo from the corner of the hive entrance, like I used to do when I first got it.

April 13, 2008

Early July, 2005

The bees seem to now be able to more effectively clean the entrance, due to a higher population. I even shot a video on August 28, 2005...and as of today, have uploaded it. By this time, they had grown enough to washboard a fair bit, but this is really better than any text-based description I can give it.

Overgrown

2008-04-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

It seems some new plant...well, not really new, more like 2-years-without-me-noticing, has managed to grow large enough to block out the sun from a vine which I had used to hide the hives. In addition, this has resulted in the nuc having a clear flight path without having to ascend first. I got a bee caught in my hair just walking out there earlier today.

That bleeding heart vine seems to have slowed it's growth since the air conditioning no longer drains on it. It was really there mostly to prevent street view of the hives, and to push the bees to fly up above anyone's head. I suppose it might be time to get something new in there, or do some trimming.

Earlier today, there were two Cardnals, a male and female, hanging around the azalia bushes near the hives. Every couple of seconds, they would dart into the flight path of the bees, land down in the leaves, and snap one of the insects between their beaks. Kinda interesting how a hive can attract something interesting to look at. Normally, they would be farther north by this time of year, but hey, with a year-round buffet, who would leave?

More Washboarding

2008-04-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

The super I added to the Italian hive came from the garage, from a hive which had previous died, and been left to sit out in the elements for a while. I really should have taken a photo of it. It had wax moth casings in it, various bugs that had been around the garage and just dirt covering the formerly white paint. As usual, I scraped out some of the loose casings, repaired a couple frames, and then just bottom-supered it onto the hive. I had expected them to clean it off, but I find it rather surprising that before Monday was even out, the box was completely undecernible from the others. The hive is large enough to be wash boarding to that large extent. Also, there was a large flurry of activity, which I'm guessing has to do with the suddenly available space in the hive. With any luck, I should hopefully be harvesting soon.

Hoppin' back on the horse

2008-04-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

Well, after months and months of not doing anything, I've actually, by some cause, checked on the bees today. It's amazing. I've never medicated due to it either being the wrong time of year (can't medicate with supers for harvesting on the hives) or just being too lazy, and yet, the hives are still very populous. So, how about a chain of events?

I woke up just after 6am...well, "woke up" isn't the apt term. It was more along the lines of "stopped trying to sleep." But, moving on, I found my jacket and gloves sitting by the garage stairs, veil in some chair in the garage, hive tool completely rusted under a pile of leaves out front, and the smoker in the back behind the old, broken lawn mower. It's surprising how much things can scatter about when you just ignore them for a year. There was even still fuel in the smoker, still somewhat wet with pine oils released in the last fire. I cleaned off the hive tool, shook out my jacket, and removed a spider or two before my veil...then treid to light the smoker...and tried again, and again. It seems that after a year without common use, I had somewhat lost my touch for lighting a smoker and keeping it lit. It's really something to make the early mistakes all over again, like smothering the fire or burning it too hot.

Apparently, I had lost two screws on the right side of the bellows of my smoker, and had forgotten I had made a quick repair job with a screw I randomly found. Probably should make a little more complete repair sometime...

The "Italian hive", which by now is probably a mix of whatever's local, actually had three SLAM FULL supers of honey on it, and a very large brood nest. They were still plenty nice to work, their disposition not much changed despite over a year of neglect. The frames also weren't as stuck together as I thought they'd be, and burr comb was still minimal. Gotta love a Langstroth. Put simply, that hive is heavy and practically dripping with honey for harvest, which I might do over the next week or two. Haven't decided when I feel like spending 8 hours of effort to harvest the crop.

Over at the other apiary, the Russian hive is all that remains.

This has left the apiary with a bit of an empty feel to it...

Oh well, at least every single one of those supers on the Russian hive was every bit as full as the Italian supers. These bees were a tad more flighty, but they've always been like that...and a bit noisy as well. For once though, they actually didn't all run out the front and cover the brood box. I suppose I'm being more conservative with the smoke, which is probably best. The broodnest was a bit smaller than the italian one, but I think that's just how the Russian bees tend to be. Also, I had broken a frame some time ago, and that gap had been completely filled with drone comb, which after what seems like a very short use for brood rearing, has been used primarily for honey storage. Always fun to grab a snack while working. So, after cutting that out, and sliding in a new frame with foundation, I closed it up, and just smashed it into a ziplock container. It's a bit thin, so probably has a lot of cabbage palm in it. But, there was also a greenish tint to it in some of the comb, so there may be brazilian pepper as well. More accurately, it's a blend of whatever's been out there over the last year.

Well, there's a thought...selling honey not as clover or brazilian pepper, but as "2007 Honey." All the flavor of an annual trip around the sun!

Almost Sepember already?

2007-08-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

This year has certainly flown by faster than I ever expected. I've already gotten my call for needing to get my annual inspection from the state. I can't say I've been looking forward to it, as I hadn't checked my hive at the house since February, until yesterday, that is.

It seems of my three remaining colonies, the Italian one has faired through thick and thin, with the best outcome. The two supers that have been on all year are completely packed with honey; 100% capped. The colony has certainly become quite populous, and I added another super from one of my no-longer existent colonies. At least that surviving comb will get some use.

I still need to get around to repairing that top bar hive and setting it up for next year. To think, I had plans of setting it up this year. Gotta love procrastination, I suppose. I'm still debating if I am to try to build-up back to my old five or six colonies, especially following the excessive neglect of this year.

Been away for a while...

2007-04-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I've done it again. I've gone another long period of time without posting anything. I actually haven't checked any of my hives since about a week after the last post. Sorta been busy or distracted with other things.

About a week after the last post, I harvested honey from the new hive. It was the day of the extraction, I had assembled all my gear and suddenly remembered, I forgot my fumigant. I normally use the "bee quick" because it's basically imitation almond extract and, that smell is preferable to the odor of rotten eggs of the "Bee Go". After a short trip to the super market to pick up a small bottle of imitation almond extract (in the hopes that would work as a substitute) I was on my way to the hive.

After a short time lighting the smoker, applying the imitation almond extract to the fume board, I walked over to the hive and began taking it apart. I figured I'd remove the top two shallows and one medium, leaving a full medium for their own use and an empty one for expansion. On the first box, the imitation almond extract worked decently well. There were a few bees left but, not bad results. The second box was ok, but, I decided to set it aside and manually brush the bees out. In the third box, the bees wouldn't budge. Overall, it was about 45 minutes spent waiting for the imitation almond extract to work, smoking the bees, brushing them and loading the three supers into the trunk.

After ariving home and brushing the bees out a second time, I began on the extraction. This would be my first chance to use my new electric uncapping knife. I found it generally easier to work than my old "cold" knife. The cappings would melt slightly, making them easier to cut. And so, after several hours of uncapping, extracting, cleaning and bottling, I ended up with just over 5 gallons of honey.

This honey was probably some of the worst quality I've ever seen. Most of it had partailly crystalized in the frames, resulting in a grainy texture and frames that weren't very easy to extract. Actually, given the foundation was wired wax, I ended up tearing apart a few frames just with cyntrifugal force alone. The crystals were continually clogging the filter, slowing how fast I could bottle the honey. In the end, the honey came out almost black or a very, very, very deep red color. This is, no doubt, due to the fact it was most likely sitting in those frames for up to two years.

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I came home and, on Tuesday, March 20, I discovered a swarm, hanging off a tree limb above the second story of my house. I figured that they were too far up for me to go at, and would probably leave in a couple of days. They stayed there for a week. I was almost convinced they had made a hive up there. I have a few photos of it and, when I get around to uploading them, I'll probably post them here.

About two days before that swarm left, another swarm appeared at roughly the same hight, 20 feet away on a different tree. This swarm was almost twice as large. It appeared to have emminated from that nuc I've had since last year. I've needed to supper most of my hives for some time. I'm sure I'm missing out on several honeyflows, and may lose a swarm or two.

I've sorta been in a "funk" lately as, I have two ABJs, still in their packaging, unread. Those three supers are still sitting in the lawn, waiting to be returned to their hive and my gear is unwashed since the harvest. I really need to get around to working the hives reguarly again.

My Week (Now up to 5 hives)

2007-02-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

Well, what a week. It has ended with me having another hive, another location, and some very dirty clothes.

Wednesday:

I received a call around 5pm from a formal funeral dirrector who had seen my newspaper article. Being in his 80s, he's had a hive on his property which had been abandoned for over 2 years. He wasn't exactly able to work them, and lacked the know how, or equipment but, offered it to me. I, of course, wouldn't hessitate to get a new hive and, set a plan to come by and see it Friday.

Friday:

After school, I got a ride straight over to his house; a small house with a large backyard, lush with grass and a wide variety of fruit trees. I could spot mangos, oranges, key limes, papya, avacados, and a few others. Seems like the perfect spot for a hive of bees. Appearantly, he's been on the same location for upwards of 50 years and, we just as glad to find someone to manage the hive, as I was to have another hive. Looking over the house, there were a few tall, red maples, having just completed their bloom and popping out with the fire-red folliage. For anyone who doesn't know, red maples are a wonderful source of early pollen given they bloom between late December and early January.

The hive was under a tree, butted up against two plank fences.

Grass had somewhat overgrown, and an old hive lay on it's side, rotting in the shade. "That hive died over a year ago. We tipped it over and sprayed given it was full of ants." he said. I dug through it, and, appearantly, they had not sprayed well enough. It was filled with fireants and the old, papery pupal casings of wax moths. They had partially burrowed into the wood, creating poc marks.

Next to the rotting hive, on a rotting wooden beam stand, a hive stood tall with, from top to bottom, two mediums, two shallows, an old, rusty queen excluder, and a deep resting upon a rotting, solid bottomboard. The boxes themselves had chipping paint and, apparantly, the mediums had slid about an inch forward given the hive was leaning forward by, at least 15 degrees. About an inch gap had been created, and, was mostly filled with hard, black propolis. Over all, they had maintained quite a bit of traffic and, I was amazed to see a hive that has been on it's own this long, doing this well. Not just the fact that it was alive but, the fact that it appeared to be thriving.

Saturday:

I had made plans to check on the bees today but, became side tracked with other things. My father was going to change a lightbulb in his bathroom and came over to show me what he found in the socket. He carried the small, tray-like covering for the light over to me. It had to be filled with at least an inch of dead bees. THERE ARE BEES IN THE HOUSE. A hive.

I ran outside and looked up to the 2nd story roof. There they were, a small mass flying out of the roof in a little pocked between the chimmney and the roof itself. A hive of bees in my house. Of course, I'm thinking they may be mine and, I'm wondering what to do about them. I quickly threw on my veil, grabbed a flashlight, and stuffed a glove in each pocket. I ascended the stairs to the attic and, carefully made my way over to the area of the roof that I thought they may be in. There were no bees in the attic but, there was a small crack. I shined a light over it, and a bee or two came out. It turns out they're in a small, issolated pocket, probably no bigger than a nuc.

I went up the ladder, and two other ladders on various levels of the roof untill I got over to the spot where the bees were flying in and out. There had to be at least 10 comming and going every second. Clearly a very busy hive. Now I'm left wondering if I should do a cut-out into my own roof, 25 feet above the ground. Worst of all, it's on a very steep edge, and there's nothing nearby to tie to. For the moment, I'll be leaving them alone untill I can think of something safe and palusible to do. One would think that a beekeeper would be well equiped to take care of a hive taking residence in his walls....that's not the case.

Sunday:

I woke up around noon, having gone to sleep at about 5am. Mostly watching television or, on my computer doing random tasks from tyring to establish a postgreSQL database to homework.

After lunch/breakfast, I assembled all my gear and a super into hte trunk of my father's car and we left for the Jackson's hives. The cinderblocks from the missing TBH were still there, still standing and undisturbed. Both of hte other hives there each had two medium suppers ontop of the usuall deep. Appearantly, I had forgotten that neither hive had a queen excluder on.

I opened the Russian hive first, as usual. They hadn't even touched the super I had added close to a month ago. Pulling that off, the medium below it was as it was a month ago, if more brood instead of honey. About 3 frames were completely filled with brood in all stages from eggs, to capping to emmerging. Going down below that, I found that not only did Iforget the queen excluder, I had also forgotten that I had broken a deep last time I opened the hive and, had not replaced it. There was the gap there but, the bees had not filled it with comb. Generally, that hive is not too strong and, given their poor comb construction, lack the ability to expand their broodnest.

Moving onto the "package hive" (I really need to come up with better names for these), I found that they had drawn out roughly 7 or 8 of the frames. They were partially filled with nectar but, over all, not as much activety as I would have expected. I took it off eaily and moved onto the medium below it. This super was in a simmilar state to the super in the Russian hive; mostly filled with honey but, having a good bit of capped brood. I pryed my hivetool between this medium and the deep brood box below it and, shoving hard, It began to come up but, stopped as it had been thuroughly attached to the box below via alot of burr comb. After a few more minutes with failed attempts at prying the stuck box, I finally gave in and twisted it, breaking the comb connections but, also irritating and otherwise harming many bees. On the plus side, the broken comb was all drone comb and gave me a chance to evaluate just how much varroa they had. I saw some pupae with between 1 and 4 varrroa mites; most having 1 or 2. Given these numbers, I'm concidering applying the ApiGuard to take care of the varroa before I start seeing more cases of DWV (deformed wing virus). Quickly going through the frames as the bees were becomming more annoyed at my presence, I found a very good brood pattern and, came to the conclution that, for the most part, everything is fine. I'll begin medicating next week.

With some irritate bees headbuting me, I closed up the hive, and went to put out the smoker and head over to the new hive of mine, unsure what effect 2 years would have on it.

After a 15 minute drive, I arrived at the issolated, dilapidated hive. With some difficulty in the 15 mile per hour wind gusts, I managed to light the smoker off of some dried pallmetto and twigs. With white, volumous clouds escaping the smoker, I donned my already sweaty gear back on, and prepared for ane xpected hour disassembling the hive.

I slide my hivetool between the outer and inner cover with relative ease. Gently prying upwards, I found the varry reason why most have abandoned inner covers in my area. A flood of ants rushed out of the crack, quickly coating the outside of the super and running up my arm. Veils were designed to keep out bees, not ants. I found just what I had expected as I pryed off a very attached inner cover. There was tons of burr comb and a thick, 1/4 inch of propolis around the edges. I smoked the bees down to retreat into their hive and scraped off the burr comb. After 5 minutes or so of scraping, I lifted the first honey-soaked frame from the box. Every frame in that box was capped bottom to top with honey.

It probably took a good 5 minutes to pry that box off, going to every corner and inserting the hive tool to pry along the topbars aswell. The hive seemed to be generally good tempered. The boxes were showing their ware as they warped under the weight of themselves when lifted. I took some time to chip the propolis off each end, somehow always managing to scratch into the rotting wood. It's amazing that hive is still standing.

Gradually, I worked my way through the 4 supers, taking care to smoke the bees and scrape off as much burrcomb and propolis as possible. The edges of hte boxes showed the most ware; having small cracks that bees were flying in and out of, or had sealed with propolis. The bees had been quite nice thusfar, not giving me a single sting. I suddenly felt something on my ankle though and thought it was a sting, I looked down and found that a colony of fire ants had apparatnly made their nest in the bottomboard of the hive. Somehow, this hive had lived with fireants in it's bottom board and pharoh ants in it's inner cover. Add in the usual effects of SHB and varroa and this hive is one in a million. They were just fine and, when I got down to the queen excluder, I noticed the amount of burr comb. Basically, it would be more than I felt I wanted to stress them in one day. I gradually began putting it back together; placing a shallow above the excluder, followed by a new medium, then the other shallows and two mediums. Each of the supers that was there was full of capped honey, so, I figured an empty super couldn't hurt. It's not often you have a 5 foot tall hive. I figure next time, I'll make a point of harvesting some of that honey, just to lighten the load and repair/repaint some of those supers. That may even give me a chance to swap out the bottom boards. This hive seems to have come through it's 2 years very well, and I'm expecting big things from it.

I spent the last twenty minutes dragging out and sorting through the old, rotting supers that had been sitting on the ground, just to see if any of them were any good. Most of the frames were completely junk but, 3 mediums and 1 deep box were usable. There were hundreds of cockroaches and ants in the tangled mass of old combs. They were black from dirt and exposure. With a few flicks of hte hive tool, I scraped out any remminants of old burr comb and wax moth pupal casings. Now, they're sitting in my garage to be sanded and repainted in the comming week. The frames and broken boxes are sitting in the same pile they were in before. I'm going to ask the landowner if I can throw them away or burn them there. Over all, this will be quite a bit of fun this season and, maybe, I'll manage to breed some queens from this hive. Clearly they must have some varroa resistance to survive, on their own, for two years, on a solid bottom board.

Beekeeping Article

2007-02-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

The article was in today's Sunday paper. After some obligatory censoring of specific information, I uploaded it. It was too big for my scanner so, it's in two jpgs.
Top Half
Bottom Half

On a side note, that's 200,000 bees total, not just in that yard and, I did not design the Tampa Bay Beekeeper's Association website, I just took the apiary photos.

An Eventful Day in the Beeyard

2007-01-27T15:30:00.001-08:00

This morning I decided I would check on the hives in an outyard of mine. I hadn't been there since I had to remove the Top Bar Hive on December 25th and, hadn't done a full inspection there for at least a month and a half. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what I would see there but, I had a guess that they would probably be in the same state of health as my italian hive at my house, or better. So, I unpacked the super I had fummigated and, was surprised to find that cockroaches had appearantly chewed through the bag containing the super and the PDB. WIth the bag removed, I could see that SHB had completely torn apart and slimed half of it and, the other half had become a black tangle of webbing and wax moths. Absent mindedly, I put the whole box outside and just loaded up two supers of foundation into the back of the car.

At the apiary, both of the hives had heavy traffic. They were bringing in alot of light, almost faded yellow pollen from Spanish Needle. I quickly lit the smoker and, with veil and coat on, began checking on the "russian" hive. This has been my worst hive and can't seem to make strait, good comb if it's life depended on it. They had the super still completely filled with honey and, the broodbox below was spilling over with bees. Good population. I began by attempting to pry a frame one in from the outside. I've known for a while that most of the brood was lumped against the other side so, I figured it'd be a good place to start. I loosened it as best I could with the hive tool but, it still wouldnt' budge. I eventually just slid it under the top bar and *pop* off it came. "I definately should have glued that." I said, more of an auditory "note to self" than anything else. Complaining a bit about the sorry state of the combs, I was sliding the frames and picking out any that looked interesting. I saw one with a particularly heavy group of bees and, lifted it out. There, in the center of it, was a large, well formed queen. She diffinately isn't the russian one I installed November 2005. She had no striping and a very light, amberish color to her abdomen. The brood pattern was probably the best I've ever seen in that hive which, although not great, is better than I thought it would be. I placed the frames back in, lifted onto them the super full of 100% capped honey, and ontop of that, placed a super of foundation. Another thing I had noticed was that these bees are much nicer than they were last year.

I proceeded to work the adjacent hive that I had installed from a package on June 16, 2006. The cinderblocks that stood next to it were the only remenant of it's previous neighbor; the top bar hive. I removed the cover and smoked them librally. This hive was full of bees, so full I'm suprised they haven't swarmed. I shuffled through a few frames of the super on it and, it was just like the "russian/half russian" hive, all filled completely with honey. It's almost aparant that the bees never even touched their stored honey this year. They had filled the gap between the brood chamber and the super with so much burr comb that I had to stick my hivetool in just about as far as it would go and not just pry the box, but every single frame. With that super off and on the side, I smoked them a bit more and had to scrape off all the burr comb. They didn't enjoy that process in the slightest and gave me a few stings in my left leg. In the broodbox, the outer two frames on each side had nothing but honey and pollen and, the rest had brood from top bar to bottom bar, and end bar to end bar. I'm sure this has mostly to do with the young queen and conditions but, it sure makes you feel like you're doing something right to see a brood pattern like that. Put simply, the hives in the outyard are currently in the best condition I've ever seen them in. Well, other than that broken frame.

I arived home after about an hour spent with the bees. But, my job was far from over. Remember that super I had laid down outside the garage? Well, the two hives at my house had taken to it and, the air was practically a swarm of bees. The buzz was auditory over twenty feet away! I had thought that given it all had been eaten by waxmouths and fouled by Small hive beetle larvae that there wouldn't be a trace of anythign the bees would find "appetizing". Appearantly, I was wrong. I lifted the super into my garage, turned on a light and shut the door. With a hose, I dilluted any of the honey that had spilled onto the driveway and, after about 3 hours, I had enough bees on the flourecent light in the garage that they practically eclipsed it.

All in all, beekeeping has been the learning experience it so often is. But, through it all with the presentation of constant new challenges, it never get's boring.

Interview with the Newspaper

2007-01-25T17:05:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday afternoon, I received a call from a journalist for the St.Pete Times asking for an interview. Appearantly, she had spoken with the agricultural director and he suggested me as someone that may be up for answering some questions. I know, many have suggested not to talk with the media but, given the topic of her article has to do with how the whole issue with the Africanized honeybees had been completely overblown by labeling them "Killer" bees and such, how could I refuse? We talked for about half an hour and, before long, worked out that she and a photographer would be by Wednesday for an interview, and some pictures of the hive.

Being distracted with schoolwork and other adolecent excuses, my home apiary hasn't exactly been in "tip-top shape". I opened up the hives just to see how everything was going and, was amazed to find that, in one of them, they have drawn out and completely filled a medium super. Even in Florida, that's extremely uncommon this time of year. I will actually have to super a hive in January! I got down into the broodchamber and, it was packed....just absolutely packed with bees. It was in the mid 70s, clear sky with a light breeze and the hive was packed. The population and amount of brood is remminicent of what I was seeing in late February of last year. Small Hive Beetles must take up residence in hives when the weather turns cool. There are littlerally hundreds of SHB in the hive but, no larvae.

The nuc has been a different story. Despite these conditions that appearantly have allowed a hive to draw out and cap a super of honey in the winter, this nuc never seems to be in a "good mood". I'm thinking I will requeen them in February or March when good queens become available. Maybe I can use them to repopulate that Top Bar Hive. In any case, I will be changing out that queen if they can stay calm long enough for me to find her.

Wednesday started off cold and overcasted. By noon, it was raining and, at two I was in the door of my house. I didn't have any smoker fuel around; had burned it all off in November. But, wouldn't you know it, my father had left a wheelbarrow full of pine needles and sticks under the porch, having forgoten to dump it into the compost or garbage can. Within just a few minutes, the smoker was well lit.

The pouring rain had reduced to a light sprinkle and, gradually come to a stop. All the vines and overgrowth had been clipped from the apiary, and raked out. After half an hour, Rita (the journalist) had arived, followed shortly by the photographer. We began talking, her notepad everpresent in her hand as she looked down to scribble out quotes and key statements. FInally she asked, "Where are the bees? Are they here?"
"Sure, just around the corner"
Hopping over the knee high fence, around the corner of the house, I showed her the hives. They had been splashed with a little mud and dirt from the rain (and from the fact that by some mericle, I managed to line up the hive exactly where the water pours off the roof). THe photographer drove up and, in a hurry, suggested we jump strait over to the hive. I suggested that given they will be a little "grumpy" with the weather today, I may be able to show them the inside of a super but, we wouldn't get to any brood. Then, had to spend another ten minutes explaining what "brood" and "supers" are and, why they may be a bit "grumpy" when it's been raining. But, I do always have such fun explaining about the bees and beekeeping. As most of my friends could tell you, I can talk on the topic for, literal, hours on end.

Surprisingly, an hour and a half had passed before she ran out of questions. And, today, I just realized that we never covered the topic of what honey is, what wax is, the dances, etc. So, I e-mailed that over and, I'm expecting a call tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T21:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've fallen so far behind. Between highschool, studying (the refference is obligitory), video games and such, I've fallen behind on thee updates....WAY BEHIND! My Newyear's ressolution will have to be to update this site again. Might as well start now. And yes, the time gaps between when I get out to the yards have also increased in length. Longest time between checking on them is up to 4 weeks now.
I passed the inspection and, beleive it or not, the inspector only checked the two hives at my house. Oddly enough, the "captured hive" was more gentle than usual. Recently, they're the hive I'd think twice to decide, "Do I really want to open this hive?" I'm sure they need to be requeened and, I'll probably do that this comming spring. I had hopped to keep any varroa resistance these bees may of had but, if their dispossition is as aggressive as it has been sometimes, I may think twice. This hive went on to require suppering in September and, filled up the whole supper (5 deep frames) with honey. The lower supper, consisting of medium frames in a deep body, has become a great hastle to open up. They extended the combs on hte remaining 5 inches of spaces and, being heavy, these combs like to snap. Nothing angers bees like them falling with their brood. An even bigger issue has been ripping the comb as I remove the frame from the body. Then, I have to stick my hand into this hive of annoyed bees to retreive this stinging mess. All in all, I'm hoping to more them over to full deep frames, like they should have been in the first place, and requeening with an italian queen of a gentler strain. Basically, since it's been 3 weeks since I've mustered the courage to check up on them, I dont' know exactly what they're doing at this point.

The "Italian" hive has done quite well this season. They had a battle with SHB just about all season but, managed to produce about one supper of honey for harvest in November. Two of the ten combs had to be scrapped though given they had been "slimed" by the SHB larvae. This hive has maintained a gentle disposition and, has been producing well. I'm not entirely sure of the queen though. THe comming spring will be her second build-up and, if a queen fails at that time, it usually means no first crop of the season. I suppose I'll let them go on as they are without replacing the queen though. I really don't want to go and kill queens for any reason other than having daughters too deffensive to work with. Right now, they have their deep brood chamber and 2 suppers. One of those suppers is half full, the other, completley capped. Between the two, they should have plenty of honey to make it through our Florida "winters". And, as another plus, the unusually warm conditions have led to incrreased acctivety in the nectories of Spanish Needle plants so, most of the hives have hardly tapped into their stores at all. Those blooms have also allowed the bees to store up more pollen at the last minute. Today we received a few inches of rain and, I am a bit concerned about water leaking into the hive. I have a small box with one frame and around 50 bees sepparated from the Italian hive by a sheet of newspaper and a queen excluder. (I'll explain why in the following paragraphs after the KTBH.)

The Russian hive has been less than satisfactory this year. I still have yet to harvest a single super from them despite over a year of being on their location. Mostly due to the fact that I lost 3 supers of honey to SHB this summer and, their brood comb has been in such bad shape that it's probably hard to have enough cells for a real colony to get going. At least they are producing enough honey to sustain themselves. THey are, at this point, probably my weakest hive. I am concidering requeening this hive but, I must change out all the combs in that brood box. They are a complete mess!. I had to reduce their entrance to help with a robbing problem.

The package hive has been wonderful. They have crammed brood and honey into every single available cell. I look forward to this hive doing well in the next season. They have followed a relatively simmilar build-up from when they were installed as a package that the "italian" hive followed in 2005. But, these bees required far less feed.

Finally, the KTBH. This hive, undoubtably my favorite, went on to produce quite a bit of honey. I actually stole 2 combs to put into some jars of extracted honey from the "italian" hive. These bees went onto expand their whole hive area to the 27th bar with honey from the 27th to the 6th bar. They were all set for a long winter (and it was an unusually warm and mild one so far), and, would have, undoubtable, built up excelently next year. Unfortunately, on December 22nd I received a call that suggested I come by and see the hive. IT sounded ominous. I rushed over that night to find combs scattered everywhere. The screened bottom was hanging limply on one side and 5 inches of dead bees lined the ground. Raccoons or some other animal had ripped the bottom out of the hive sometime between the 19th and the 22nd and, had proceided to whipe out my strongest colony. I came back the next day to clean up everything and see if I could figure out what had happened. I went through the bars, only finding 1 inch stripps of SHB covered combs. Ants and cockroaches had also moved in. Then, I got down to the last bar and found a mass of 50 bees all huddled in a corner. Whenever they group together, it can be a very good sign of a queen being present. I had not brought a veil or protective gear so, I ran back to the car, threw a blanket over my head and neck and grabbed a lunchbox. Using a wad of pine needles, I proceded to brush the bees into the small lunchbox. With every live bee that I could find in that box, I proceaded to finish cleaning/scrapping the rest of the hive and packed it up. The instant I got home, I fixed up my old observation hive to fit ontop of antoher hive in hopes that I could get these bees (and hopefully a queen with them) to come through. Ofcource, I have no smoker fuel and, it had been raining earlier that day. Without a smoker, I proceaded to open the "captured" hive. An already deffensive hive, on a bad day, without smoke is a VERY bad idea and, they "voiced" their objection through several stings to my gloves and thigh. Realizing this was a bad idea, I went to put these bees on the small feeding hole in the cover of the "italian" hive. I popped off hte hold and laied down the newspaper. Realizing after a few seconds that no bees seemed to be comming up, I walked off to grab the lunchbox. When I got back after maybe 30 seconds, bees were BOILING out the cover. Another mistake, another sting. Eventually, I cleared off all those bees, placed down the newspaper and queen excluder, and transfered the bees from teh lunchbox (or as I liked to call it, the "Unauthorized, unapproved livestock transporter") into the observation hive super and closed everything up. Given this observation hive is broken, most parts were substituted from a styrofoam box, cardboard, ducttape and whatever woodscraps were just lying around. I"m hoping that the queen was in there and, if I'm lucky, I may see eggs next week. If not, I'll know I gave them the best chance I could and go back to ordering anther package and redesigning my KTBH.

So, there's 1/4 of the year summarized in one post with no pictures. Overall, I'd rate this year a "D". Passed.....but just bearly. The italian hive and package hive are my only two that are on target. The KTBH is dead, the captured hive might as well be (sure'd be alot less stings), and the russian hive seems to just make combs worse. For 5 hive in one year, and receiving less than 7 gallons of honey, that is a very bad average when you take into account that 1 medium super contains around 3 gallons of honey. Given it's been unusually wet in our dry season, I have high hopes for next year. Winter is the time to look at what went wrong, what could have gone better and what can be changed. After I start passing Algebra II, then I can devote more attention to these hives and get them all running smoothly. Who knows, with 2 "not-so-good" to "bad" years in a row, maybe 2007 will be the magic one. We'll see.

Merry Christmas from Apis629. And have a Happy Newyear.

My Inspection is comming up!

2006-08-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

My anual beehive inspection has now been scheduled for tommarow. Yesterday I checked on all the hives just to make sure they were all ready. I wonder what the inspector's reaction to the TBH will be...

Italian hive:

I think they may have swarmed. There are many fewer bees than I remember. Granted, we're into August and as teh sunlight deminishes by around 1 minute each day the queen will lay fewer eggs. They're storing up plenty of pollen and honey with the two outermost frames on each side being completely filled with pollen and honey; with the exception of a small 3x3 area of brood. Oh yeah, the weekend of the 5th and 6th I harvested honey from this hive. I did take photos but, I'll try to upload them later this week. It's lighter than the honey I got in February but, also quite a bit darker than the honey last October. There were a few frames of cabbage palm honey and, right now, that's about all that's in the hives. The bad part about that is that the bees often have a hard time getting the moisture level below 21% so, it has a tendancy to ferment. Sometimes it even ferments in the comb! It's a honey that is best when blended with other honeys.

Captured hive:

When I had first put this hive together I used a DEEP nuc body with MEDIUM frames. I'm hoping to get a deep brood chamber later but, those medium frames are becoming an issue. It is very difficult to move the frames around when there are peices of comb sticking together. I removed what I could for the upcomming inspection but, I'll have to add another deep nuc box just to keep them from swarming. At all times the front is usually covered in a three inch layer of bees spanning top to bottom and side to side. If I don't give them more space they'll surely swarm.

Russian hive:

I replaced another bad comb and looked through the hive body. Those are, without a doubt, my worst frames. They're poorly drawn with comb running PERPENDICULAR to the frames and also being incompletely drawn. Some patches of the comb are extremely deep spanning over and inch and a half. I had to trim this and, just based on how runny the honey was, I'd say it was completely cabbage palm. I was planning on requeening this hive but, as they year goes on I may have to just order a queen out of hawaii come January.

Package hive:

These bees are comming along right on schedule. They have about 7 frames drawn out with a good distribution of honey, pollen and brood. They have a good brood cluster. It's not the best I've seen but, It is still good. They have around 4 frames filled 75% or more with brood. I won't get any honey from them this year but things are looking good for next.

KTBH:

These bees are doing just fine and are now to bar 16. Just check out how large the cluster is...

I've established that they seem to be reserving the bars after bar 13 for their honey storage area. Bar 13 itself seems to be a transition comb with mostly honey but, some drone brood aswll.
Here's a photo of bar 13:
And here's the 14th bar. Notice that is is nothing but honey storage.

Compare this comb closer to the center of the broodnest to the photo. This comb is completely made up of worker cells and you can see the definite "layers" of honey storage and brood. I wonder how many weird looks the inspecter will give me about this hive...

I found the TBH queen! (photos)

2006-07-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY

Captured hive:

They've done extensive drawing of comb in the last two weeks. The nuc is just about full but, given there temperment is starting to show and, they aren't large enough to even build up for winter on their own, I've decided that I will have to kill this queen and combine it with the italian hive. This is the part that every beekeeper hates but, given I am in an urban area, I can't have any tollorance for overly deffensive bees.

Italian hive:

The cabbage palm honeyflow is on. It's really a poor honey. The bees never seem to get anywhere near the 18% moisture necessary for honey. It usually is capped around 21%. Some of the people at the TBBA have said that this will cause fermentation and, they've seen the tops pop off barrals from the pressure. As for the hive itself, they've drawn out 7 out of ten frames of a super, so I added another. Now there's 1 super of foundation, 1 super mostly drawn with ripening honey and 2 supers ready for extraction. Down in the brood box, the queen has a much improving brood pattern. She's laying in the perfet football shape on 7 of the frames. In my book, she's earned another year of leading this hive (contrary to most recomendations of annual requeening).

TODAY

Russian hive:

Thses bees NEED requeening. This seems to be the worst hive of the bunch. They have bad frames and, even the good ones have bad comb. They're also becoming more deffensive. I've concidered requeening them for some time, so, I guess that time has come. I'll probably replace the current queen with an italian queen. Italians seem to ALWAYS be nicer, more productive and draw comb faster and more completely. Not much to report on this hive except my general dissatisfaction of all the above.

Package hive:

This hive is rapidly expanding. They've got 3 frames full of honey and pollen and the rest is almost solid brood. Next year this should be one of my big producers.

TBH:

Here comes the fun part. These bees have been wonderfull and, I finally today have a picture of the queen. Last time I got a good look at her, I was shaking the swarm of bees into the hive body. The bees are on bars 1-15 with bars 1-8 75% or more drawn. I'm starting to see how the bees transition from a core brood area of nothing but workers to farther back in the hive, around bars 10 or 11, where it's almost all drones. After that, comes the honey. There must be a good flow going on given, they're drawing out wonderfully, and, so many of the combs are filled with ripening honey. As of today, the bees are actively present in half the hive.

HERE COMES THE GOOD PART...PHOTOS!

Here you can see my usuall photo of the cluser of bees expanding. All that white comb is freshly drawn, indicating to me that there is currently a honeyflow;cabbage palm. I think I'll let the bees eat if...

Heres bar 12. The queen was on this bar. This bar had less than a dozen cells with brood and, I didn't find a single egg. There was, however, alot of ripening honey and even come capped.

Here's "her highness" her self.

Here's the last shot of the photogenic queen. She's scurrying over the top bar but, I did manage to get this shot of her abdomen. She seems to be on of the largest queens I've ever seen and, she's deffinately one of the most productive...

...just check out that brood pattern. Nothing but workers! bar 7.

Here's bar number 4. The cells are quite a bit darker from the generations of bees being raised in them.

Final note: If you want to see larger versions of these photos go to http://flickr.com/photos/backyardbeekeeper

100th Post!!!!!!

2006-07-10T13:05:00.001-07:00

Today I went over and saw the remaining three hives...then went for a swim in the landowners' pool. Hey, it's hot out and wearing all that gear in the sun is even hotter. Anyways, before I cooled off in 8 feet deep of liquid salvation, I did get something accomplished.

Russian Hive:

They're building up but, still not much stronger than the package hive. They still have eggs and everything but, they also still seem to have a disablility of drawing comb. These bees must be lazy given, there's a honeyflow going on and they can't seem to get their act in gear. I'm probably going to order up a queen either later this month or in august to replace the current one. I'll probably go with italian, which means I'll have to find a better way to name my hives.

Package Hive:

These bees are expanding just fine and I have stopped feeding them. The queen is a powerhouse of egg laying with 6 frames just about filled with eggs or other brood. They've expanded to about 7 frames and, are currently on their way to becoming a strong colony. These bees are also very nice but, at their small size I can't really make to strong an estimation of their threshold. They came from the same company that supplied the package for my first hive, and they came out just fine. My prediction is that, next year, I'll have at least 4 colonies producing honey, rather than the current 1.

TBH:

Here's where the photos come in. I walked up to the hive and saw that they've clearly done some expanding.

These bees have expanded to the point that they have fully drawn combs on bars 1-4, 5-7 are 3/4 to 1/2 drawn and the remaining 8-12 are less than 1/2 drawn. Basically, from the end it looks like this :

Compare this to the photos on May 14th and you'll see just how much they've expanded. It looks like my concern of them being africanized is unfounded given, I've yet to receive more than 2 stings when I go through the colony. I'll have to see how they do over the next year given, that will be the best guage of temper.
They currently have a few small patches of honey stored but, I don't think they'll have anything potentially harvestable untill September. This is probably the most fun hive in the beeyard, hense, why else would I always want to take photos. It's a novelty, even to other beekeepers. Unfortunately, most don't like them but, most don't wear gloves either. I'm the minority.

Here's the sixth comb:

On this photo you can see a definate line where the bees first drew out comb, those bees emerged and then, the bees felt they needed more space and drew out even more comb. That's why there's a transition from the darker comb to come that is more of a gentle yellow.

FINAL NOTES: 100th post...woohoo!

Next year, I could be producing over 40 gallons of honey...we'll see how that goes.

I finally made a movie!

2006-07-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

My Music Video

I took the photos, video and wrote/played the music. Also, look at the post below this for an update on the bees. Hope y'all like it.

Sorry...I forgot about you.

2006-07-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks I've been doing my inspections like usuall but, actually forgot about this blog. I had forgotten my cammera on all of them except today's so, I'll explain them.

Last week:

The daughter of the people who's land my hives are on was here from the Washington D.C. area and wanted to see the hives. I had brought along an extra veil so, I didn't see why not. She did take some photos and, hopefully, she'll e-mail some of them to me. She was, though, probably one of the bravest non-beekeeper's who has seen my hives given, in one sentance, I convinced her to hold a bar from the KTBH for a photo. Gloveless non the less!

Russian hive: This hive is about were I'd expect it to be given they swarmed not to long ago. I'm probably going to requeen them in the fall given they swarmed and I don't exactly trust the genetics in this area. I really haven't liked this hive at all but, like anything, don't knock it, 'till you try it. And I tried it...but won't again. I'll probably requeen with Italian, given I've liked those quite a bit in my other hives.

Package Hive: This is where I need to do some updating. I installed the package as usuall on June 17 and came back the next week. They've had plenty of sugar water and, the queen was released safe and sound. They have a good brood cluster and have expanded out to 7-8 frames.

TBH: They're on bars 1-12 with 1-5 fully drawn and those after it anywhere from 3/4 to 1/8. These have got to be some of the nicest bees I have and, even my guest in the feild was willing to hold a bar. They've had a very good brood nest orientation and, are begining to store up honey and pollen. With any luck, I may get a comb or two of harvest in September or October.

TODAY!

Italian hive: This hive has a good 2 supers full of honey like this and, is begining to draw out a super I added earlier. This is a sure sign of a honeyflow.

This is honeycomb perfect for extraction. I have a full 2 supers that look like this. With any luck I'll get another super on the current flow. I think that are common summer rains are probably the cause of this honeyflow. Unfortunately, I have no idea what exactly is blooming. Today, I had a friend of mine, Adam, come out and see the bees. At the end he said, "I have a newfound respect for what you do." Complementing me on my "Kahoneys". Anyways...back to the hive. I got down to the brood chamber and the frames on each end are COMPLETELY filled with honey. Working inwards, there are no queen cells (indicating no plans to swarm or supercead their queen) and every stage of brood present from eggs to emerging adults. This hive is doing just fine and clearly doesn't need to be requeened. Unfortunately, not all was well with Adam, given I forgot to warn him that the bees, if they sting, will go for areas of contrast. His black wristband became a bee-sting-belt, given a few stung the band, and one stung the neighboring flesh. All's fine, however, he was surprised that the sting hurt so much less than those of the paper wasps, which are so numerous and so often confused with a bee in this area.
Also, as a final note, after I harvest I'll have to treat for Varroa mites with the Apiguard.

Captured Hive: These bees still haven't outgrown their nuc, but, they're on their way. So far, they have completely drawn 4 frames and half way drawn 1. I'll probably need to move them into a full deep next month or so. They do have a good brood patern on the frames which they do cover. The frames are just mediums so, I'll have to swap them with deeps one by one. Here's a little example of how the brood is looking.

Earlier, they had what's known as "shotgun brood" where every other cell seems to be missing a larva. This could be a sign of a mechanical resistance to varroa via removal of the infected pupae and the varroa mite itself.

TOMARROW: I WILL CHECK ON THE REMAINING 3 HIVES.

I'm back...

2006-06-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

And yesterday I checked on the hives I have here. For those of you who don't know, (most) I had ordered a package scheduled for delivery on June 16th back in April. It arived yesterday and, the top bar hive which it was origionally intended for is currenly occupied (I'll find out just how much tomarrow).

Captured hive:

The queen now has a wonderfull brood pattern consisting of a solid football shape. I remember a few weeks ago, not too long after I origionally got them, they had what's known os "shot-gun" brood where every other cell seems to be missing a/n egg/larvae/pupae. This has been almost completely resolved and, my hypothesis is that they were doing this as an SMR trait (Surpressed Mite Reproduction) and, that's the whole reason I wanted them. It's deffinately getting populous now but, they are still only on 3 medium combs. By August they should have most drawn but, they probably will need feeding. Still minimal aggressian from them.

Italian Hive:

They still haven't even TOUCHED that super of foundation and, I'm thinking that I'll have to pull it off, wax coat the foundation and put it back on. I'm also concidering removing the excluder or, at least placing the super beneith it. THey seem to be crowding all of the honey into the brood nest and, unless I can get them to start storing in the supers, they WILL swarm. A swarm this late in the year will eliminate any chance of harvestable honey later. The queen though, on the frames she can, still mantains a good brood pattern. I'm thinking that next week I may do a thourough search for her just to see if it's the same one I had last year. That part is really of no imporance but, it's still fun to know that you can find an individuall bee in a large colony and know it's the same one you saw last time.

PACKAGE ARIVED YESTERDAY!!!!

Yep, I'm still expanding and this will be my 5th hive. Now, if I could get them all producing honey at, say, 3 supers a hive, I'd be dealing with 36 gallons a year. The top bar hive will be conciderable less every year. I'll have some photos either later today or tommarow of the instalation.

Total Expansion!

2006-05-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

Russian Hive:

Not much has changed. They've begun drawing out some of the frames I put in the brood box but, haven't touched the super of foundation above. They seemed a little "nervous" on the comb today in that they practically refused to stay in one spot. The palmetto on site is in full bloom but, do to a lack of rain, necar production is minimal at best. If we could just get a few good rainy days then maybe this flow could produce something. On a more possitive note, the queen is laying more eggs and I'm noticing an improving brood pattern. Oddly enough, they're not storing anywhere near as much pollen as the Italian Hive, an of cource, MUCH more propolis. I may concider making a propolis trap as, when it is mixed with beeswax and some sort of oil, it makes a wonderfull instrument varnish.

KTBH:

The bees are on bars 1-8 with drawn comb. Some of this comb is already about 6 inches deep and at full thickness. I've also seen plenty of eggs, pollen, larvae and now, capped brood. They're also drawing it perfectly center on the bar, making for management almost as easy as with a conventional frame hive.

Here's a picture of the sixth comb (1=front 32=back). You can see the very palmettos I was talking about earlier. If you look carefully, you can see BEES, pollen, necar ripening and capped brood.

Too much POLLEN!

2006-05-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today I only had enough time to look at the hives on my property so that's the captured hive and the Italian one. The KTBH and the Russian hive will have to wait untill monday. What could possibly have taken all of today's time? BEEKEEPING SEMINAR! Florida State Beekeepers' association meeting where the TBBA meets...you know I won't pass that up. Spent the day learning about varroa and SHB research as well as honey marketing and AHB controls/detection. Anyways, before I bore you to tears, here's the update.

Captured Hive:

Not much change. They've gone up alot in population and now are drawing out the outer two frames. The center three are mostly full of brood and pollen. They have a little honey but, probably a few rainy days and they'll be completely out. The Palmetto is flowing and that's probably what's keeping them aloft...literally.(for those of you who didn't get that or are already a year into Summer Break...I was refering to the fact that honeybees fly...) They were a little "on edge" but, no stings. I'm almost convinced that they are truely ferral SMR (Surpressed Mite Reproduction). They have been removing pupae and I can see that the pupae they're carrying out all have at least 1 mite on it.

Italian Hive:

Before I opened the hive I thought I'd take some pictures of the outside for a change.

Here, they're "washboarding" which is when they crawl around the outside of the hive and appear to do "the WAVE". They use thier tounges and front legs to remove bacteria and dirt which contaminate the outside of their hives. They're hygenic little insects aren't they.

In the top super of the hive I have frames of honey which look like this. The white portion is the capped honey, ready for human consumption. A frame like this is perfectly ready for extraction and, each side is about 1 pint of honey.

Here is a frame from a half super of pollen. This is the bees' protein source and, why their storing so much of it...I haven't the slightest clue. Usually, they can use it all up pretty fast and they don't have enough to store. Soon they'll make a thin layer of honey on top of it to preserve it and cover that in a wax capping. This pollen will come in handy next spring!

I continued going through the hive down to the brood nest. The outer frame was nothing but honey and they have all stages of brood present; a perfectly healthy hive. There was also a lot of pollen there too but, that's where the pollen should be anyways. This colony is deffinately very strong and is in perfect shape for me to leave alone for 2 weeks.

This photo just gives you an idea of the population. As you can see, there's plenty of bees. If you look carefully, you can see capped honey, capped brood, open pollen and young, open brood. That last one is a little tricky...

All in all, not much to report. These hives are doing well and it seems like either varroa levels have gone down or, they've just been diluted. I plan to treat these colonies with Apiguard after I extract the honey.

Russian update...What is a KTBH

2006-05-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to check on the russian hive and figured I'd get some photos of the KTBH (Kenyan Top Bar Hive) aswell.

Russian Hive:

Oddly aggressive, the russian hive nearly chased me out. They were nervous on the comb, prone to stinging the gloves and were head-butting to an unusuall high. I went through the brood nest and they couldn't draw comb if their lives depended on it. They seem to like doing the opposite of what I want them to. They have about 4 of the ten frames in the brood nest completely drawn out (terrible), and, won't get off of my veil. A few headbutters are usuall but, when it gets over a dozen, with stinging, that can take the fun right out of it. On the plus side, the palmetto bloom is getting into full swing and, there is one full super on the hive. They had another super but, it was filling up aswell so, on went a box of foundation. I intended on taking photos of them but, I didn't want to open my pocket. I'm probably going to have to concider requeening them.

KTBH:

Here is a look at the cluster (intact) in the KTBH. (I've added the K for accuracy, there are really two types of top bar hives, and this tells which one.) As you can see, the swarms was clearly good sized given, the other half of the bees is out foraging. They are still covering bars 1-9. Just to give you an idea of the mesurements, the walls are 13 inches tall, the top is 22 inches wide and the bottom is 8 inches wide. That's a good sized cluster!

Here you can see the front of the KTBH (120º). The slope makes it easier to remove the fragile comb and, the bees confuse the sides for the bottom and attach less comb to the sides. The holes plugged with twigs are used for additional space in the entrance. There is a small gap on the top between the top bars and the side which, the bees are now using as an entrance. This photo was taken on a different location, before the bees were installed.

This is a bar holder used to hold the top bar and comb so that I can make corrections such as cutting comb. It is also used to hold the bar when the comb is cut for harvest. I usually leave it sitting under the hive and, wouldn't you know it, it fits just perfectly.

"Slam Full"

2006-05-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Today, after a visit to Busch Gardens, I checked on the colonies around 3:30. It's still very dry and I have my concerns about the flow. As a point of interest, I found my first SHB larva. It was probably close to an inch long and just tunneled out of a pollen cell when I was picking up the frame. I cut into the comb at a few points and found not other larvae so, that must be the 1 in a million that was able to hide before the bees could find it.

Captured Hive: (not to be confused with the recent swarm. That will be reffered to as the TBH)

This hive is still very small but, has appearantly gone through that whole presentation project almost 2 weeks ago without any affects. These bees still are on only 3 medium frames but, such is to be expected after they are removed from their old hive. I'm expecting them to use the current flow to build up in population but, that probably won't be enough. One of the biggest reasons I've wanted to keep them is that, logically, if they came from a hive populous enough to swarm, they must have some natural resistance to the Varroa mite. I have noticed them removing infected pupae and there always seem to be a few at the enterence with mites on them. These are usually carried off not long after.

Italian Hive:

These bees now have two supers SLAM FULL of capped honey. Some of the cells are even being extended into other frames. I have learned a lesson though...NEVER USE DURAGUILT IN HONEY SUPERS! Duraguilt is one of the earliest plastic foundation and, unlike the rigid Plasticell, it will warp easily and under the stresses of extracting becomes practically worthless. Good thing I only bought one box worth. Other than those two boxes, the brood nest actually has a frame on each side filled with nectar and honey, one frame in is a frame of pollen, and after that is mostly brood. This is a textbook case of a very good queen and brood pattern. Finally, contrary to my earlier concerns, it appears that I did get the queen bellow the excluder last month and she has now been confined to the brood box; right where I wanted her.

Realisticly, I could probably do a harvest this week, but, I really don't want to do that just before I go out of the contry for 2 weeks. I am expecting, however, to do a good sized harvest some time around late June. I can honestly say that I am strongly looking forward to it!

Update

2006-05-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

I will be posting all my updates on the new TOP BAR HIVE under "Top Bar Hive bees" under the heading, cool blogs, to the right.

FIRST SWARM CAPTURE; a rollercoaster of thrills.

2006-05-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the same people who's hive I removed over a month ago, called in a panic about the thousands of bees in the air. The thrusday before, they called me about a hive that they found in their decorative roof tiles. It turns out, that the hive is based in the walls; a much bigger problem. The thousands of bees flying through the air were part of a swarm, showing that the bees had been there longer than they thought. I came over as fast as I could and, there was a swarm (probably about 7 pounds) hanging around 15 feet up an oak tree on a limb maybe 1 1/2 inch in diameter. I had been hesitant to capture it, given the possibility that the bees would be africanized. However, today I finally decided that I would take a chance and collect the swarm.

Around 1:00, I headed over to collect the swarm. Trembling with fear, I made my way up the ladder and began brushing the bees into a box. The first brush was the worst. I poorly manuvered the box so, the bulk of the bees fell right onto my veil and chest. It was almost like a bee beard, except, with more fear. At that point, I just about fell off the ladder but, I regained my ballance and got the box under the entire swarm. I sprayed them with about a quart of water and began brusing them into the box, again. When the bulk of them fell in, they felt to be about thet weight of 2 bricks. Now came one of my largest problems, how to manuver the bees and myself down the ladder. In an act of ballancing, I carried the box in the palm of my right hand(just about spilling the bees all over the bushes) and threw the brush down to the grass. Once I had the box on the ground, and in the shade, bees began flying everywhere. In a period of about 20 minutes, all the bees flew strait into the box and, from the some thousand or so that were flying/still on the branch, there were probably 20 bees still flying. I began on my walk home but, the woman who's swarm I was removing offered me a ride home.

When I arived home, the bees were starting to chew their way out of the box and what would fix this problem?MORE TAPE! I began waxing "starter strips" into the Top Bars of my Top Bar Hive and, I would for the next two hours. After this entire process was complete, I packed up the box of bees and everything else into the car and, keeping my veil on, went over to the location of my Russian hive.

I set up the Top Bar Hive on some bricks and made room to shake in the package. Since capturing them, the bees had stopped buzzing and vibrating, so, I was worried that they may have been smothered. I opened up the box and, with the first slit, the bees suddenly came to life. There were THOUSANDS of bees in the box and, I began shaking them into the TBH. They formed a large, buzzing clump in the bottom. They began taking flight and, formed a mass in the air so thick that, they appeared like gnats in the sunset. I noticed that they were all flying back to the box, so I shook those bees at the enterance and they clustered all over the front of the hive. I got a quick look at the queen running around the front, before she was engulfed by her daughters. The bees were all starting to clearly accept their new home and, after hours of working on the bees and the hive, I decided that was enough for one day and, I fugured I'd check on the other three hives tomarrow, and, I'll get a quick peak at the captured swarm hive, just to see how they're doing.

Do these flows ever end?

2006-05-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

I am assuredly amazed how much flowers produce nectar in Florida. In February, it began with Oak honey and honeydew, then moved to Clover in April and now, Palm Tree honey in May. In June; mangrove then moving into Brazilian Pepper in August. Now, the Palm tree flow is comming and comming strong!

Captured Hive:
This hive is showing a developing brood nest and has probably doubled in population since it was captured. The bees are being a little flighty when I opened them but, still pretty non-aggressive in terms of persuing and stinging behavior.

Italian Hive:
This hive has made a 180º turn in this last week. They had no pollen stores and almost no honey in the brood nest area. That, typically, is a sign of a sort of pollen and honey famine. Now, there are probably 6 frames, slam-full, of pollen and honey. The queen has also stepped up egg production with the suden appearance of frames full of eggs and young larvae. Today, I also ran down the bees all into the bottom brood box in an attempt to finally get the queen out of the honey supers. These are probably, now my gentlest bees and, I will probably have to super them next week to make room for the new flow. The Palm honey has an interesting flavor compared to the other honeies but, proably the most marked difference is that it's actually very "runny" not viscous.

Russian Hive:
Today I swapped out three poorly drawn frames for new foundation and, given the current flow, they sould draw it out well. I accidentally left the cover perched probably 3/8" off the box itself on one side and, the bees had already mostly propolized it shut. Unfortunately, I think they superseaded their queen given I'm finding superseadure queen cells and a few have been chewed open. I'll probably have to requeen this year depending on the aggressive atributes of the new bees. This hive currently has about two supers suitable for extraction.

A [realtively] Clean Bill of Health

2006-04-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Overall, all three colonies are in good to excelent condition by my standards, with the exception of varroa levels. On the good news I have managed to order some Apiguard from Dadant and I'm not seeing quite so many bees with deformed wings.
Harvest in three weeks...or so.

Italian Hive:
I was concerned about these bees for the past few weeks given the queen was developing a poor laying patern and the number appeared to be dropping. Currently, they have two supers filled with capped honey, and the bottom brood box has capped brood, eggs, larvae but, oddly, hardly any honey. Pollen levels were also a little on the low side but, with some flowers constantly putting out pollen despite the lack of water, that is low in my concerns. Traffic near the enterence has been relatively low, but, I assume that's mostly due to the lack of nectar given the dry conditions. Given how few bees there are (still plenty but, conciderably lower population than the russian hive), I think that they won't really build up their population untill July. In the next three weeks, I expect to harvest at least one super, just so they don't have quite so much surface area to protect...and also since I'm starting to run low on my own supply. Today, just as I was closing the hive up, I actually got stung where I've never been before, on the back of the left thigh. Definatly painfull!

Captured Hive:
They currently cover two frames and the queen appears to be laying abundantly. They are very docile given, I probaly didn't even need smoke when I opened them up. Still very small, they cover two medium frames which have some honey and pollen but, mostly brood, and given their light weight, I think feeding will be required. They also have a very nice, leather back italian color. Next week I'll get a photo or two.

Russian Hive:
Currently the most populous hive, the russians are the most aggressive and have the most honey. Two supers are just about capped and, the swarming impulse is ever present in the colony. I had nearly an entire frame of queen cells and plenty of queen cups. Oddly enough, two frames are very poorly drawn and they are actualy building comb near perpendicular to the frame. One is full of capped honey and I figure I'll cull it next week as well as the other one. Between the one filled with honey and the wall of the hive, the bees actualy built a solid side of honeycomb filled with capped honey. Upon scraping it off, it fell to the bottom of the hive and I had to stick my hand down inside with about three inches of manuvering room in a box lined with thousands of honeybees. They didn't really like me sticking my hand in there and, to be honest, even after the second super was removed, the bees kept becoming louder and more took flight. While the russians are intimidating, they really don't sting too much.

All in all, I'm confortable with the state of each of my colonies and they seem to have a secure future.

Status Report

2006-04-16T19:06:00.000-07:00

THE HONEYFLOW IS OVER!

Captured Hive:

The population continues to decline but, I transfered some brood and bees to help. Not much has really changed since the last time I looked.

Italian Hive:

The queen has massively decreased egg production and the number of bees appears to have fallen. There is vertually no brood in the intended brood chamber and she's laying in the supers. I've done all I can to try and get here to go back down and, if she's not down by next week I'll have to just run all the bees down with some Bee Quick®. I was able to test for varroa and, the hive is crawling with them. I'm gonna try to get my hands on some ApiGuard given the honeyflow is pretty much over and I'll probably harvest soon.

Russian Hive:

This is currently my most populous hive. The bees are litterally boiling out and two supers are just about filled with brood. They clearly want to swarm given I removed probably 30 queen cups and 3 queen cells. Given the eggs hatched in some cups to create queen cells, also refered to as "peanuts" given they resemble them in shape, I now have to move from swarm prevention to swarm control. In swarm prevention, the only steps are to clip queen cups and add supers. In swarm controll I have to take much more extensive actions. I have to lessen the size of the brood nest and even possibly split the hive. On the plus side, that may mean that I'll get a cheap source of bees for my Kenyan Top Bar Hive. The bees were also oddly aggressive. A sure sign that the older ones are "hanging around" waiting for a swarm to commense. I will probably have to split them next week or lose them in a swarm. That's beekeeping for you...constant new challenges.

IPM time!!!

2006-04-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have failed to keep varroa levels acceptable and due to tardiness of administration of combative chemicals, namely due to the fact that I could not get my hands on and Apiguard®, given the entire county is out, I shall begin an IPM(Intigrated Pest Management) regemin. I plan to use powdered sugar dusts, drone comb trapping and the screened bottom board. The powdered sugar encourages bees to groom themselves thus, removing the mite. Varroa mites are actually attracted to drone comb given it allows them greater reproduction time and therefor, more mites. When the cells are capped the varroa are essentially trapped with a seemingly lemitless food supply. In drone trapping, the bees are encouraged to draw drone comb on one frame and the varroa mites are trapped when the cells are capped. Then, the mites can be measured by counting the mites in cells ripped open. The rest of the cells are left capped and placed in a freezer overnight to ensure death to the varroa "vampire" mite. Why all this sudden draw of pest preventors and treatments. Varroa in my colony have climbed to destructive levels as, I am now seeing week, deformed bees on the ground in front of the hive and defformed bees inside. Even the brood pattern has gone awry with brood deaths. If I am to have any hope of bringing this colony though to next year...(dramatic pause)...I need to get my act together!

I did use some brood and bees from the inspection on Monday to help that hive I captured. The cluster of bees is too small to have survived on their own so I added nurse bees and brood. They did, however, draw out a small, dollor coin sized area of comb and filled it with eggs as well as pollen and cell of nectar. Hard work, but, not enough bees to work. With this new addition, these bees should see it though. Afterall, the colony they came from had to be resistant to varroa given it prospered enough to create a swarm. I should assume that they probably have a minor resistance. Oh yeah, they passed the aggressian test.

How'd she do that?

2006-04-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the queen at my russian hive..."pulled a hudini". Somehow, she got around the excluder which shouldn't happen. She's clearly only been above for less that 2 days given there's only eggs and, not alot. As for honey, one super is capped to the "extraction" point or the point at which I can harvest it and it won't ferment or spoil. The other super is filled with ripening nectar and a few eggs, as stated above. I had to smoke the queen down which usually creates a bit of a panic in the hive as it becomes shrouded in smoke...which the bees like probably about as much as the average person. Tomarow I'll probably open the italian hive, maybe get some photos, and super them. Maybe I'll even get the excluder on.

SUCCESS!!!

2006-04-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Today I installed the captured bees into a nuc. There weren't near as many as I thought and they formed into one clump the size of probably a navel orange. Bee will only form clumps like that when they are in the presence of their queen as it is her pheramone that makes them so attracted. I sprayed them well with sugar syrup and carefully removed the peice of cardbroard they were clinging to. Then I slid it near a frame and allowed the bees to crawl off. Then, I carefully brushed a few bees aside and there she was. All I can say is that she deffinately wasn't from my swarm. She was reminicent of carniolan with deep almond, almost chocholate colored bands flanked with black ones. I have to say that the color is very nice. I'm not sure if they have enough bees to draw comb well or feed the resulting larvae but, by this time next week I can find out. This weekend I may just shake a few bees from the adjacent colony into there just to give them a little more strength. I went back down to where the colony was to tell the land owners that I had the queen. They were out but, the people cutting the trees were still there and just finishing up. So, I went over to ask if there were still bees around and to tell them that I had the queen. He's also appearantly interested in some unpasturized local honey...just what I have. I can't wait to see how this queen preforms.

Bees are gone!

2006-04-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

I came back after a few hours and found the bees all clustering in a small area in one of the logs on the ground. After making a few improvisational cuts and such I modified a vacume to hold a box for the colection of bees. Everything worked relatively well, then the sun went down. I'm not quite sure if I have the queen or not but, I should be able to find that out soon. Tommarow afternoon, I'm planning on taking the bees from that box and shaking them into a super on top of the hive here and separate the potential two queens with a queen excluder. This way, I'll be able to tell if I have a second queen, without risking either being killed. The bees in the box have heardly made any noise so I'm also concerned about thier condition. I guess by this weekend I'll know if I have a new queen and the makings of a new colony.

My 4th Hive Removal Call

2006-04-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

Some neighbors about 6 blocks from here called saying they had a hive in a tree which they were removing before hurricane season starts in a few months. Wouldn't you know it...these bees had about the right about of comb and population to be that swarm that escaped not to long ago. The brood is of the right age and the population is the right size. Even the temperment seemed to match my bees. When they were cutting off the branch and lowering it only one person got stung, and just once. I probably got a few but, I was having some very direct contact. These bees weren't even headbutting. They were just clustering up 30 feet in the tree where the nest had been and in a log on the ground. Despite people working all around them with chainsaws and axes, the bees still weren't peruing to any real level. When I saw how the bees were bearding and all gradually drifting up to the tree I was relatively possitive that the queen was up there. I scooped and cut up the log on the ground and checked every dozen or so for the queen. Then I would mist them with water and plop them into the box. After I went through the entire log with no more than a few hundred, I looked back up at the tree and a secion of limb, about 2 feet long was covered/flooding with bees. Then, sweaty and with a sting or two though my jeans, I had to tell them that I wouldn't be able to get the bees away unless I have the queen given, the bees will orient to her scent. Tommarow, they're bringing in a crane to finish the job and take down the tree. Then, that will be when I get the new colony. On a side note, one of the men was convinceed that he had honey. Oh yeah, they were so gentle that he could take their honeycomb from them with out being stung. Sound like gentle bees? Darn right! Funny part of the story is that he thought it was honey, took a bite and got nothing but brood. I explaned to him that this colony, given it's size, probably doesn't have much in the way of honey. Tomarrow, these bees will be mine...that is assumming, they don't abscond later today. We'll see what happens.

Swarm Averted

2006-03-31T12:24:00.000-08:00

I checked on the Russian hive today and everything is looking well. They've drawn out probably a third of the new super and filled that with honey. The older super is actually completely filled with honey and rippening honey. It's probaby half capped. One frame had warped terribly and was getting in the way. I had to replace it with foundation but, the honey contained is probably some of my best. I can't wait to extract it. Down in the brood chamber, the bees were drawing out foundation but, doing a pretty terrible job at it. I was also searching for possible swarm cells given I didn't want to lose the honey production of two colonies. I found plenty of queen cups and cut them but, there were also three queen cells in the usuall swarm possition on the frame. These had to be cut, and were. I have hopefully, now, prevented a swarm. There were minimal eggs, some very young larvae and many pupae. The fact that egg production seemed to be rapidly slowing is a good sign that the bees are getting a case of "swarm fever". For each swarm it's gallons of honey lost as well as potential for honey production for a few months. The queen is also lost. The bees can make a new queen from eggs and young larvae but, their's no tellling what the genetics of the bees will be. With it now being official that my county is AFRICANIZED, I have to take every precaution available to make sure my colonies remain docile. Anyways, I have a few pounds of honey that are needing mine, and a slice of toast's attention...

Yesterday's trip to the UF Bee Lab

2006-03-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

5:04 am, I awoke, after probably five hours of sleep, and with great hurry got dressed and in the car. We would have to drive 2 1/2 hours to Gainsville, but it would all be worth it. I'd get to vollunteer at the apiary of Dr. Hall. He is one of the leading geneticists trying to breed Varroa mite resistant bees (Queens) and preform various experaments. Today, we'd be installing packages, 20, to be exact; 7 would go in nucs, 7 would go in the standard 10-frame equipment, and 6 would go into 10-frame equipment to be trucked to another location. We arived around 8:00 am and I, tired but excited, was prepared to spend a day working with bees. First, we'd have to set up the equipment for the packages, which arived on Tuesday. This would mean stetting out bottom boards, organizing frames of honey with empty frames, sealing the enterences wtih screening and thumb tacks and setting out the covers and queen excluders. This whole process took around 3 hours. In that time, all the above actions took place. I'm not entirely sure which part was best out of the whole experience, but so far, I had hardly seen a bee. To set everything up it was loaded onto a trailor pulled by a golf cart then, to my surprise, Dr. Hall said, "You can drive it over there, if you want, and set the stuff up." While I was concerned about hitting one of the active colonies, it seemed easier than hauling 10 heavy, ice cold (from being stored in a freezer) supers by hand.

Here are the nucs prior to the bees being installed.

Here is some of the 10 frame colonies. The ones with 2 boxes (supers) are all about to be filled with packages. One package can be seen in-front of the closest hive body. The multiple storied hives (3+) are active colonies. These girls have something to deffend!

This was all completed by 11:00 am, or so, and I would finally see the packages. I walked into the extraction room, used for handling the honey the bees make. Making honey isn't a priority for the Bee Lab but, "bees will be bees". The second the door was opened, there came an ominous roar of thousands...hundreds of thousands of bees. While their noise may scare, with nothing to protect, they're gentle as lambs. All the packages had to be taken outside, placed in the shade and ripped from the wooden strips with hive tools. Then the staples had to be taken out. All this work was done so that the packages would fit inside the new "hives". After some work and splinters, it came time to loosen and take off the wood covers on the packages. The package consists of a wooden box with two screened sides and a hole the size of a large soup can drilled in the top. This is filled with a queen cage attached to a thin strip of metal and plugged with a large can with several holes in the bottom. The can is filled wtih a sugar syrup to keep the bees adaquately fed for 3-4 days. After all the tops were removed we began removing the cans, taking out the queen cages and covering the hole back up with the wooden cover. The packages and queen cages were given matching numbers and the queen were taken inside for marking and clipping. Marking is the process of putting a small drop of paint on top of the thorax of the queen to identify her. Clipping is when one wing is clipped off. Usually, a beekeeper will clip one side on even years and one side on odd ones to be able to guess the age of the queen. When holding the queen, I learned that one must be extremely carfull and gently pinch her by the thorax. Touching the head can dammage sensory organs and holding her by the abdomen can either make her steril or dammage her overies. One must also be carefull when clipping her wings that one of the legs doesn't get in the way of the sisor. The front legs are used to measure the cell to determine if it is to hold a worker or a drone. The back legs support her emmense weight (rellative to her body size) when laying. After the process of marking and clipping was complete they were transfered into small, narrow screened cages. Now they could be introduced into the hives with the workers from the package.
First, the queen would be placed in the hive then the box containing the workers would be placed in the hive aswell. Then the cover on the package would be taken off and the cover of the hive slipped into place above a queen excluder. This process was repeated 20 times. Every time worked just fine with the exception of one nuc which had a badly warped cover. It created a half inch gap at the back, through which bees escaped for about half an hour before it was noticed. When I asked why it was nessesary to screen the enterences, Dr. Hall told me how, last year, they left the enterences open and then came a swarm. All the bees drifted to it and formed a mass from 20 packages ($1000 worth plus shipping). "It was larger than a beachball." He said. Now, with all the new hives set up it was time for the last act of the day. Three queens were being placed in queen bank colonies. Queen banks are colonies used to hold queens for later use. The queens are each confined in their own, individuall screened cages about 1 inch sq. Now, the day was over after a little clean up, and I was sting free. I noticed how, just one year ago I would flinch at the sight of a near by bee, and now, I would open colonies and packages without hessitation.

Bored...but with a cammera.

2006-03-31T11:41:00.000-08:00

On March 24th I was bored and decided to attempt to get a decent macro-shot of the italian hive here at my house. You can judge if they're decent or not.

Here some bees are filling a gap I accidentally made between the cover and the super, with propolis to seal out the elements. That green powder on top of the cover is actually oak pollen from one of the half dozen oak trees that shadow it.

Here is a photo of bees trying to use their bodies to seal the enterence and keep out the cold wind. It was actually around 60º that day.

Oops!

2006-03-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

I overlooked a critical symptom when I started worrying about AFB. The cells affected were uncapped. This point to the likely senario being that the colony swarmed and with the stress of the lower temperatures the colony has gotten a slight case of sacbrood or EFB (European Foul Brood). EFB doesn't form hard, industructable spores or kill colonies. It only affects a few brood just like sacbrood. Since the larvae die uncapped, the bees are quick to remove them thus, averting any possible major infection. I'll have to deal with the varroa mites, and given the current population is low and there's minimal brood to hide in, treating soon would be ideal. I guess I was just over-reacting to the fact that a colony that was populous and crowded on last inspection, has just become halved in population, many empty cells, and about a super of missing honey. Given there's still a honeyflow going on and a few frames of capped honey they should get along alright untill the next flow. In beekeeping, all you have to do is be a few days late, and you lose an entire crop. I'm just hoping that the new queen will be just as gentle and her mother. Time will tell.

It looks "grim".

2006-03-28T15:01:00.000-08:00

I checked on the italian hive and not all looks well. I'm now seeing bees with obvious varroa paricitation, such as terribly deformed wings, and the hive also appears to have sacbrood and possible AFB...AFB (American Foul Brood) is probably the most dreaded of the bee diseases. It's highly contagioous and nearly impossible to destroy. There was some honey, though not the ammount to be expected durring a honeyflow. The hive also appears to have swarmed, probably when I was at school. This could explain why there were bees near the porch that one day. A swarm could also explain why there seems to be alot of honey missing. Swarms "tank-up" before they leave to establish a new colony. The current italian colony obviously has a new queen but, it could take up to 6-8 weeks more to get the population up to "pre-swarm" conditions. Hopefully, I'm only seeing discolored sacbrood, instead of AFB. If it's AFB then I'll be forced out the the "Bee-bussiness" ASAP.

The Russians have been Supered

2006-03-20T12:47:00.000-08:00

It's been windy today but, they were still working diligently. Fulfiling that old phrase, "Busy as a Bee."

The Russians are finally getting their act together!

2006-03-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

I checked on the russian hive for the first time in 2 weeks given they were running light on stores the previous time I checked them and I wanted to see how they were doing. When I arived, I noticed exceptionaly heavy trafic at the enterence. There didn't seem to be any guards, some pollen was comming in and most of the bees were returning from the same direction. Most to be learned about a hive before one opens it up is to watch thier behavior at the enterance.

When I opened it the roar of fanning was already in progress. This either means that it's too hot or they're making alot of honey. I pulled out the first frame to find it practicly dripping with the liquid gold! There were still some capped brood in that super but given there were no eggs above the queen excluder, I had clearly successfully gotten the queen below it. Looking into the brood nest, the russians had dramaticly expanded their brood nest. They are now on almost all the frames with brood and have drawn out all but one or two frames of foundation. Some of the comb has been so stored with honey that the bees actually expanded it from the usuall 1" to about 1.5"...and yes that means alot. It means that honey is comming in so strong that with the top super full they need more room...and fast! It's times like this when everything falls into place and beekeeping becomes exciting, in a good way!

Where did they go?

2006-03-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

I checked Friday morning and there were probably around 3 bees making their quick flights into and out of the enterence crack. I arive home from school around 8 hours later to find that not a single bee is in residence. I observed it for about half and hour and didnt' see anything. I got immpatient (like any adolecent) and threw a rock...or two at it. Still nothing happened, not so much as one bee investigating the disturbance. Then, I was upset, threw on my veil and gloves and shoved a wire hanger into the hole. Still nothing. The bees much have either absconded or been killed by pesticides implanted into buildings to keep out pests such as termites. I think the more likely option is they they just absconded; packed up and left. Saturday I'll probably open up that area if I see any beee in the enterence crack and see just what is going on inside. It can't be anything to much since, if I poke a hanger into the hole and not even one single bee shows up, there must not be many bees in there.

...what falls through the cracks.

2006-03-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Maybe flys into the cracks would be more accurate. I was walking around in the backyard today and noticed how the stucko covered 2nd story poarch is falling appart. The wood is completely rotton and massive cracks are forming. Looking closer at one of the larger cracks(about 1/2 inch wide) there were bees flying in and out. There were probably about a dozen. Some bees had made their nest in a poarch that WILL fall probably within the year. Now, this weekend I'll have to remove it and see if these bees are anything usable. If they are africanized then I'm in for a living hell...

Remember that TBH (Top Bar Hive)?

2006-03-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

Yeah...that one I was "enthusiastic" about last October. Anyways...it is now dead...er uh, disassembled. It never had bees in it but, then again it was never built well enough to house any living thing other than maybe termites. So, if you haven't guessed by now, I'm in high school. Of cource, no high school is complete without a "Shop Class" or as we call it, "Materials and Processes IB". Most just call it "Shop". I have been given permission to build a TBH for credit so long as I supply the sides(plywood). Wouldn't ya' know it...I have a mostly built TBH with the proper size wood. So, it was just a mater of taking out those screws...the 3.5 inch deep screws...the 3.5 inch horably stripped screws. It took me over an hour but they're all out and the TBH has been broken down to just it's elemental peices. Sides, ends, screws and screening...the last two found their way into a garbage can. Now I'm thinking of "reserving" a package from Spell Bee co.(I bought my first package from them and those bees have been astounding!) So, if I ever get that thing "up and running" I'll be sure to post it on my TBH blog. http://topbarhive.blogspot.com/

Trapped Above

2006-03-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

I checked on the Italian hive yesterday and found that I had actually trapped the queen above where I wanted her. She's laying in the honey supers while the brood box is missing eggs. On the plus side, she suddenly got alot more room to lay, leading to more bees...and eventually, more honey. The bees were oddly aggresseive yesterday. I left the top super(containg nothing but foundation) and the queen excluder off then was recruited by my Dad, the second I finished, to mow the lawn. I got about a third of the way through then, suddenly, about half a dozen (6) bees just started headbutting me. For those of you who don't know, "head-butting" is when the bees are angery and ram the source of their anger in the face...me. This is usually one step before stinging and can accidentally enter the nasal and oral cavities as well as the ears and eyes. Not nice places to be stung. I did get stung in the ankle through the sock by one determined bee. The pain passed in about 5 minutes but, with the weight of walking it did get more intense. Then, my mother, weeding, got stung in the scalp. In the pain scale that's just one step below the tounge. They seemed to "cool their tempers" by the next day but, the fact that they were still aroused after an hour leads me to beleive that I must have screwed up somewhere in the inspection. I was carfull and didn't roll any so I don't know what went wrong.

Pollen-Bound

2006-03-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

I checked on the russian hive today. When I first approached I was surprised that the brick I keep on the hive cover to cover the feeding hole had been moved. It appeared to be recent given their was an expanding ring of propolis in teh hole only 1/4 inch in radius. The brick had to have been moved within the last week. There is a school nearby so my first guess goes to mischeavious adolecense. Anyways, when I put in the queen excluder a few weeks ago I accidentally trapped the queen ABOVE the brood chamber. Now, where there's supposed to be honey there is brood...and alot of it. The brood chamber ( the one below that the queen was "locked out" of) is almost COMPLETELY filled with pollen. The oak trees in the area have produced a steady flow of the proteinous powder. Such pollen has also reaked havoc for my allergies. This hive is also a little light in stores and next week I expect to feed both of them. The hive population has steadliy increased and now they are actually drawing out the foundation, which leads me to beleive that there has been or still is a minor honeyflow. If their is, it's too weak to create any stores but should help the hive in its day-to-day existence.

Hmmmmm...a little light.

2006-03-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

I did the first meaningful inspection on the italian hive since February 5th. They've gone through almost a super of honey and may need feeding. I'll be able to further evaluate this next week. I am surprised that they're not managing to feed themselves with nectar given the entire neighborhood has azalia bushes blooming and it seems that most everything is following suit. The Jacarandas should start blooming next month and hopefully then the bees will store some honey. They have gotten very full of pollen given the oak trees have been blooming for about 2 weeks now. The number of bees in the hive has also lessened noticably. I'm begining to question varroa paricitation. In other words, I'm wondering if my hive has varroa mites in great enough numbers to injure the hive. I did get the queen excluder in place today and hopefully that will contain the queen's laying to where I want the eggs...out of the honey! However, the bees must be in a reasonably good state in refference to resources. They have begun to rear drones which they do only when they feel they have a surplus of food.

As I was lighting my smoker a neighbor approached me. While waiting for the, "Your bees are in my pool/birdbath/hummingbird feeder." she was actually intriuged (sp) about the bees given she had just learned about them a week ago when I gave her honey. She began with the usuall questions of, "How do you feed them? How many are there? Do you ever get stung?" It's always nice to receive questions like this when compared to the alternative..." What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Same as Last TIme

2006-02-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday of last week (February 7, 2006) I harvested more honey. It ended up being the same amount as the last harvest in October due to some changes I made in the last minute. I decided to leave that second super full of honey for the bees given they appered to be "digging into it" for their own needs. I figured that I might as well leave that on untill the Jacaranda trees start blooming in mid March or so. I'll probably beging treating them soon for Varroa and innoculating them against American and European Foulbrood...basicly, most anything bad that is present of may present itself later in the year. The honey is much darker than the crop I got earlier. When held up to the light it has a redish amber color but, when not held to the light it apears black and one cannot see through it. There was a fair bit of pollen in the frames and think that may account for some of the darkness in the honey. Given the time of year the honey was stored and it's color I'm inclined to beleive that it is predominantly Gallberry. This time I fed the honey from the cappings back to the bees so I probably saved them about a quart of honey. Since I disturbed them so many times in one week (inspection sunday...removal of honey supers Tuesday...replacement of honey supers Wednesday) I decided not to do an inspection this weekend.

Here is some of the honey just to show you how dark it is.

Here is a picture showing the color of the honey when held up to the light.

All in all it was a successfull harvest...I cut the time in half compared to last time. I finished extraction and cleaned up in about 3 hours!

Why are their two races of bees in my hive?

2006-02-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

I went to check on the Russian hive a little after I checked on Italian one. At first I was concerned that they may have swarmed. They were very quiet given there is usually a loud roar when I open the hive. I appears as though most of the super is filled with honey but they're still refusing to draw out most of the frames in teh brood chamber. Only about 6 frames are drawn with only 4 in active use. I'll probably have to requeen this colony or hope that the bees more actively draw comb in the summer. THe one thing they have no shortage of in that colony is propolis. The hive is just about gummed up with the stuff. One thing I did notice when I opened the hive was that my usually dark black bees now have a few Italian, leatherback colored ones. This has probably been due to the queen being killed and a new queen mated with native stock. I did find a supercedure queen cell cup on one of the frames. The brood patern in teh hive is improving. I'm begining to find the characteristic circular shape brood patern of a good queen. The bees sure do seem to be storing enough pollen. THere are practicly frames full of the stuff. If I could just get those bees to draw out the rest of the frames I'd be happy and maybe I'd get a crop or two of honey this year. This could be a prommissing year for honey production.

Unconfortably Close

2006-02-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

I inspected the Italian colony today to guage how long untill I should harvest honey. Right now, given it seems that the honeyflow has halted, I'm thinking I should harvest the two boxes either Tuesday or the weekend after next. After seeing the honey I removed the boxes to get down to teh brood chamber where the queen, eggs, and larvea are. I removed the first frame and accidentally rolled all the bees off. Rolling bees is jsut when they are all scraped off the comb by an adjacent frame. Either way, they get very angery when that happens. I continued looking through the frames and then heard a loud buzz and felt something on my ear. Then it flies to the face mask part of the veil. A bee had gotten into my veil! Then, after a few seconds I noticed two more. It turns out that my veil had gotten caught open on the back of my shirt collar. I had to close up the hive before I could do a varroa test given they were getting nasty since I rolled them and I had a few "visitors" in my veil. I hastely closed them back up and walked away. I threw my veil off my neck and watched as a few bees flew out. Overall, it wasn't a very productive inspection, though I did move a few frames around in hopes that the honey they contained would be ripened a bit more. On Monday, I'll hope to sanitize my equipment and get everything in place...oh, I forgot to buy the jars. On Tuesday afternoon, the harvest will begin!

A look back...

2006-01-30T14:29:00.000-08:00

Contrary to anything I've said, the hive I have now is not my first hive. I tried a little over one year earlier on March 23, 2004. I wanted to keep them in an observational hive so I could look at them any time I wanted. I ignored all the nessesary equipment such as a veil, smoker, hive tool, gloves...everything. Basicly, I was an idiot. The hive died on July 17, 2004 after it absconded. They swarmed for the first time in June with a productive queen and just as I once thought they were dead for sure, I found a queen laying happily. I realize this is kind of random but, I just wanted to show you a really cool hive. The sides are made of glass so you can see the bees at any time of day. I still have the hive so, if I were so inclined, I could repopulate it and make another blog about an observational hive. I would even be able to show pictues of the queen at any time, show her laying eggs and the workers doing various duties that are impossible to capture in an ordinary hive like the one I have now. By the way, when I say the colony died by absconding; absconding is the act of abandoning a hive. When they left, Small Hive Beetles devoured the comb, honey, and pollen left and tuned it all into a foul-smelling rottting pile of slime. Here are the photos at its prime in may 2004.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/Apis629/P4030001.jpg
Here is an overview of the entire hive...only 2 frames. THe duct tape was used to keep the two sections together...wouldn't want 6,000 bees flying free in my room.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/Apis629/P4030003.jpg
Here's a close up section.

I wish I would have taken more photos. Probably the coolest thing to watch in the hive were the dances. By recording them and playing them slow speed I could tell the direction of the nectar/pollen/water/propolis source in meters and the direction relative to the sun at that time.

I got the MONEY SHOT!

2006-01-29T10:32:00.000-08:00

Today's inspection began like any other, with the exception that I remembered the camera. I decided to actually search for the queen this time using minimal smoke. I got down to the brood nest and this is what I saw.
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/Apis629/DSCN6865.jpg
Needless to say, it's a good thing when so many bees are covering the frames. The queen had layed eggs like crazy. All those frames of capped brood are now filled with eggs and larvae. They've even moved some honey up into the supers to make room for egg laying! I did find one thing that tells me things aren't well...a bee with deformed wings. This could be a sign of that dreded varroa mite. There were also some "sick" bees that seemed to stumble on top of the bars. So much for my bragging that I don't have any mites. The good news is that, maybe, the screened bottom boards I installed will help with this problem. The honeyflow has also continues and strengthened with the blooming of the ornamentals in parking lots. Here's the big moment, I found the queen...AND GOT HER PICTURE. Now you can see the mother of the hive. (please excuse the blurrieness)
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/Apis629/DSCN6866.jpgWith an inspection well done, I diagnosed a possible disease, checked how the honeyflow was going, checked on broodrearing and even found the queen alive and well. I think in that last post when I said there was another queen, I caught her running across the top bar and must have missed the dot...or maybe it was one of those "big fish" stories. But, now I have irrifutable evedence that I saw the queen, now to today's topic...What's her name?!

Excelent Brood Patern...wait, who are you?

2006-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

I did an inspection of the Italian hive today and I think it was one of my better ones. I got everthing assembled and put together, suited up and hoped that the bees wouldn't sting too much. The Italian hive at my house had become increasingly aggressive throught the fall and, needless to say, I was concerned for my own sake. Today I would do a full inspection, not a touch up of the supers, I mean all the way into the core of the brood nest...where bees are most defensive. Here's how the journey went. The bees haven't even begun to draw out the top super and however, the one below it was probably 70% filled with capped honey. I smoked them and they roared...a few hundred had taken flight and were hoveing around me. It was probably the most bees I've ever seen flying in one area! Granted, the roar was loud...louder than an airconditioner. I removed the super just above the brood box and nearly dropped it given its weight. It is 100% full of capped honey. I finaly got down to the brood nest for the first time in almost 2 months. While this may seem neglegent keep in mind that I was being repelled by stinging behavior, and to this point I didn't have even one sting in my gloves. I picked through the frames and found that every one of them had brood in them. The four or five frames that make up the center were completely full and branching out from that frames were 2/3 full of brood and the two end frames were about 1/4 full. In the center of the brood nest I actually found the queen but, I found out why it's been so hard to locate her. This queen is not the one I installed with the package, she had no white dot on her thorax. Either way, I'm keeping her, she's fueling an army of bees to make gallons of honey! I got one sting in my right glove when I picked up a super and accidentally squished a bee. It was the only sting I got in the entire inspection. Not bad for such a large colony. One thing I do have to bring up is when I got back into the house my father said, "Did you see how many bees were in the air around the hive?! There was a cloud of bees!" Just to put this into perspective, it looked like what would be equall to the entire Russian hive taking to the skys. Anyways, the hive is loaded with bees, brood, pollen and honey. Drone numbers, however, seem awfully low. I think the honeyflow may be in a lull of production. I could easily, however, pull off one super full of honey almost any time. I'm just waiting for that other super to be filled. G4st...your birthday present should be ready in time!

Much Better!

2006-01-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

I checked on the Russian hive today for the first time in over a month, probably a month and a half. While I wasn't looking forward to it given the dismal condition it was in last time I had to do it anyway. I wasn't even sure if they were alive. When I got there they seemed to be in heavy foraging. This was a good sign. I suited up as usuall, lit the smoker and got to work. The population had much improved and now they're probably at close to half of the population of the Italian colony. They seem to be gathering nectar and have stored entire frames full of pollen. I think I've identified the primary attributes which make them uncomfortable to work with. Listed in order they are: Loud noise, balling tendencies, head-butting tendencies, lack of honey production and stinging behavior. While some people think I may be over reacting about the loud noise..I have to tell you, it is just kind of hinting of unfortunate things to come. In the italian hive, they buzz for a few seconds after I smoke them and then it tapers off. In the russian hive it just grows into a roar. From 30 yards away it could still be heard. Back to the inspection, this queen appears to be doing better than before. Egg laying is much improved in grouping...there's actually one frame in the center that is enirely filled. The other frames aren't great but they're better than before. The brood nest now, at least partially, occupies four frames. It was more spread out at first but, I suspect that the warmer temperatures of spring and summer will become the catalyst for lateral brood nest expansion (I like using BIG words.) Next time I'll get photos...maybe that's what I should do with the Christmas money...buy a camera! Tomarow I'll open the italian hive and see how far along that honey is!

Not Exactly as Planned

2006-01-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

I had assembled every tool I could possibly immagine needing; a long knife, hive tool, bee brush, veil, helmet, jacket, cardboard boxes, bucket, super, repelent, fume board, hammer, axe, saw and of cource, the smoker and smoker fuel. I arived to a hopeless clump of wax, honey, brood, pollen and bees. The log was actually about 5 feet long and was probably close to 2 feet whide at it's widest point. This is much bigger than the landowner made it out to be! It seems that when it was cut, they went half way through the brood nest, so, there went my hope for a queen. I figured I'd clear out the trunk in hopes of finding some bees protected in some cavety. I pleeled apart the combs which had all sandwiched together like a stack of pancakes. Inbetween each pair of combs were countless dead bees; killed by the weight of their own honey. After I was about a fith of the way through the trunk, I had filled my bucket with honeycomb; dripping with honey. Unfortunately, none of it could be used as the landowners, in a panic, tried to spray the nest with wasp and hornet spray. It worked none the less. I noticed when I began to take apart the hive that there were italian, carniolan and russian bees all there. It also seemed as if some heavy foraging was going on. I realized when they all dispersed with the smoke, that this hive was practically devoid of bees belonging to that hive, all the bees I saw were bees from other hives, stealing the honey for their own uses. As I got to the center of the combs which contained some of the brood nest, it was covered in Small Hive Beetles, even if I could save the honey, it would surely become a mass of bubbling liquid before I could eat it given the Small Hive Beetle's eating habits. This hive was certainly HUGE in its prime. It even had honey from over a year ago. The color of the brood combs told me by themselves that this hive had been a perenial. All this activety had stired up the curiosity of the neighbors. One of which came over and said exitedly, "Are you like, a real Bee-man?" He was so facinated by bees that he had bees on honeycombs tatooed on his shoulders. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera but, he said he'd e-mail me the photos. In the end I endured one sting and the hive had over 150 pounds of honey. Beleive me, it was heavy, so heavy that I needed help to lift it in shifts. Feeling that I had done my job,(for free too) I took off my honey-soaked gloves and veil and had a conversation with the landowners standing next to the shell of a hive. Just as I was talking about how I had only gotten one sting and was surprised that was it, given the hive had just been fallen the day before, a lone bee flew into the coller of the shirt behind my neck and stung. It actually didn't hurt too bad...untill I tried to get the stinger out. Since I can't see behind my head, in an effort to remove it I basicly pushed it in. It wasn't too confortable but, probably the worst effect was that my neck was stiff. The burning passed in a few minutes. The odd part is, I thought a sting in the neck would hurt MORE than the fingers. It was the other way around. Anyways, no bees could be saved, the comb found its way into the dumpster with the honey, and I got nothing, not even bees in return for my work. I even ruined my shoes. The honey won't come off. All in all, I feel the better for it, I worked hard and created three more bee enthusiests.

Timber!!!!!!

2006-01-17T17:42:00.000-08:00

I was just about to update this blog saying that nothing has happened and that I was bored. At 6:00pm I got a phone call that changed everything. Someone has an unwanted hive from a recently cut down tree and has taken the effort to research and then call me. Best of all, this hive has already been cut down and is just sitting on the ground so there's no percarious hights involved! Hear this, when I asked about their temperment, here's what I got in reply, "Well, we cut it down with a chainsaw and no one got stung." Those must be some really laid back bees! Now I've put together all of my equipment, cleaned my gloves, smoker and hive tool, as well as ammassed every tool that might me minorly usefull. I've also extravagently taped up a cardboard box that will serve as their residence for a few hours. With any luck, I'll try to combine that hive with my russian hive in hopes of helping them draw comb and kill the old queen. She's just terrible. I've complained before so I won't go in depth. It's just to the point that, as the book says, "The Queen must Die". I'll try to take many photos. Wish me luck.

Condencation Cover

2006-01-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

Just as the tital says, I supered the hive on Sunday. Things have been a little hectic with school so I haven't had much time to update this blog. Anyways, it was a cold day so I only had enough time to take off the cover and super the colony. I'm hoping to do an inspection this comming Sunday. Who knows...they may have even drawn some comb by then. When I was putting the super on, the second I took off the cover a few drops of water came off. I gave it a hard shake away from the hive and at least a cup[ of water sheeted off. I was a little bit concerned about condencation as a result of cold temperatures and the humidity of ripening honey but, I didn't think it would become an issue. I fixed the problem by proping the cover up about 1/8" with two twigs and hopefully, that will alow water vapor to escape out of the hive rather than condencing on the cover, dropping down and chilling the bees. It's actually been cool at night to flash a flashlight at the crack and see a little stream of steam float out. It's deffinately not big enough to cause concern for heat loss. If the bees don't like it they can readily fill it up with propolis. I haven't checked on the russian hive for a while and, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. They're ill tempered, skitish, run on the comb, ball into "buzzing taffey" and just aren't that pleasent. Maybe I'll be able to requeen this year. That's another entry for another day.

I might get a harvest sooner than I thought...

2005-12-29T11:40:00.000-08:00

In my past few posts I stated that there was a honeyflow. Today, I learned just how strong that honeyflow is. Currently, the hive I have here (the Italian one) consists of a deep brood box and two supers. The botom super is filled with pollen and capped honey and the top super is over half capped with honey. At this rate I'll be able to harvest honey before the end of February and maybe sooner! When I opened the hive the bees were clearly busy; bees were flying in heavely burdoned with pollen and nectar and the entire hive had a sweet smell. No doubt do to the ripening honey. I pulled off the first super after a fair bit of prying. I thought that they must have collected alot of propolis but, when I got it off I saw tons of virgin white comb that was attaching the supers. This flow is so strong that the bees are violating "bee space" to store it all. I was going to take off that super and check out the brood box but, given it's only about 70ºF I didn't want to chill the brood. When the brood get cold (below 90ºF, they die. There was also the issue of the bees being a tad aggressive to my presence. I may have to requeen come spring. So, I lifted the super, heavy with ripening honey, and my smoker slips and burns my thigh. I screemed and dropped the super with wood, wax, honey, bees and all. Luckely, I dropped it onto the hive and not the ground. I actually burned a hole all the way through my khakis. This was very painful given I had just burned my leg. I slid the super into alighnment and put the cover on. I brushed off the oak leaves and dirt that had accumulated on it and walked away. I guess I'll have to use my gift card for Dadant to buy some new shiny extracting gear.

Some Bee Foraging Behavior...

2005-12-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

I was bored today so I watched honeybees on Spanish Needle. It was windey today with gusts around 12 m.p.h. In less that one square yard there were five honeybees foraging simutaniously. That's kind of odd given I've read that bees stop foraging after around 8 m.p.h. winds. It was really cool to watch how they would bite the pollen off the anthers. they would just dig their heads in, clamp down with their mandibles and just "rake" it back to their legs. I had never acually stopped to watch them forage. There was one intresting niche they did though. They would actually sit on the flower or the pettles and either fly to a stem and crawl up it to get to the flower-head or they would "jump" from flower to flower about 1 inch away from eachother. To be honest, I thought that the bees would usually fly from flower to flower but, it was really interesting to see them quite literealy jump.

I found out what's blooming.

2005-12-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

There's been a honeyflow going on lately so I figured I might as well go around and see what it is.There's only one plant blooming in abundance in the neighborhood and that's Spanish Needle. And humor me, this being my first year I'm trying to establish what my honeyflows will come from and this is more for my own records than it is for anyone else to read. Anyways, my camera has a dead battery and since I don't feel like waiting three hours to do a post I'm just gonna pull a picture of it off google. It is kind of funny though. Every spring and summer I hate this stuff given it grows on/near the beaches and has a tendancy to stick and cut into one's foot. I guess it's cool that in the winter I still get a honeyflow and these flowers are good for pollen too. There is an unbeliveable amount of activety around the enterences every afternoon. There's heavy trafic of bees (at least 6 bees a second!) and it's only around 60ºF. They were even flying when it was around 52ºF and these were foraging flights, not deffication ones. Anyways, here's a picture of that annoying, but usefull, Florida Native.

Sorry I haven't posted anyting in a while. I'm going out of town for the holidays so I won't be posting too much after this untill early to mid January. Although I like to inspect and work the bees it's at this time of year when the temp hovers anoud 70ºF and drops in the evening I like to stay out and reduce the stress on the colonies.

Deja vu...

2005-12-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

Today was a good warm day in winter; a high of 80 degrees! It was finally warm enough to do an extensive check on how the bees were doing. The large italian hive got a clean bill of health and was very docile today. I didn't get one sting! The population has clearly diminished as has the brood nest. Anyways, I took off a super, which I thought was empty, so I could fill it with sugar syrup and give it to the russian colony. It took me about 15 minutes to fill the super with 1 1/2 gallons of syrup. In the center frames there was a actually fermenting, recently gathered nectar. Somewhere near here there is a species of plant blooming in mid winter. I went over to the russian hive which I last inspected a couple of weeks ago so I was unsure if it was even alive. They couldn't be more alive. Although there wasn't much activety at the enterence, the inside was buzzing with activety! They were very low on honey stores and actually didn't have much more that a few ounces of capped honey. What honey/nectar they did have was black as tar and most of it was stored in brood cells. It makes sence given the queen isn't laying very many eggs when the day length is shortening. I put the super full of nectar and sugar syrup when the man alowing me to keep bees on his property walked up and told me about a hive in a water meter. "I found it the other day jogging, did your bees swarm?"he asked. I replied that there was never a population drop large enough to indicate a swarm had ocurred. He kept telling me it was a beehive and as much as I didn't believe there was a subterranian hive of bees, I looked into it. We walked about 60 yards up a street and stopped at a tree. There was a group of bees ontop of what looked like a city water meter. I told him they were definately bees, but not my bees. The russians I had were almost a jet black, these bees has tan, italian colored bodies. The bees were all fanning and flying in and out of a slot at the end of the meter and in the little key hole at the other end. Thus, I come to the name of the post, it was just last week I was told about a hive someone wanted removed. The good news about this hive is if they pass the aggressian test they should be relatively easy to capute compared to the hive 25 feet up. First, I'll have to call the city to see if they'll even let me do it given the hive is nesting in city property. We'll see how it goes.

It looks like that won't be happening!

2005-12-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've now determined that it is a touch too dangerous to be taking the colony. It seemed a little on edge at first but, after this aggression test I did it would be insane to try. Anyways, I went over to the colony, got a long pole and put an old, black sock on it. Before I did this I was sure to have a smoker on stand-by just incase... I was swinging the sock around to determine how aggressive the bees were and something really surprised me. When it got within 6 feet the bees began head-butting it as if to say "GO AWAY!" As soon as it got within 2 feet it was clear I couldn't take this colony. DOZENS of bees fell off the comb to attack this small opponant. At one point the sock appeared to be encased in bees. Some smoke made short work of that but, needless to say, I'm not up to the job. As I said before, being 25 feet in the air taking bees seemed to be crazy enough but doing it on an africanized colony seems more like suicide! Either way, as much as I wanted to get these bees I had to tell my neighbor to call an exterminator since, I just don't have the stuff to deal with an africanized colony.

You've got to be joking...you're not joking?!

2005-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

I got a call from a neighbor about one mile away today saying that she had a hive of bees on the outside of her tree about 25 feet up. I kept telling her that bees build nests INSIDE objects, not outside them. Eventually though I was intrigued enough that I went over there at about 4:00p.m. She wasn't kidding, they're honeybees alright. A nice hive too, it looks like they were from a swarm just a few weeks ago as there's alot of white comb. Comb is only white before it's exposed to brood or pollen. The cluster itself was about the size of a basket ball. I think they're closer to 15 or 20 feet up. Tomarow afternoon I'll do a flag test to determine if I want them (a.k.a. that they're not africanized [killer bees]). If they pass that test I'll take them that night. I want to do it at night because, that way it's too cold for them to actively fly and therefore I can drop them right into the bucket. Oh yeah, I'm gonna be dangling from a ladder 25 feet in the air with thousands of cranky, cold bees. What could go wrong...

Eggs!

2005-11-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

I checked on the Italian hive and they seem to be doing well. They've got more than enough honey to sustain themselves and the Russian hive. They're also very populous but, they know that winter is comming and are propolizing the hive to prevent the cold winter winds from drafting in. The highlight of the day, however, was with the Russian hive. There wasn't to much activety at the enterence so, I was a bit worried when I was comming to inspect them. I donned my gear, lit the smoker and looked inside. There were still plenty of bees but, they really haven't drawn much comb. They've stored alot of the sugar syrup I was giving them and, I finaly saw eggs in cells. A sure sign that there is a queen. There were even some young larvae. I'll be able to better diagnose how well this queen performs over the next few weeks but, it's a releif to see eggs! This hive may make it through the winter yet!

I'm worried.

2005-11-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

This is no change from the usuall but, I'm worried about the Russian colony. I went over to check on it today and they were very aggressive. The population had certainly increased but, my Italian colony was 3 times that size before their increased aggressian became noticable. I inspected the colony as usuall but, after opening it I decided to go with gloves. They were NOT happy. I pulled out a frame and they had completely drawn the comb but, it was empty; no brood and no honey. I continued searching all the frames and some had honey but, none had larval brood or eggs. The bees had a very loud buzz but it all sounded the same. Then, I picked up a frame, they buzzed as usuall but, just after I turned it over to inspect the other side I heard a loud sound, "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". This repeated a few times and I was slighly dumbfounded. I had never heard bees say their name. I've heard that this was the reason they are called bees but, never heard it myself. I was thinking at the time that possibly the broodless state was due to a lack of resources so, I put on a quart of 1:1 sugar syrup. I still have no idea why the only brood is capped. Some was emerging when I arrived but, I have come to a few likely conclutions. I saw some bees coming in with pollen and there was also a fair bit stored so I don't think their is a pollen dearth but, a lack of nectar. Their honey stores have been deeply tapped and I think the lack of brood has been caused by a lack of food. I do have some facts to back this up. Russians are more efficient in their brood rearing activeties and if the temperature is too cold to keep the brood warm or they don't have enough resources, they will stop brood production. Italians will maintain a large amount of brood until it gets too cold to cover it and keep it warm. Another idea as to why they are so short on brood is that their queen is dead, either by supersedure or my manipulations and inspections. This is very unlikely but, if it is the case, it's too late to buy a new queen and too late for the bees to raise their own so, I'd have to combine them with the Italian colony here. I really hope that isn't the case. If it does turn out to be a lack of nectar then, that is easily manageable. I'll be able to tell by how fast they drink the sugar syrup. I'll probably continue feeding them even if that isn't the problem just because they need to draw out comb and they need winter stores. I'll be checking up on them daily or at least every other day to see what the situation is. I hope they're alright.

...light for the first time.

2005-10-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

I went to that colony I made from a split and I will now and forever refer to it a the Russian colony. Anyways, I DID IT WITHOUT GLOVES! Hooray for me! I didn't even get stung, I was shaking alot, though. But seriously, I opened it and unlike running up the frames like my Italians they seemed to acknowlage my presence and then continue working. I lifted one fram and there was a patch of 3 square inches of bees chewing their ways out of their cells. I forgot the camera but, I will take a picture next time I see it. It really is a beautiful sight. There were maybe one or two very angry bees that were repatedly trying to dive-bomb my veil and sting my hands. I just shooed them off and eventually they stopped trying. Anyways, there is clearly a honeyflow going on and at the rate this hive is spreading I'll need to put on a super in two or three weeks. I think they're building up faster than my Italians. One thing that cought my eye was one bee that was about half the size of her sisters. She was practicly miniature. I've never seen such a small honeybee. I can't tell if she was malnurished, paracitized, or just sick. I also took off the straps today as well as the bricks and noticed something I overlooked earlier. The bottom board which I converted into a flat top for the Russian hive is warped. The bees should propolise it up in the comming few days but, I should probably replace it. I am, however, noticing that these bees really do use propolis extensively. The cover was practically cemented on and the Top Bars are already covered in the stuff. Cool part is if I start harvesting it I can make floor polish, ointments and just use it as an adhesive. On the plus side is that once this hive really gets growing and uses more propolis the cover won't come off in high wind. I'm not going to open the large Italian colony until next week. I've already disturbed them this week to take their honey.

2 Gallons 3 Quarts and 1/4 cup...

2005-10-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

That's how much honey I harvested yesterday. I din't take to many photos because I was worried about getting the camera sticky. Anyways, the temps were in the 70s so my inteded meathod of fumigating bees out of the super wouldn't work. I had to go to plan B: maunual brushing of bees off of frames. It took about an hour and at the end there were about 1,000 very confused, very angery bees in the garage. Not exacly the best place but, they all cleared out and I didn't get a single sting! Anyways, with all the bees off the comb I could see how great it looked. The cappings were so white I'm thinking of using this colony for comb honey production next year. Anyways, here's a picture of the comb I'm talking about...

The extractor was, of cource, the centerpeice for the honey extraction. Unfortunately, I'm a little inexperienced at balancing frames so, half of the time the extractor was jumping around like a salad spinner filled with a brick. The honey came out ok, but, the straining is what really took the time. I clocked it at about 3 tablespoons per minute. That gave me plenty of time to put the super back on the colony. Strait out of the hive the honey had a mild bitterness to it but, after about three hours the flavor completely changed. Now it tastes like sugar but, has aromas and flavors that couldn't be found with table sugar. Here's a little interesting tid-bit, if I sold all the honey from that one super I'd have made a little over $100.00! To bad that became illegal. Anyways, here's a picture of the honey...

A Long Explanation of Events...

2005-10-25T18:19:00.000-07:00

We all heard about Wilma, right? Anyways, she came and went and was a hick-up compared to Francis. Nothing really interesting or scary even happend. Around here there was no flooding, no real wind damage and the house didn't even lose power! I know that just 100 miles to the south it was terrable but, we didn't feel any of that here. Anyways, I prepared for the worst. I tied down the hive and weighted the top of the smaller colony.

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I wasn't too worried about the one here given it was so heavy. Around 5:00am the winds reached their highest with sustained 40 M.P.H. and gusts up to 60 M.P.H. At this point I was worried about the smaller hive but, the weather was too inclement to go check on it. I waited through the day either by staring at the large hive throught the window or reading up some more on bees. Eventually, the hurrican passes and, to my surprise, the temperature dropped from the mid eightys to the upper sixties. It got cold and, believe it or not, my bees went into a winter cluster and I think expelled some drones. I could see that the large colony here was about 500 bees smaller as it looks like the beird was blown down into a puddle. While that's no problem at all, it still isn't nice to see drowned bees. The weather passes around 9:00am and I went out to check on the smaller hive at about noon. As you can imagine, I became very concerned when I saw this:

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an empty enterence. So, like an idiot I stuck the camera under the hive and took a photo.

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Take special notice to the fact that there are bees OUTSIDE the screen and were seperated from my hand by about 1/2 inch. Oh, and, one more thing, before I closed up the hive I did a quick inspection and someone wanted to take some photos of me in my new bee suit.

Status...

2005-10-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

Here we've been getting the outer bands of hurricane Wilma for the past few hours. The rain has been light to moderate, and the wind has bearly blown. Wilma is expected to make landfall about 6:00am eastern time just 200 miles south of me. The winds are expected to climax at that time and so far (12:00am) power is still on. Oh, and, one more thing, Hurricane Wilma has increased in spead to a strong Catagory 3 out of 5. I checked out the beach this morning and the waves were about eight feet higher than normal. On a more satisfying note, if the rain gets much harder the main hole covers are goin' to burst. Last time it rained like this there was a two foot fountain of water streaming out of one just down the street. If it happens, I'll get photos.

The Russians are coming...The Rusians are comming...

2005-10-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Russians are comming...out of their cells. The Russian honeybees that is. I quickly checked on the hive I made from a split a few weeks ago and the population is definately expanding. I saw the queen and could compare the old Italian honeybees from the split and the young Russians that are now starting to emerge en masse. The main reason I went to check it out was not for just an inspection. I went over there to tie down the hive to some cinderblocks as 40+ MPH winds are expected. I even used a shovel in an attempt to prevent the water immidiately eating at the sand underneith the cinder blocks. The hive is still very light, about 40 pounds, so that's why I took all the precautions. The larger hive of Italians here I'm confident are so heavy and propolized that I don't have to worry about them blowing over. Assumming power stays on throught the storm (Wilma) I should be able to extract the honey on Tuesday afternoon.

Just to give you an idea...

2005-10-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

Just to give you an idea of how many bees are in the hive, think about it. It's at night, all the bees are in the hive, and they're so short on room that they're hanging off the enterence like this.

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(Photos taken October 19, 2005)

If you look carefully you can see my regestration number.

My New Extracting Equipment

2005-10-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

The extracting/bottling equipment actually got here in only a week. Here's a photo of all of it...

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The large stainless-steel cylender is the actuall extractor which holds two frames and spins the honey out of them with cyntrifical force. Leaning up against the extractor is a very large, very long and very weird looking knife. This is called an extracting knife and is used to cut off the wax cappings that the bees seal their honey with. There is also a white jacket sitting on top of a bucket with a flow gate. This jacket is just the same as my bee veil but, provides more protection for if the bees are a little "nasty". The bucket is called a bottling bucket or settling tank. The little particles of wax, pollen, and bee parts will float to the top where they can be skimed and only honey is left on the bottom. The flow gate works like a valve to let honey out so it can be put into jars. Just to the right of that is a shiny, metal covered peice of wood. The bottom of this is felt and is used in conjunction with the bee repelent to chase the bees out of the supers. The repelent is in a little bottle just beneith it. Hopefully, this harvest will go quite well.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2005-10-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Wilma is approaching fast and could pose a major problem for my bees. For those of you that don't know, hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan last year destroyed about a third of the beehives here in florida and now, hurricane Wilma, could pose some problems for me and my bees. I was planning to extract about 60 pounds of honey this weekend from my top super but, now I'll have to let it stay there depending on how high the winds get here. The whole reason I'd stay out of the hives this weekend is that the longer I stay out, the more propolis gets applied to the sides, cover and joints. This propolis will hold the hive together through the wind and if I opened the hive I would end up getting rid of the propolis so the hive wouldn't have anything holding it together other than the weight of the wood. Given the national weather says that the hurricane will probably be a catagory 3 out of 5 when it makes landfall, the bees are going to need all the help they can get. So, I'll probably have to stay out of the hives this weekend.
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8 HOURS LATER...

Wilma is now a catagory 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 175 miles per hour! It could make some major probems if it comes within one hundred miles of here. It's already more powerful than Charley, Francis, Ivan, Reta or Katrina. I just hope that it skims a cuban mountain range and slows down.

Tomarow: Pictures of Equipment

Honey, honey, honey, ho-ney.......HONEY

2005-10-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

We all know that song from the Aprentance® and I must say that if honey were money I'd have alot of it. Right now I have two full supers, on for the bees and one for me. They're each about sixty pounds so that's 120 pounds right there. If you include the honey in the brood chamber that brings the total amount of honey on the hive to about 140 pounds. That super I put on Wednesday is doing quite well as well. In less than a week it is already half way drawn, now the bees just have to fill it. I'm thinking that once that super is full, or near full I'll give it to that split colony I made to get them through the winter. I think the honey in the super I'm going to take is mostly palmetto while, the honey in the super I'm leaving for the bees is mostly Brazilian Pepper. The bees weren't exactly plesant today so I think I still had some alarm pharamone on me from the stings yesterday despite showering. Oh well, they should be better next week. I didn't take any photos since I was in and out in under 10 minutes. It looks like there's going to be a good honey harvest this year despite getting started so late.

Remember that Split I Made?

2005-10-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks and every week I've checked on that hive. The population is very low, it will have to be nursed through the winter. ON the plus side, however, there is a flow of Brazilian Pepper and palmetto in the area. So far, about four of the five frames are drawn and the queen is pumping out eggs. There is a fair amount of capped brood but, hopefully, it will start emerging soon so the hive can grow. The photos are mostly self explanatory, one shows the entire hive with the nice, new bars, another shows bees storing honey and the last one shows some capped brood and bees. Right now the colony looks like my package did when I first installed it. The nice part is that this colony is so small that it is very easy to work without being stung and requires minimal smoke. Over the next few weeks the population should increase and, worse come to worse, I'll bring over a super of bees and honey from my other colony.

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Assosiation Work Day

2005-10-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Today was a work day for the Tampa Bay Beekeepers Assosiation and I must say that it was very enjoyable. The apiary has fallen to ruin with only a quarter of the hives there were two years ago.(This is going to be long so bear with me...) Anyways, I showed up there at about 8:50 and the entire place was overgrown with grass waist high. The bees weren't really active so the eight of us that showed up waited for about half an hour for some of the bees to leave the hives. Eventually, we all donned our veils and lit out smokers to begin a few hours of work. There were about 20 colonies there but, not all were doing very well. They were on pallets for easy movement and apearantly, it got cold enough the night befor that dew was on the ground. Anyways, I watched what other people were doing for a while and moved onto my fist colony. It was BOOMING! The three medium supers on there were filled with honey and it needed a fourth. That's roughly 180 pounds of harvestable honey on one hive. After a little more rumaging around in the brood box some distance below, I concluded that this hive was healthy and moved on to the next one. It was acutally not doing so well. There were probably 30 pounds of harvestable honey and the colony itself was failing. I was instructed to grab a super full of honey off another colony and place it, bees and all, onto the colony. I did and so moved onto probably the most visious colony I've ever seen. I lifted the cover off and there weren't very many bees. I tought maybe it was queenless so I took off the honey supers and the queen excluder and came to the bottom brood box. It was terrable. It turns out that this colony swarmed in in the last month. It was actually an unused deep box that was just set off to the side with a few supers on it given the colony was a dead-out. All the frames were either foundationless, just wires or warped so, about half of them were taken out and replaced with foundation frames. It was at this point that I noticed that there were probably about a dozen bees trying to attack me through the veil and everyone else in the area. David then said, "I think it may have some africanization in it." I definately agreed when I felt a sting right through my jeans just above my knee. My bees have never stung me through a shirt or pants. Anyways, after working on scraping burr comb from that colony for about half an hour it was time to work another palet. I moved over to the last three hives I would do that day(bringing my total to six). The first one was so heavy with honey that I needed some help lifting the supers off. I got down to the brood box and was noticing a specific problem with queen excluders. Unless the propolis is carved all the way around(which is impossible given the setup) bees would be flung strait into the air like a trampoline. They really didn't like that. The hive was doing very well anyways, so I put the queen excluder and supers back on and went to work on the last two. The next one was basicly the same so I'll talk about the last one I did for the day. It wasn't much better than the visious one I talked about. But, this time, I was stung just below my left shouler blade through my shirt. Someone near me commented,"I think they take a short cource in human anatomy to know where it hurts most." I ripped out the stinger with my hive tool and continued working on the hive. It was definately on its way to becoming a dead-out. We worked on exchanging brood from other hives just to get this one "back on its feet". Oddly enough, non of the hives there had screened bottom boards or upper enterances; both of which I've found key for colony success. Anyways, the day was concluded with five of us, standing in a circle, all with our veils on, discussing our worst stings. One man said that when he started beekeeping he would remove comb with honey, brush the bees off, and eat it. Apearently, once he missed a bee and it stung him in the tounge. I was so thirsty after all that work but I had a few dozen bees on my veil and didn't want to take it off. I grabbed my bee brush, brushed them off, and grabbed a much needed sip of water. The bees still flew around as I had alarm pheramone on my from the stingings. It was a great deal of fun and I can't wait 'till next month.

Stand Tall!

2005-10-12T13:28:00.001-07:00

I finally got around to super the hive today. They wern't exactly happy to see me. Just as I walked outside, befor I had my protective gear on or my smoker lit, this bees flew out at me noisely and first darted toward my face, then did a figure 8 with my legs. Anyways, I lit the smoker, carried the super over there and, with my veil and gloves on, opened the hive. Just before that, when I smoked the enterence I paid more attention to see why the bees always took flight when I smoked them. It turns out that when I smoke the enterence the few hundred bees holding up the few thousand below them in the beard all let go and all those bees drop to the ground and it is followed with a loud, VERY agitated BUZZ. So, after seeing this and having thousands of bees take to the air I was nervous to say the least. I quickly took off the cover, lined up the super, put the cover back on and, briskly walked away. After the bees calm down a bit I'll go back out and take a photo...it may be a while.
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TWO DAYS LATER...

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Sorry it's all tilted 90º, I couldn't get it to fit onto the camera if I did it the normal way so tilt your head...oh, and one more thing...I'M NOT GOING ANY CLOSER UNLESS I HAVE TO DO AN INSPECTION!

Come on in, Honey!

2005-10-12T12:20:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not talking to you. I finally have enough honey on the hive for a decent harvest. There is about 60 pounds so, I've ordered an extractor and all the parts nesesary for a honey harvest. While this is not a huge crop I am quite impressed given every book I read says that "...you will not get a honey crop in the first year.". I have finally proved countless publishers wrong! This will be quite exiting. Every beekeeper I've spoken to says that bees will fight to the death to keep their honey. So, I guess I'll have to suit up, duck tape all the cracks and have a well lit smoker. I'm thinking today I'll put on a super just to see if the bees can fill it. Oh and, I've sampled the honey and observed it's color. It's about a medium table grade and tastes like palmetto honey. I'll probably be able to harvest in about a week and a half or so.

Inspection of a Heavy Hive

2005-10-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Today, after over two weeks, I finally got to inspect the big hive I have here at my house. And do I ever mean BIG. There are probably close to 60,000 bees in there(I don't know...I didn't count them all.). Anyways, I opened the hive as usuall today, and there is a MAJOR honeyflow going on right now. The top super was FULL of capped honey and so was the super below it. All that honey makes for heavy lifting so, as anyone would, to make it easier on myself I carried it on my thighs. It seemed somewhat easier but I got some strange looks from a few people on the street. They must have thought I was crazy to be near so many bees. I got the two supers off and had gotten down the the brood box, good. I smoked the bees thoroughly and began to remove the three foundationless frames I had in the hive. If you're wondering why they're in there, I had no foundation when I did the split so I had to put in empty frames to keep the bees from cementing the hive shut with comb, and it worked. So, I got the frames out and put them in a nuc box. Then, I quickly replaced them with frames with foundation. I could tell that the bees weren't very happy about me taking some of their comb, and since I already saw eggs and knew that the queen was present I didn't see the need to further present myself as a target. I grabbed the nuc then saw that it was overflowing with thousands of bees. I immidiatly put it down and grabbed individual frames, brushing the bees off with a bee brush. I put my smoker down and continued to carry the comb into the garage(bees will ALWAYS fly toward the light) where it was somewhat dark. I returned, profusely perspiring, and saw enough bees to intimidate even the most seasoned beekeeper. I tried to smoke and brush them out but all that got me was alot of very angery bees so, I walked away hoping that they would return to their hive upon nightfall. I have a few photos of some of the comb which I will probably upload over the next day or two. Right now I can see from the second floor of the house that bees are flying back and forth signefying that they have already returned to their daily foraging.

p.s. Don't let anyone tell you that a bee has to be alive to sting. I found out when I was running my hand across the bar about fifteen minutes ago that the bees were so furius that they had stung the wood. Wouldn't you know it that by running my hand across the bar I got a stinger into the fleshy part of my finger print area. It actually hurt alot more than the singers usually do right out of the bee.

The Nuc is Full!

2005-10-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

I did another inspection of the Nuc yesterday and it is FULL of bees. I found the queen, after some effort, and have now transfered the nuc into a full size ten frame brood box. On the frames were nothing but eggs, and capped brood. That new Russian queen has just been pumping out eggs, and the bees have done a fair bit of comb drawing. Over all they were well tempered especially given the situation; it was about to rain. The bees had already stored a few pounds of honey too. I think there's a honeyflow of palm and palmetto going on right now. There was also some collected pollen, esspecially bottle brush, in the comb. At the rate this queen is laying she should have no problem building up a population before winter. It'll still be another week or two before the first of her offspring begin emerging. They should be chericteristicaly black and grey.

A little something I've been up to...

2005-10-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've been building a TBH(Top Bar Hive). It is the only type of hive that allows one to view the natural distribution of brood and natural behavior of honeybees inside a hive. The KTBH(Kenyan Top Bar Hive) on which my hive is based, has a theory that by previding a slant the bees will confuse the walls with the floor, upon which they never build comb. In all the stuff I've read it's not exactly that simple as bees will attach any heavy comb. Anyways, here are some photos of it so far.

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In the photo of the enterence I have since attached a 1 by 4 to there to previde a landing/fanning area. The whole construction is about three feet long and later I'll previde all the dimensions. The main reason I was lured to a TBH was that there's no heavy lifting of supers, the bees are easier to work whatever their aggressian level, it's the only way to observe a natural brood nest, it can saturate the area with drones and since bees naturally build small cell comb it hinders the reproduction of Varroa mites. There are also no expensive accesories needed for TBHs. A standard langstroth hive would require boxes, frames, extractors, uncapping knives and all that stuff. In a TBH all the parts are easily manufactured. The honey harvest just requires cutting off the comb and eating, no extraction required. Granted the bees will produce a lot less honey but, no one can eat 200 pounds of honey anyway. It will truely be a great adventure when I stock this hive with bees in this comming February or March.

A Nuc Check-up

2005-10-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

First, befor I tell you about the whole inspection of the nuc I have some information which you will find to your liking, I HAVE PHOTOS! So, I got to the nuc, lit the smoker as usuall and began the inspection on Saturday. Unfortunetly, some of the frames slid a bit while it was in transit so there was a lot of comb that I needed to cut. The queen cage had also fallen to the bottom of the hive. After moving a few frames, cutting some burr comb and picking up the cage I began to do my search for eggs. The colony was a lot bigger than I remembered. The frames were covered in bees so I think the some 6,000 bees I brought over capped have emerged. In the empty frames, after looking carefully, they were FULL of eggs. This queen had been busy. When I installed the package it took the queen two weeks to begin laying and here, in just seven days this queen had pumped out thousands of eggs! I saw here rush along the bottom and as I brought the cammera closer to take a picture, she darted under a pile of bees and I couldn't finder her. And so after being proud of the first three frames I removed the last one, or attempted to. It was stuck to the bottom and I had to pull as hard as I could to break it loose. I soon found the culprip, a peice of untrimmed burr comb which I neglected to chop off when I did the split. I cut it off, stacked it with the other burr comb and closed up the hive. As I walked away I brushed the bees off and took off my veil for the ten minute drive home. Here are the two most impressive specimens.

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As I studied these I saw a peice with two peanut-shaped hanging cells. Immidiately I knew they were queen cells. Her highness was inside but, now killed by my handling of the comb. Given their placement, they were swarm cells from the colony I have here, at my house. So, now I knew that my colony here has gotten to such a high population that they want to swarm, so, tomarow, I have to super them with a super I was saving for the other colony. If you look carefully, there are also alot of capped drone cells in the comb of which I did my drone cut inspection for varroa mites. I didn't find a single one with any disease once so ever. Just so you know, I did disect the queen cells since they were already dead and the queens were perfectly healthy untill then. I tried to take a picture of them but, the cammera couldn't focus on such a bright white object so, the pupa just looked like an asprin. I didn't see a need to post a picture of it.

That's more like the bees I know...

2005-09-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I went over to check on that nuc I installed on Sunday. I approached the hive, saw that the feeder was already empty and mixed up some sugar syrup. In two days the bees had already eaten a pint of sugar syrup! They were indeed thirsty. What was really nice was there temperment. I was concerned that they would be like when I installed them so I put on my veil and gloves as tight as I could and slowly approached the hive. I thought it was odd that on the sand around the hive bees were landing, licking the ground, and then flying back up to repeat the process. I stood next to the nuc, reached down, grabbed the feeder; gently pulling it back and there were half a dozen Small Hive Beetles that had been hiding under it. Surprisingly though, the bees hadn't given me a single buzz yet. The jar was clearly empty so I pulled it out gingerly and slowly placed in another. Still, not a single bee had so much as flown up to my veil. I put the feeder back into the enterence and just stood there for a few seconds. Watching the bees at work, bringing back pollen and nectar and defending the hive. After a few seconds I walked back to the car, took off my gear and drove(rode) on home. It's really to bad that as colonies become larger they become more aggressive. To be honest, I can't wait until spring when the colony is small and gentle. Now that my colony has gotten so large it would be idotic to inspect them without wearing gloves and a veil. Hopefully, this weekend I'll get pictures of both. I think that right now the colony at my house is getting close to or above 60,000 bees.

No Flow...Let's Split

2005-09-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Well, the split went a little less than well. I smoke the hive as usuall but, I completely taped my gloves to my shirt and my veil to the neck portion of my shirt. The hive had gotten so large that I was actually becoming scared of them. The queen I ordered arived on Friday, a day early and on Saturday we had to drive about fifty miles to borrow a nuc box. With all the parts rounded up I find that I didn't have enough foundation for three frames so I would replace the frames I took from my hive with empty frames. So, anyways, I organized all the stuff, after spending about an hour closing all the enterence holes in the nuc, and began to do the split. The bees greeted me as usuall, about four thousand taking to the air with a deafening roar. My camera woman at this point had to retreat because of a sting to her finger. Anyways, I took down the first super; somewhat heavy but, light in comperison to the super just below it, and at that point I reached the brood chamber. This hive is booming with bees and I think that it has reached it's climax for the year. I quickly determined which frames to take and placed them in the nuc with the queen cage much in the same way I installed the package a few months ago. It was right about here that things began to get ugly. I replace the frames I took with empty ones and then go to bring the nuc to the short 2.5 foot tall fence. About halfway there I got stung in the only exposed area of my arm, the ventilation mesh. Now, I scraped the stinger out as usuall, accidentally ripping my gloves and, would you believe it, my smoker went out. Now I had to rush to put back the supers and cover just as the bees were beginning to lose their temper. I got the cover on but, the boxes wern't perfectly aligned. They're off about a half of an inch, luckily, the boxes are three quarters of an inch thick so I just left the bees. Surprisingly, the sting had completely lost its pain after the first five minutes, I was rushing because I was afraid of the comming stings given I couldn't cover the alarm pharamone. I moved the nuc and found a few straglers on the out side. I brush them off but they just keep comming back. I quickly carry the nuc to the garage remembering that bees will always fly to a source of light. Then, as soon as I had the nuc in the garage I went inside to cool off for a few minutes. When I came back it appeared that there were just as many stragglers as befor. Confused, I close the garage and turn on a florecent light, in a few minutes hundreds of bees were banging into the bulbs and I knew that there was a leak in my sealing of the hive. I brought the hive back outside and bees were just pouring out in a steady stream. After attempting to close it up I decide to wrap it in a bed sheet to take it the some five miles to it's new home. I hop in the car, somewhat nautious with dehydration, and head over to the property, praying that the bees don't get out into the car. As soon as we get there I open the trunk and one bee flys out and gets tangled in my mother's hair. We remove it and I carry the nuc back to the spot some fifty feet away with two cinder blocks to stand it on. I organize the blocks and took off the bed sheet. There wern't any bees so I thought that maybe I had done and ok job. I lifted the nuc onto it's make-shift stand and tried to tear off one peice of tape. The entire bit that I had covering the enterence came off and hundreds of bees flooded out with a very agrivated buzz. I ran off for a minute then came back to pull the cloth from the main enterence. After that I grabbed the bed sheet and walked away, whipping the bees off of it. Appearently, the bees thought they were bulls and charged right at me. That's what I get for being stupid. So I ran away at this point and went about 100 feet to the driveway, whipped the last few bees off the sheet and brushed some off my back, then took off the gloves and veil. It had been about two hours and I was so dehydrated that I began vomiting. Not in massive amounts but it was clearly there. I crawled into the car, leaned back and sighed in releif, "That took longer than I thought it would."

NO PHOTOS...sorry

Devide and Concour

2005-09-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Yes...I know I spelled the third word of the title wrong but, that's not why I'm writing. I've been offered to keep a hive of bees on a neighbors proporty and jsut today went to look for a good spot. Almost anywhere was perfect, and their property is filled with palmetto, which makes delicious table grade honey. Oh yeah, and did I mention it's 11 acres! However, there are a few unfortunate parts of this. One, I needed to get about $140.00 worth of equipment and I accidentally ordered the queen a week too early. Right now I'm calling around to see if I can get the one part I'm missing within the next two days. I've only got to days before it arives and I'm not ready! So, now I must crunch the numbers to see if it is possible to get a nuc box and bottom in time. So, if it all works out, I'm going to make a split on Saturday! Exiting, nerve-racking, and a little bit concerned. All these can describe the events planned for Saturday.

Ugh...MY BACK!

2005-09-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I wan't able to really inspect the bees today. I got the first super off, not much work had been done and then I go to lift the next super after prying away some propolis. The second I got if off the hive body it felt like my back was going to snap. I had to end the inspection early because of that and the bees wern't behaving normaly...when I opened the cover and smoked them instead of all retreating between the combs thousands traveled upward and poured out. Smoke is suppose to have the opposite effect. I'm really not sure what it was but, I'll try again for tomarow.

A New Perspective

2005-09-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

Every day I've been looking at the enterence hole I drilled into the super I put on the see if the bees were up there yet. For any of you that don't know what an upper enterence is, it's a hole drilled just below the hand-hold of the super. Anyways, up till today I thought the bees weren't in there yet because I didn't see the chericteristic ring of bees around it. Just today, either beacause I'm crazy or obsesive, I stuck my head in front of it and could see at least a dozen bees fanning out the small hole and a curtain of bees inside. Now all my worries that the bees weren't using the super are unfounded and, hopefully, within the next month, I might get my first honey harvest.

Occupational Hazards

2005-09-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I was just out by the hive with a headlamp on. You know, those little flashlights that you put on your head. Anywasy, I just wanted to look at the beard before I left for school and, having just woke up...NOT THINKING... I left the flashlight on a white light instead of red. Instantly, the bees began to orient to what they thought was the sun and landed on my face. This is one of those moments that teaches you that bees are not forgiving of stupidity. Anyways, I did the un-beekeeper like thing and swated at them then, began runing away and hopped the fence between the patio and my bees. It's the fastest was to my house. The second I got over the two and a half foot tall fence (which I literally "hopped") I suddenly felt this sharp pain in the palm of my hand. Remember that this was in the dark so I couldn't see a thing. I thought I bumped the rose bush but then, it began burning and felt like it was moving. I have to say that this bee sting felt less painfull than my first one but, still hurt. It got pretty swollen and I couldn't bend my pinkey. I have, however, learned two lessons from this...1. "I'm not allergic to bee stings, yet." and 2. "Never crouch down with your head near the enterence of a hive that has over 10,000 bees bearding with a light on your head..." There was a very sweet smell, though.

3...2...1...BOOM

2005-09-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, my hive's population has EXPLODED. There is also a HUGE honeyflow going on right now. Last week I checked on that super and they were beginning to draw it out and I was pleased with the progress. In just a week the whole super has been entirely drawn out and it's all filled with ripening nectar and honey. All I've heard that's providing a good honeyflow right now is Palm, Palmetto and Brazilian Pepper. Given the color of the stuff it's probably Palm or Brazilian Pepper.
Anyways, I lit the smoker and headed to the hive as usuall. This is a little later than I usually inspect them so the hive was in shade. I opened them around 3:30 Pm as opposed to my usuall 10:00am. They were again very gentle and I smoked them as usuall and the second I got the cover off was amazed at how many bees were up there. I picked up the first frame and every frame after that was the same way...filled with honey and ripening nectar. After fully inspecting the super I tried to pry it from the brood chamber but, it was too propolized. For five minutes I ran my hive tool along the crack like a box cutter. I moved to lift the super and when I felt this enormus weight I thought that I was lifting the brood chamber too. Then, I looked down and the super was about three inches clear of the brood chamber. That thing had to of weighed about 50 pounds. For a hive to draw and fill combs to the point that a super goes from 15 to 50 pounds in a week there must be one SERIOUS honey flow going on now. All I have to do is get a queen excluder and I'll be able to put on the super I have for honey harvesting. And I'm goning to need an extractor which come at a pretty penny. So, after I removed the increadibly heavy super it was time to inspect the brood chamber. I removed the first frame which had to be about 9 pounds with honey and pollen. That frame had no brood, just pollen and honey. The next frame was filled with eggs and young larvae and having seen eggs, larvae and capped larvae I had done everything I needed to in the inspection. I didn't search for the queen because, that would require me to inspect every frame and, if I leave a few frames undisturbed the colony gets back to work in no time. Besides, I had searched for any disease or paracite in the first five frames. Next week, I may have to throw on another super. This hive is growing like a weed...a very nice to have but somewhat scary weed.

A Super Super

2005-09-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

(For any of you who don't know this, a super is a box that a beekeeper puts on a hive to store honey or expand the brood nest.)

I've been off at the beach for memorial day weekend and inspected my bees yesterday but, I couldn't get onto the internet untill today. Unfortunettly, I didn't take any pictures but it was probably the best inspection I've ever carried out.
Yesterday was sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and it had been two weeks since I opened the hive, so I decided to try for an inspection. I lit the smoker and did everything as usuall. I used my hivetool to crack open one side of the cover to blow some smoke in, then, I lifted the cover thinking it would come off as usuall. I strained as hard as I could and the entire hive came up. It had to of weighed over 60 pounds! Anyways, I used my hive tool and scraped enough propolis off to pull off the cover. I was half expecting that the bees hadn't done anything with the super I put on then a few weeks ago. I was wrong, and noticed that the second I took off the cover. There were actually hundreds of bees in that super, unlike the usuall one or two dozen.
I pulled up the first frame and it wasn't drawn at all. Then, the second and it was about half drawn and so was every frame after that. Once the cells were drawn ,however, instead of being filled with brood like I thought they would they were filled with ripening nectar. I think this is a sure sign that the bees have changed their focus from horrezontal brood nest expansion to vertical honey storage.
After I was done with the super I had to lift it off to check on the brood chamber...easier said than done. Again, it was so propolized that I had to strain to pry the boxes apart. I lifted it up and it had to weigh at least 15 pounds. Not very heavy but, it's a start. I carved away the propolis and smoked the bees off of the ears of the frames. Lifted one up and it was picture perfect. There was about 1/3 of the frame at the top filled with capped honey, of which I sampled a few drops. There was also a solid brood nest core. I did some scraping of comb at the bottom of the frames and did another brood cut. No a single varroa and I didn't find any sacbrood. I saw plenty of eggs and young larvae so after checking four frames I figured I wouldn't disturb them anymore.

Again, this probably was the best inspection I've had in a long time. Not a single sting and none have gotten into my veil, yet. There wern't even any bees clinging onto my veil. There are usually about a dozen or so. This has again been a demonstration of how bees can change their moods by the weather.

I Checked Again but no Queen

2005-08-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Again, I couldn't find the queen. I suspect that she's been hiding in the burr comb but, I don't know. I trimmed it all and still couldn't find her so I gave up. I did, however get some interesting photos.

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As you can see, the frame has bees, brood and honey. The other picture is of the slot created when I removed the frame. thousands of bees are clinging to the sides of the frame and wall. Nothing out of the ordinary happened out at the hive exept, my smoker went out three times(I've been packing it to tight.) and I had a friend ask to come along. Granted, she wouldn't approach the hive without wearing a pair of jeens, shirt, overcoat, gloves and a veil, but, it was a step. Anyways, I did a major brood disection with some burr comb. There were about 300 larvae and pupae. None had varroa mites and only one had sacbrood so, I think the bees are staying on top of the diseases.

My Bees are Bearding Again

2005-08-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

As I sure anyone who comes here remembers, I have posted some pictures of small beards just a lttle over two weeks ago. Since then the population has sky rocketed and I have more photos. Tonight it rained(yes my bees only beard at night) and I saw what I thought was very interesting. There were no bees at the enterence but thousands just inside and thousands were bearding under the enterence. I crouched down and saw something I've never bothered to look for. Under the hive were hundreds of bees, either walking aimlessly or clinging to the screen on the bottom bored and fanning. I never thought that the bees might be fanning under the hive. (If I get up the corage I just might stick my hand under there and get a few photos, but, that's a big if.) So anyways, here are the photos.

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What Happened to my Gentle Bees?

2005-08-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I said I would try to get some pictures of my queen right, well, I couldn't. I couldn't even spend the time to look for her. I'll tell you how it went...I had gotten on all my gear and lit the smoker. All my smoker fuel was missing so I had to run around the yard and pick up pine needles. I collected all that I could and lit them as usual. I approached my hive, smoked them and then came a different reaction. Instead of heading into the colony to gorge on honey they flew up into my face and I had several land on my veil. I popped the cover, as hundreds flew arround me, and smoked the super. There was a buzz louder than I've ever heard from my bees but I continued. I looked in the super and not a frame had been drawn. A little disapointed, I tried to take it off and lifted the entire hive! They had completely propolized it in a week. Now I had to pry it off with my hive tool but, just to get between the supers I ended up prying them apart with a *SNAP* and in the beekeeping world this is a BIG mistake. Once I got it off I smoked them and then found that the frames were heavely propolized to the sides. Even worse, they had built alot of bridge comb so when I moved the frame the bees lost about a quarter cup of honey. After I removed two frames I had been pumping my smoke so hard that if flamed and I had to stop and snuff the fire. Unfortunetly, that at up all the fuel I had in the smoker and the smoke went out in about two minutes. Completely out of smoke I removed one frame flipped it over, it looked fine, placed it back and then I looked at my left hand. I had five stings in the leather. Not one got through but it told my that the bees were to hot today to be worked. I closed up shop after only examining three frames. I think my major mistake is that 10:30 has become too early and there were way to many bees in the hive then. I should have waited until 1:00pm. The hive's population is boooming and I'm hoping that they'll draw out the foundation in the super this week. Oh, and, one more note, I did a drone cut style of varroa inspection and found that my brood don't have varroa. Or, at least, there is only voarroa in 0/100 cells.

A Little off Topic...

2005-08-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I walked outside today just because I like to look at my bees. I step outside, pause a second, and then this loud buzz flies right past my head. I look behind me and there it was, on the front door; a Cicada Killer. For those of you who don't know what Cicada Killers are, they are among the largest wasps in north America at about 1 1/2 inches long. Guess what is was carying...a cicada. I, at first, was affraid of it, I mean, the insect was huge and louder that my bees ever were. Then I thought, "This could be a great specimen for my Insect Studies Merit badge." Yes, I'm a boy scout. Anyways, I run inside; around the back of the house, not the front door. I grabbed my veil and gloves and threw them on. I would soon find out how good a choice that was. I ran back out and then saw that the Cicada Killer wasn't on the door anymore. As I was begining to think I got all exited for nothing I heard the loud buzz again. This time it was on a wall at eye-level. I had grabbed a jar and tried to capture the wasp. It stung my glove and flew off. Then, for some reason, it came back and started malaxing the cicada. I got it in the jar and it was mine. I'm going to mount it later today, once it dies. Hopefully, I'll get a picture of it soon.

I got my letter...

2005-08-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have finally, after over a week, gotten my regestration number and am now fully regestered with the state of Florida. NOW I'M LEGAL! I'll probably be painting the number on the side of my hive tonight when the bees aren't flying and for now I'll look forward to opening the hive on Sunday.

P.S. I want to name my queen...any sugestions?

I am Now an Oficial Beekeeper

2005-08-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering why I am saying this. I didn't get my regestration number yet or harvest honey. I'm saying this because I've finnaly experienced the pain of the honeybee's stinger. Today wasn't the best day for inspection; rained earlier and was cloudy, but I wanted to see what my girls were up to. They were a little cranky today because of the weather and the second I opened the hive it started thundering. I was already half way through the inspection so I thought I'd be able to finish in a few minutes. Just then I lift a frame and...BAM...I got a sting right at the end of my thumb nail. At first I saw it and didn't feel anything then, it felt like it was a nail drilling into my skin. I looked closely and could see that it was still moving and pulling its self in even further. I popped it off with my hive tool and after that the pain just became more intense. I smoked my thumb to cover the alarm pharamone and kept working. After that I didn't get another sting but I think I'll think twice befor working the bees without gloves. Isn't it ironic though that I never had a single sting on my gloves and the first time I take them off I get stung. Anyways, I didn't see the queen and to be honest, wasn't looking to hard for her. I just wanted to make sure that the hive was in good health
then, close up shop.

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I finally got a chance to super them, as you can see in the photo. If you're wondeing what super means that is to add another box on for the bees to make their colony larger. Right now my thumb is kind of swollen so it's a little hard to type. In the other photos you can see liquid, gold, honey in the making and the bee with its head in the cell is actually regurgitating nectar so it will ferment and predigest. In the last picture you can see some brood cappings and if you look carefully you can see some bees comming out of their cells. You can also see some very young bees that just emerged from their cells and have a soft, downy appearance and also a little matted. Untill the next inspection I'll be resting my thumb.

P.S. If you click on the photos you can see them in a larger size.

A Foul Odor and even Worse Feeling

2005-08-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

I went to see and pick up this hive that I've been ranting about for the past few days. I had to rent a moving truck just so I could bring it the was back to its new location. After a ride there which only increased my anticipation I opened the door, grabbed a flashlight and headed to the area of the property the owner said the hive was at. Just fifty feet from the truck I could tell something was wrong. The air had a smell resembling rotting fruit; a pungent odor. I walked up to the hive, noticed no bees were at the enterence and knocked on the side to see if any were home. The smell had gotten stronger. I placed my ear on the side of the hive and thumped some more; not a buzz could be heared. Then I shined my flashlight at the enterence and saw something that made me lose hope in getting this hive; SHB larvae. These little worms cover everything in slime and cause the honey to ooze out of its cell. Everything begins to rot when they're around. I grabbed my hive tool and tried to pry a box apart. I looked up and noticed that there was a large chunk of granite on top. I lifted it off and found that the top super was covered in fire ants. I then cracked the propolis between the box and the one below it and was met with an odor so foul it could make a sewer rat puke. Discouraged I called the owner and said,"When last did you check on you're hive?"
"Oh about a month ago."
"Well...they're dead..."
Just to show you what the hive looked like I took a few photos of the hive and the enterence. On the enterence photos you can see the pool of slime just oozing off the bottom board.

www.flickr.com

About the hive...

2005-08-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

I just got a call answering all my questions about the hive. It has a deep styrofoam brood chamber, queen excluder and four honey supers. Apparently, the bees are Buckfast and quite docile, in his opinion. In case you're wondering, the bees I have had since June 8th are called Italians. Buckfast are actually a man-made cross breed. Right now I just have to rent a pick-up and head over there for the colony. My current idea is that I will be able to get there to remove them on Saturday or Sunday. This project will be tough though. The brood chameber weighs at least 70 pounds and each super weighs at least 40. That's 230 pounds! It's a backbreaking load so I'll have to dismantle a few supers untill I get them the 30 miles to the new location. It's times like this that I'll wish I had one of those fork lifts they use in those warehouse stores. In a couple days I'll be able to tell you if everything went off without a hitch or I just dropped 50,000 angry bees on myself and aquired numerous stings. Wish me luck for the first one...

It's Christmas in August!

2005-08-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

I just got a call from a local beekeeper who wants his hive removed and guess what...I get if for free! The apiary inspector checked it out just this summer and it's disease free. So, now I'll have two hives and twice the honey! I have no idea how aggresive they are but, hey, if I can get a hive of bees inside a hive that is worth $60.00 I'll be VERY happy. Later I might be able to post photos of me moving the hive about 30 miles to its new location.

Some Bee Behavior

2005-08-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

For those of you that have watched my bee videos you have seen some bee behaviors such as fanning and guarding. For fanning bees flap their wings at the enterence and inside the hive to improve air flow and reduce temperature as well as humidity. Guarding is self explanatory but, the bees that are guarding are alert and perched on their two hind pairs of legs. Now I will show you a behavior called "bearding". You can see some photos of it below.

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This behavior can be done at any time of day and its purpose is mainly to "cool off on the front porch". This is a rather small beard; some colonies can make beards over six inches long. While these bees are bearding they are all dependant on eachother as they connect with the hooks on their feet. They almost seem to form a chain sometimes and for drawing out comb they hang like that one the inside but can stay their for a few days. I hope that I will later be able to show an even larger beard.

I have done it!

2005-08-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have found a site to handle my bee videos and audio clips. The links to these are at my other site at http://beevids.blogspot.com. Be sure to tell me what you think.

I Passed!!!

2005-08-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've been inspected today and my hive passed inspection. Unfortunetly, my hive has sacbrood. It shouldn't become a major issue but, I'll keep checking on it to see if it worsens. All in all the inspector said I have a very docile and healthy hive; great to hear when you know the fate of an unhealthy hive, burning. The inspector seemed to be very confident in his work. He inspected the hive without wearing even a veil. Sorry, no photos this time but I saw the queen. Hopefully, next week I'll get the photos. In case you're wondering why I'm having such trouble getting a photo of a queen, she moves to the dark corners of the hive when I open it, there's only one of her and 30,000 of her daughters and she moves very fast on the comb. I'll search for her next week and just might get a good picture. For those of you who don't know what sacbrood is you can read about it here.