Confessions of a Beehaver

"Vanishing of the Bees"

2010-07-31T13:51:00.000-04:00

2010 Bee Season Begins

2010-04-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

Hived two packages of bees in nuc boxes today. Weather was nice and somewhat sunny. Gave each colony a quart of sugar syrup.

As usual I’m a month behind on my preparations, so I had to clean up some old gear for these new bees and I didn’t have any new frames ready for them, so each box is about three frames shy of being full.

TODO:
- Make more sugar syrup.
- Make frames with foundation.
- Check on bees.
- Find enthusiasm before it’s too late.

Let's Try This Again - New Bees

2010-03-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

I guess I’ll give this beekeeping thing another try. I ordered two packages of bees this afternoon for $67.95 each (but now that I think about it, I don’t know if these are 2# or 3# packages).

The bees should arrive on April 24th. That gives me a little less than seven weeks to prepare for them and hopefully do things right this summer.

Hive #3 is Dead

2010-03-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

I checked on my last hive today and found no living bees. All of my hives died this year.

:-(

Test Post from MacJournal

2010-02-16T15:01:00.000-05:00

Picked up MacJournal for a song via MacUpdate yesterday. This is a test of it’s blogging functionality. (And now I’m testing the update functionality...)

January Hive Inspection

2010-01-24T15:08:00.000-05:00

WEATHER:

Gloomy, breezy, 45+ degrees.

HIVES:

Two rows. Front row (S) from left (W) to right (E) are hives 1 to 3. Back row (N) from left (W) to right (E) are hives 4 and 5.

All SBB were closed all winter and the telescoping covers were not vented.

STATUS:

Hive #1 - Deadout. Loaded with honey. This was my strongest hive going into winter.

Hive #2 - Deadout. Loaded with honey. This hive was very sick with varroa mites and deformed-wing disease last fall.

Hive #3 - Bees!!! The cluster seems small, but I did not dig into the hive to take a good look. These bees are about half-way up the stack of four medium supers. I added another medium super of honey to the top of the stack.

Hive #4 - Deadout. Loaded with honey.

Hive #5 - Deadout. Loaded with honey. I think this hive was queenless last fall.

TODO:

- Find more enthusiasm for keeping bees.
- Stain/paint my 8-frame gear.
- Retire ALL of my 10-frame gear.
- Make frames.
- Buy two packages of bees (despite the fact I said I wasn’t going to in a previous post...)
- Decide what to with all the “old” honey.
- Start my 2010 bees with new boxes, frames, and foundation.
- Try, try, again.

In Which Bees Converse

2010-01-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

[Stolen from Wondermark.]

Autumn

2009-10-19T23:00:00.000-04:00

Finally checked on my girls after all but abandoning them this summer. I put entrance reducers on all of the hives, unvented their covers, and removed the nuc boxes from the tops of two of them.

The East-most back-row hive (new from second round of packages this year) is most certainly queen-less. It's FULL of drones and quite aggressive. If I have another dry, somewhat warm day, I should combine this hive with it's sister hive.

The middle hive in the front row is very sick. Lot's of dead brood and deformed wing disease. I pulled a lot of empty comb from this hive. Not good. This hive will not last the winter.

The best looking hive out of the lot is the West-most hive on the front row. Absolutely packed with honey and bees.

I'm going to try my best this winter to rediscover my enthusiasm for beekeeping. Next year, I'm going to try to avoid buying bees. I overwhelmed myself this summer (which probably led me to neglect the poor girls). Also on the docket for next year - queen-rearing (again).

This weekend I noticed a big skunk hanging out by the neighbors fence row, but he seems to have moved on (after snacking on the bees, I'm sure).

Bees Invade House

2009-08-13T01:00:00.000-04:00

Bees, probably a swarm looking for a new home, have invaded our house on two or three occasions in the last two weeks. The last invasion resulted in a few hundred dead bees on the enclosed front porch and in the basement directly under the porch.

Not good.

Hive update

2009-07-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

My poor bees. It's been a while since I checked on my girls and it seems that I lost one of my over-wintered hives. It had three medium boxes on it, and they were completely devoid of bees and picked clean by the other hives.

I added a box to three of the remaining hives, and threw some 5-frame nucs on top of the remaining two hives. ALL of my hives are honey bound.

Where is my enthusiasm for the bees?

My Bee Tree - UPDATED!

2009-07-01T22:23:00.000-04:00

I've got some honeybees living in the hollow of one of the Maple trees in my front yard.

They are very busy girls and from the looks of it they're coating the entrance to their hive with propolis.

I need to get a little closer so that I can get a better shot into the entrance. A little more sun would help.

See how high the entrance to the nest is?

UPDATE: Here's a snippet of video I took the same day:

090614 - Hive Check

2009-06-14T17:34:00.000-04:00

Weather: Low 70s and partially cloudy. No breeze.

As usual, I'm way behind on my work with the bees AND my blog posts. Today I found four medium supers full of comb in the garage. It's a good thing because the front four hives (last years + first two packages from this year) have filled up their boxes. I should have thrown these supers on a month ago.

One of the "new" packages is coming along, but the other seems a bit slow. I should have checked to see if it was queen-right or not.

Put blocks under pallet of back two hives.

Put pallet on blocks under front two "OLD" hives.

One of my hives has tiny bees. Wonder if it was due to OLD small cell comb?

Pulled (forgot) plastic board from SBB under two "NEW" packages and found very, very few varroa. Also saw some larva of some sort on one - hive beetle larva?

ALL of my 10-frame medium supers are in use. I have seven or eight deeps that aren't in use that I STILL need to see if I can cut down. Or, I should consider using up my remaining sheets of deep foundation and work one or two of the hives onto it to free up some of the other medium supers.

So much to do, so little ambition.

Poor bees.

090517 - Hive Check

2009-05-18T13:09:00.000-04:00

[FYI: I'm way behind on my blogging. I currently have six hives: 4 from packages, and 2 from last year + loose bees].

CONDITIONS: Slightly breezy, partly sunny, about 60 degrees. Mid-afternoon.

I gave each hive a second box of medium frames - 2-5 of which are foundationless frames - but most are old frames in need of culling. This should have been the year that I replace ALL of my wax; but I'm too far behind schedule now to make the transition. All-in-all, I added 15 new foundationless frames and cut the wax from a few more from previous years. I have another 90 or so frames to make, unfortunately they may not see use this year.

I need to watch the last two packages I installed as I may have more gear on their hives than they can patrol. I don't need a wax moth issue again this year. Also gave the last two packages another quart (each) of sugar syrup with fumagilin and honey-b-healthy.

The two hives from last winter are doing well with the "loose" bees that I gave them. I need to inspect them on a warm day to verify that they both have viable queens. I screwed up with one of these hives and only had 9 frames in the box. The bees, being unforgiving, filled that with wax and brood. Not good. Cut out the comb and laid it on the top bars, putting a deep super over it. I must check this frequently to prevent them from doing this to me again, only worse.

All but four of my 10-frame medium boxes are deployed. I'm debating whether or not to set up one or two of the hives in deep boxes just to get through the season. I also need to prep and stain my 8-frame garden hive. I need to repaint all of my nucs. I need to investigate whether or not I can easily cut down my deep supers. I need to cleanup my old frames... and their wax. Why did I pick a hobby that has more work than I'm capable of keeping up with?

If time and weather permit, I need to do some queen grafting this weekend. It would be nice to have a few banked queens ready for use if necessary this summer.

Brother Adam, etc.

2009-04-02T10:38:00.000-04:00

The temperature has been in the 50s for the last few days and bees have been flying, though I haven't really had the time to check them out. :-(

At the MBA meeting, Mike Palmer mentioned that much of his methodology came from Brother Adam, the Benedictine Monk who established the line of Buckfast bees. Well, Brother Adam died a decade or so ago and his books are pretty scarce here in the U.S.A. I found one title - USED - for $150 at Amazon, so I figured that I needed to find them elsewhere. I'm proud to say that I'm now the proud owner of all three Brother Adam books and the DVD about his life - all for about $82 (including shipping). Where did I find them? At the source: Buckfast Abbey! It only took the books and DVD about a week and a half to get to me from England.

If you'd rather buy them from someone "local", Larry Connor at WicWas Press now has two of the titles in stock.

So, more good bee stuff to read...

Well, Not So Fast.

2009-03-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

Hive from last years packages:

The cluster in this hive is really small, but the queen is laying. I hope there are enough bees (and warm enough temperatures) for this hive to recover. I should consider transferring it into a nuc box next week if it is still alive.

Nuc in 5-frame gear:

Small cluster. Debating whether or not to take it off the ten frame box and leaving it in a single super until it (if it) recovers.

Nuc in 10-frame gear:

This hive easily has the best cluster of the bunch.

I thought that my bees were working through the sugar syrup I gave them in quite a hurry. Well, that's not true. What is going on is the seals on my wooden hive top feeders have given up the ghost and for the better part of the last week they've been leaking medicated syrup into the hives. Not good.

There is far too much honey in my yard. I should consider spinning out all of the honey from the dead outs and feeding it back to the bees later. I think they'd be more prone to taking the medicated syrup if they weren't sitting on so much honey.

71st SEMBA Beekeeper's Conference

2009-03-21T21:00:00.000-04:00

Attended the SEMBA conference today. I had a great time socializing with my beekeeping comrades. I think my "bee fever" has finally been renewed (it's about time).

Attended the following sessions:

"Bee Mites, What are they?" - Diana Sammataro, Ph.D.
"Breeding for Winter Survivor Bees" - Winn Harless & Rich Wieske
"CCD and a Review of Other Honey Bee Research" - Ken Schramm
"Migratory Beekeeping" - Rich Kussmaul & Don Schram

I learned some interesting things about mites and my respect for the gravity of the CCD issue has increased. I learned that one of the reasons HFCS isn't necessarily good for bees is because it develops into a poison if not stored properly. I also learned that one beekeeper at the convention won't feed honey to his bees because he thinks sugar syrup is healthier. (WTF?)

As always, I didn't win the hive raffle. But, I got a door prize: a plastic deep hive body. Yes, in my operation it's about as useful as tits on a boar; but it always feels good to get something free - no matter how useless.

Quick Updates

2009-03-17T21:00:00.000-04:00

Almost 60 degrees out today. A little breezy. The bees were robbing the dead-outs (and each other) full force.

I added a pollen patty and about a quart and a half of sugar syrup with Fumagilin-B and Honey-B-Healthy to each hive. I also second guessed my hive stacking decisions from Sunday and rearranged the hives so that I had more honey ABOVE the bees. Also noticed that I hadn't even bothered to peel open the 10-frame hive in the back of the yard - and it's a good thing that I got to it today because it was nearly EMPTY of honey. But it did have larva!

Found the queen in each hive, too. Nice!

Things are looking good for 2009.

2DO:
- Feed more medicated sugar syrup this weekend.
- Build medium frames with foundation.
- Cull old and messed up frames.
- Store good frames before the wax moths show up.

And Then There Were Four?

2009-03-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

50+ degree day today, so I worked the bees. Just over a week ago I thought I was down to two hives from the six that I started with last fall. Well, I was wrong. The hive on the left in the photo above wasn't dead. I found a really tiny cluster in it today. I tore the hive on the right down and gave it's honey to the other colony and set things up so that it could be robbed out when the weather is warm.

The colony on the right starved. It was full of honey, but the bees ate their way straight up (they "chimneyed") and died when they hit the top and couldn't move to where the honey was. I guess this was due to the extreme cold we've had this winter.

Both of these hives were Italian bees from Groeb Farms packages last year.

The "hot mess" pictured above is what's left of two nucs and two colonies. The left most stack of boxes is full of frames that need to be robbed out. The middle colony is a nuc that I'm going to work down into a 10-frame hive. I'm very surprised this nuc is still alive as it is a mess of dysintery. We'll have to wait and see if she makes it. The colony on the left was technically a nuc, too; just in 10-frame gear. But, it seems to be the strongest hive in the yard right now.

All four of these colonies had queens grafted from Ed Nowak's dark(er) bees. I think he's got either Carniolans or a Russian mix. IIRC, I installed them in late June or early July; so they didn't have a full season to build up.

One of the dead-outs was my only survivor hive from the previous year. It had a heck of a time all summer long either trying to replace it's queen or being queenless most of the time. I gave it one of the queens from Ed, but I'm not sure that they ever accepted her. As with the other dead-out, the bees ate their way to the top and ran out of honey. I'm running screened bottom-boards that were open all winter long. I don't know if this played a role in their demise or not. Next winter I plan to wrap my hives and use insulation under the telescoping cover.

The pic above shows surprise hive number two. One of my ancient maple trees has a honeybee colony in it's hollow! There was a lot of traffic (which is how I found it), so I'm guessing that this is a good sized hive that made it through the winter. I need to get the ladder out so I can get closer and take some pics and video.

So, now I've got four hives!

TO DO:
- Start feeding sugar syrup with treatment for Nosema disease.
- Make and feed pollen patties to the colonies.
- Properly stack hives so that there is honey ABOVE the clusters.
- Saturday: SEMBA conference.

If I play my cards right, I might roll into summer with BOOMING colonies this year.

090313 & 090314 - MBA Meeting

2009-03-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

Attended the Michigan Beekeeper's Association ANR Week conference in Lansing, MI for the first time this past weekend. I heard that there were over 500 people in attendance and the folks in charge seemed a little surprised by the size of the turnout. Many sessions (like the one above being given by Roger Hoopingarner) were at or over capacity.

Friday sessions that I attended:

"Management Plan for Self Sufficiency in the Apiary" - Michael Palmer
"Q & A on Self Sufficiency" - Michael Palmer
"Marketing Your Honey" - Ed Wracan
"Building & Use of an Imirie Shim" - Steve Tilmann
"Wintering Bees" - Roger Hoopingarner

Saturday sessions that I attended:

"Two-Queen Colonies" - Roger Hoopingarner
"Honey Production Strategies & Techniques" - Michael Palmer
"Honey Production - Q & A" - Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer (photo above) was the keynote speaker at this conference and the reason that I finally attended this conference. He spoke at the North Central Queen Assembly in October and I found his talk very motivating then, as were his talks this weekend. Michael runs 700+ production colonies and 400+ nucs, and raises about 700 queens in 35+ beeyards each year. His income is primarily honey sales from the 40 tons of honey he produces. I'm guessing that his speaking fees (he's been in high demand in the last year or two) help bolster his income. One can't spend too much time picking this guy's brain.

Things I learned this weekend:
- You can make a living producing honey if you don't have to buy bees every year.
- Really old-timers claimed that bees overwinter better in 8-frame gear than 10-frame gear.
- Beekeeping attracts too many beginner "know-it-alls".
- I can sell comb honey in Michigan without being "licensed" because it isn't "processed".
- I'm the only person at this conference that seems to look at honey as a nuisance.
- I gotta quit over-thinking things in terms of my beekeeping.
- People that ask really stupid questions get under my skin too easily.
- There are very few beekeepers under the age of 50.
- There is one beekeeper in Michigan that paints the inside of his woodenware!
- Rabbet joints are stronger than finger joints.

I'm a little more motivated about the bees this year than I was a week ago, but I'm still missing the enthusiasm that I had a few years ago.

Four Down; Two to Go

2009-03-06T12:36:00.000-05:00

Visited my "local" beekeeping supply shop on Wednesday and had an interesting conversation with some folks there regarding other beeks. Got some interesting dirt on some of the folks I talked to on Saturday. Got some good vibes regarding my beek cousins up north. Bought some stuff. Had a good time.

The weather has turned "warm" this week and so I checked the hives again: lost another two. My remaining hives are nucs that I didn't expect to last the winter, so I expect that they won't finish out the month.

What have I learned so far this year?:
- Gotta do a better job of winterizing small colonies.
- Gotta do a better job of winter feeding my colonies.
- Nucs WILL make it through the winter with the right care.
- Ed's dark bees tolerate the winter better than the southern Italians.
- I need to treat for nosema; with a vengeance.

Plans for 2009:
- Test 8-frame, medium box hives.
- Test 5-frame, medium box nucs.
- Cut down deep boxes to mediums.
- Continue "foundation-less" frame experiment.
- Practice queen-rearing.
- Collect grafts from other beek's survivor stocks.
- Gear honey production, if any, towards RAW honey.
- Rediscover my fever for bees.

090228 - BoSCM Meeting

2009-03-02T15:26:00.000-05:00

Attended the second Beekeepers of South Central Michigan meeting at "Bob the Beeguy"'s place outside of Manchester. We had a group of about 18 people there, some of them from Bob's beginner beekeeping class, others keeping bees for their first or second year, and many more of us with a few years experience. A couple of the guys go back a long time and would probably be considered side-liners since they keep 300+ colonies.

Winn Harless (in photo above) spoke about some of the gear that he makes himself and Carol Hoffman talked for a short time about how deep newbees can really dig into this hobby. It was good to see Carol again. She and her husband - Earl - taught the SEMBA beginners class when I took it back in 2004 (with "Bob the Bee Guy", no less). The Hoffmans have a great deal of knowledge and passion for honeybees and they've been missed by many of us at the SEMBA meetings.

Got into a (onesided) conversation with some old-timer ranting on about how the government screws over beekeepers. He kept me trapped for the better part of an hour. Gawd, I hope that I don't get that bitter and cynical when I'm his age.

Chatted a little with a local side-liner who said that I can use his beeyards for mating queens if I'd like. I chatted with him this past summer at Groeb's regarding the same thing. He seems really keen on getting someone local to produce queens. Almost too keen. (Why am I so guarded?)

I was hoping that attending this meeting would help refuel my passion for honeybees, but it didn't. Maybe the next one will. I miss having a fever for beekeeping and I fear that the issue that has driven joy from every other avenue of my life has removed my zest for beekeeping, too. Blah.

Regardless, I ordered two packages of bees on 2/24; just in case none of my girls make it through the rest of this dismal winter. The packages should arrive in late April.

2 Down; 4 To Go

2009-02-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

The weather has been in the 40's this weekend, our first string of warm days since the low 40s day we had last weekend. So far, this winter has been bitterly cold. I think we've had more snow than the last four years combined. Last Saturday, I had six living hives. Yesterday, I had four. I'm certain it was the cold snap. I posted a comment to this effect on Joel's FB page when he asked what did my bees in:

Your guess is as good as mine, though I suspect that the warm day we had last weekend followed by some VERY cold days stressed the two dead hives enough to do them in. Moist weather + extreme cold is a deadly combination for bees. I lost my oldest hive (the ONLY one to make it through last winter) and my strongest hive. WTF?

The hives that I thought would have died off first, two of three small nucleus hives, are still kicking. I fed honey to all of the remaining hives yesterday, but the carnage around the hives is still bad. Lots of dead and sick bees. They may be dealing with disease, but then they were cooped up for too long without a "cleansing flight" and this can make them ill, too. As with previous years, the hives that died had plenty of stores, so it wasn't starvation.

I need to decide if I take my chances and hope that I get at least two of the remaining four hives through the rest of the winter, OR order a couple of packages of bees for May delivery.

I'll most certainly order more bees this week. I can't risk losing them all - though that hasn't happened to me in the last five years. Better to have too many bees than not enough, right? Especially if I plan to dabble with queen rearing?