Winterizing

It's time to help the bees get stay warm for the cold months ahead.  It's pretty simple, yet seems to fire them up a bit.  I'll give them some pollen feed supplements, and put on the entrance reducers. I'll double check that they have the screen tops off, and the inner tops for winter in place.  Anything that will give them a break from the harsh winds and cold. 

If you're interested in getting bees for next spring, try to catch a local meeting before February.  We meet on the last Tuesday of the month in Quincy, we do skip Dec due to the holidays.  That just leaves 2 meetings before we start planning spring bees!

Email me anytime to details at lmoyers@adams.net  Also, we'll host a big class about bees in February and we as a club order new bees in March. Our class will be February 16th and cost is $30 for a family.  Includes your intro book, lots of handouts, and your membership fees.  It's a good way to get started-with lots of support!

Time to catch up on my bee reading and online education.  Night Night bees!

Honey GLORIOUS Honey

This weekend we have perfect weather. It was finally time.  I started with bees in the spring of 2011.  My two hives were very successful last year, but I was unsure.  I was very afraid to take too much honey away from my bees.  If I had taken honey, what would the bees eat all winter?  Yikes, I decided to play it safe and wait for year two.

You may  be wondering what the big deal was in waiting.  Bees are not an inexpensive thing to get into.  To start, you need hives, frames, a suit, equipment, and of course bees.  All of it costs a pretty penny.  So to take a risk that I would starve my bees over the winter did not seem like the right thing to do.  So I didn't.

Hence 2012.  I was so excited to have not only my 2 hives, but 3 more packages.  I had also purchased 2 packages for my mother's farm.  Then, the early warmth hit.  Those who have been following my blog know I picked up several swarms this year.  FREE bees!  I got up to 9 hives in my bee yard, and 2 over at mom's.  That's a lot of bees. Of course, I'd have plenty of honey. 

Then the weather turned.  The Drought we had here in Ursa IL was terrible.  The worst I can remember.  It does no good to complain, true farmers were much worse off than my poor bees.  Bees do not need water, but they do need plenty of blooming plants to collect from.  With the drought so severe, I didn't even have the occasional white clover in the lawn for my poor bees.  They were just foraging day after day, and not able to collect pollen.

Each time a beekeeper checks the bees, you distrupt the flow of the workers.  So about the first of July, I quit checking them.  They were under enough stress, they didn't need me smoking them up and causing panic just to see they had no honey.  So I waited.  And I waited.  And about mid August we got some rain.  So I waited until the goldenrod started to bloom.  And I waited.  And now it's the 22nd of September, and it's time.  Time to check for honey.

 I cleaned the equipment and set everything up.  Really, I was just hoping for the best.  I was very unsure as I went out the bee yard.  I knew they were "Okay"  I could see them flying in and out and working as hard as they could.  My hopes were that I would get at least 9 bottles of honey for my family for the year.  That would be plenty of fresh honey and at least I'd have some to enjoy.

When I opened up the first hive....nothing.  No honey I could rob.  So I went to my second strongest hive.  I had 7 frames with honey.  As quick as I could work I brushed off all the bees and put one frame at a time in my minivan and closed the hatch.  The last thing I wanted was mad bees hanging out in the family van.

Gorgeous!  The honey was beautiful.  It was a nice yellow color, light and clear.  That is what most honey producers are looking to harvest, light colored beautiful honey.

Next was to ready the frames for the extractor.  To do this, you need to lightly scape the cappings of wax off the cells.  Be careful!  if you scrape too far, the bees have to rebuild the wax comb.  If you just scrape the tops, then they just refill the cells and recap.  Save those ladies some time and effort!.

I used the uncapping knife I had purchased for this task.  It was not so great.  I found it to be a bit cumbersome and hard to hold while balancing my frames.  The frames, by the way, are very heavy.  Ladden with rich honey these guys look light, but weigh a lot.  Plus, you want to be careful to hold just to frame to avoid smashing the comb.  

Eventually I said, "To heck with this!" and picked up a kitchen fork.  It seemed to do the trick and was simple and easy.  The caps just fell aside and the honey was exposed.  I could have saved some moolah if I had just thought to use a fork the first go around.

My extractor is a second hand buy.  I purchased it from Bernie of Andrew Honey Farm. It's perfect for a small scale harvest.  It's a hand crank, which did give Avry and Me a workout.  We both felt it was invigorating!  Not bad since she's 14 and I'm ...well....it has a 4. 

The Extractor is basically a tank with a spin operation.  We fling the honey out as it spins.  Kind of like a salad spinner with a basket to hold the frames.  Then at the bottom is a nice gate/spout to drain the honey and wax that has collected at the bottom of the tank.

Incidentally, I'm doing this right in the middle of my kitchen.  Why not?  It's clean, and I don't have to worry about bees getting in the house to track the honey.  So right between the sink, stove and fridge.

Spin baby spin!  Avry grabbed the camera to get an action shot.  This is about the point where I'm huffing and puffing.  When the frames are heavy, it's hard to get it really spinning, but as the honey flings out, it gets easier.   This is a perfect set up. NO need for an electric one for a small amount of honey.  IF I had 10 full hives and 200 frames I'm sure I'd be buying the electric ones. 

 Can you see the honey at the bottom?  The wax is caught inside the basket, so most of the wax is contained. Yet there is a lot of capping wax mixed into the honey as it is spun out of the comb. It's starting to really smell good. 

Can you smell the sweet honey?  I think it's at this point where both Avry and I end up sticking our fingers in the honey to be sure it's sweet.  Yep.  It is. 

But maybe we should check again....

And Again.....

And Again....

Okay back to work.  Now it's time to filter the honey.  There are wax cappings, and a couple blades of grass, one stubborn bee in the pot.  So we start to filter.  We used a simple bucket purchased at Dadant's.  We drained the honey from the extractor to the bucket and seive.  We used a 400 micron filter.  It was perfect.  Cleaned the honey so we could eat fresh raw honey right out of the spigot. 

This is where having help pays off.  "Avry, get in there and scrape the sides with a spatula.  She was good help.  But it looked fun, so I took away the spatula and did some honey scraping my self.  Not too bad!  It cleaned right up.  We took as much honey as we could get from the extractor. 













The bucket in the meantime was filtering slow.  Which is good.  It can take up to 48 hours to filter this honey.  Yet, some was already accumulating at the bottom of the honey bucket.


Hmmmmm....Lets not wait!  Let's bottle some up right now!  So we did.  We were just too excited.  Professional honey folks will wait until all the air bubbles have settled (up to a week)  Not us!  We were too happy to have this golden honey and wanted it to be in these cute little bottles. 





Here's what I found most shocking.  I only took 6 frames due to the drought.  And I bottled 28 lbs of honey.  Whoa.  That's a lot of honey per frame.  I did not realize how much honey those bees were packing up in the hive.  No wonder the hive weighs so much.

The other wonder, was how light the honey was.  I expected to have good clover honey this year, which is light and valuable.  But with the drought, I thought I'd have more wildflower and goldenrod looking honey.  Or, an amber tint.  This is was very light and had a nice flavor.



We lined up all the bottles, and even tried to make a pyramid with them, FYI that doesn't really work with these bottles. 

The whole family got into the process, but my main helper was Avry.  She asked what we are going to do with the "Ucky stuff"  and I explained that beeswax is very valuable for making cosmetics.  Her payment is the wax, she ordered some lip balm tubes on Ebay and she's going to make her own Beeswax lip balm.  I'll let you see how that goes next week. 


On Sunday, we loaded up bottles for the neighbors.  They see the bees all the time, it's only fitting we share some of the bounty.  Here's the cute little bottles we gave out. 







 It was a first time harvest and full of excitement.  We have already had Peanut butter and Honey sandwiches, Tea with Honey, Honey flavored BBQ, and Katy's Favorite, Honey on a spoon.  It was a very rewarding experience and I hope to do even more of it next fall. 

Rain!

We finally got some rain.  My house in Ursa had been skipped the past two times it had rained in Quincy.  My grass was crunchy, and my bees had nothing to do!  They needed something growing in order to be making honey.  I had given up on any good honey crop this year due to the drought, then bam!  Two rains over the weekend.  I'm so happy. 

I did manage to merge two weaker hives into some larger colonies.  They were struggling and with the drought, I thought it would be best to have 7 good hives than 9 kind of good.  I'm hoping we continue to get scattered rains over the next few weeks.  Then my clover will start blooming again, and maybe just maybe with an extended fall, my bees will make enough honey for me and for them too. 

Come on Rain!

Capital Bees

Just got back from a trip with Avry and the 8th graders (they say, High Schoolers) from Unity Middle school.  We went to DC.  While we were walking around the grounds of the White House we saw the well manicured-perfectly manicured-kitchen garden and to my surprise, two beekeepers.  The men were suited up and messing with the bees. 

Cool right?  So they had out their boxes all up on stilts.  Stilts look good for show.  Then I counted boxes.  We were standing pretty far away, so I used the zoom on the camera.  There were six shallow boxes to this hive.  Odd.  No deep brood boxes.  Then the guys started shuffling the boxes around.  One had bees all over the box.  ONE had bees all over the box.  Two of the shallows they tipped and there were no frames at all. 

In concept, very good idea to have bees near the kitchen garden.  But no bees?  No brood?  Not so good. Bees won't go around stinging tourists.  They rarely will leave a 1 mile area, and that is only if there isn't anything to pick up near them.  AKA nectar or pollen.  So next to all those flowers?  It's not like Ive ever seen a president walking around the kitchen garden for a photo op. 

Yet, everyone else in the group was impressed with the bee boxes and the two guys in white suits.  They snapped up pictures right along with me.  We all looked like tourists!

Redneck Swimming Pool or Bee Waterer

So my bees are thirsty.  They are all over the swimming pool toys so they can land and get a bit of water without drowning.  I went out to the bee yard and put a chicken waterer out there, which is supposedly the bee water method of choice.  Not my bees, heck no.  They only drink off of water guns and floaties.  So I've put out a big bucket with some bee toys in the yard.  Let's see if I can retrain them to drink from their own pool!

The full bee yard.  10 hives.  I have 2 that are struggling, the others are doing very well.  Still have two more at moms.  I'll be looking for places near Ursa Il to put additional hives.  Anyone need pollination for your crops?  

By popular demad

Okay not really popular or demand, but one person wants to follow my blog by email, I put the sign up on the left sidebar.  Feel free!

Bee Squad in Action

You've heard of Geek Squad right?  Well, Paul Woodworth and I are the Bee Squad of Northern Adams County.  Why?  Who knows why!  Why do any of us keep bees?  Let along go on bee calls.  People call with their BEE issues and we spring into action.  Today was a humdinger of a bee project.  I'm going to try to explain what happened and show you the pictures.

Paul told me last week that he had an "interesting" bee call planned.  He was not kidding.  He said he could use an extra hand if I'd be able to go Monday morning.  I said sure, I'll be ready to go.  Usually this means my job is handing him the sugar water bottle and keeping the smoker lit.  Not today my friends....not today.  Today I was just as much in action as Paul.

Today, I could have used more hands.  We may need to expand the Bee Squad for jobs like this one in the future.  Yes, now that I think about it, two more hands would have been good....any takers? We'll get you a special suit.  All white.

So we arrived on the scene and found an older home with some wooden slat siding on the porch of the north side of the house.  There was some obvious rotten wood that provided a hole or opening for the bees to fly in and out of.  The occupants were a really nice older couple who said they thought there were some bees living over there and that is why they called.  They suspected that the bees moved in last year.

As we looked at the hole we saw the bees going down and not up in the hole.  Which was a bit odd.  Normally bees like to build up.  But because of the windows, there was no room to build up.  Just down.  So Paul started pulling off the wooden siding.  Then he needed a power saw.  Then a crowbar, and a hammer.  I was glad it was him in charge of Bee Squad and not me. 

As we pulled the boards off, we could tell the bees had built comb all the way down the wall.  So we'd have to pull all the board off the side of the porch.  The owners did not care, they were planning to get new siding this summer.

 See that rather small opening in the bottom corners of the two windows?  That was the entrance hole.  Doesn't look like an entrance to so many bees does it?

  Smoke.  Smoke....MORE smoke.  The smoker generally calms the bees.  Truthfully they smell smoke, think FIRE!  Then eat up honey so their bellies protrude.  Once the belly is full, they can't get their stingers out all the way...and it's better for us and for them.  More bees live!   SMOKE!

It was around this point that Paul asked if I had my smoker with me.  I did not.  He said, I think we could use two smokers.  Huh.....a two smoker job.  

"How do you want to do this?" I asked Paul.  His plan was easy.  "We'll take the brood first, then the honeycombs, then we'll put as many as we can in the hive box.  Then we'll sweep a box full, then we'll vac up the left overs,"  he was rather calm.

Look at those combs.  Huge combs.  They had brood combs "On Top" or facing outward towards us.  They had honey combs further back. 
So up on the ladder with a comb knife and rubber gloves.  He cut the brood combs first, and would hand them down to me.


 

 I tied them to frames as best I could with those bulky crazy bee gloves.  NO WAY was I taking them off.  I'd just have to work slow.  We tied up 5 brood frames and put them in the hive box.

Now we added 5 empty frames and popped a lid on top.  It was loaded with bees already.    Normally calls about bees, would be this.  Some bees, a box and some sweat.

Then we had an entire wall of bees.  Paul guessed 6 pounds of bees.  I guessed 12 pounds of bees.  It was a lot.   More bees than I've seen on a bee call.  We sprayed them down with sugar water so they couldn't fly well then bee brushed them into the bee box.  We got about 75% of the wall of bees by doing this.

Now to the stubborn bees.  We used the Paul Woodworth custom bee vacuum method.  We started sucking up bees and it worked great.  But I noticed we didn't seem to be getting the bees out of there.  What the heck?  The bees that were out foraging were coming back to deliver their pollen.  Oh mercy.  We're never going to get these bees. They just kept coming.

Finally we duct taped the vacuum to the hottest fly in place and let it sit.  It constantly sucked in bees about 50 per minute.  We sucked bees for at least 45 minutes.  That's a lot of bees.  I could not believe how many bees were just flying back to this house.  It was a huge colony of bees.

LeAnn Vac'n  LOVE it!

I wanted to vac!  So I got to vac while Paul cooled off.  loved doing that.  Watching them fly over the hose end and just WHOOSH right into the hose. They just kept going to their old entrance hole and they I'd suck em up!


The owners were very interested in the entire project.  They had lots of questions.  I think it's the bee humor effecting me, but when they asked if I knew what type of bees these were, I told them, "Well, there's Minnesota bees and Italians,'  I couldn't make out their dialect for sure.  They fell for it.  Can't help it, it was fun.

They wanted to know what we'd do with the honey.  It was all mixed in with brood comb.  There was one good chunk of solid honeycomb so we put it on a board and shooed the bees away for them.  Their grand kids were there watching as well so everyone got a good taste of fresh from the hive honey. It was very sweet and warm. 

We thanked them and went on our way.  We put the bees in a hive in my yard.  I think secretly Paul is out of room for bees.  That or his wife doesn't want him having more hives near their home so he let me keep them here.  I'm happy, I'll take the bees!

It took two boxes to get them all in there.  We put the hive box out, then the cardboard box dumped into that.  We slapped an inner cover on fast as we could so they wouldn't fly.  Then the second brood box, two frames of comb and dumped in the vac full of bees.  It was at least 2 new package sized load of bees.

I'm going on record saying it was closer to 12 lbs of bees than 6!

Keep the calls a comin'

Got another call this am.  I'm nothing but a big ball of sweat!  More bees near the fairgrounds in Mendon IL.  This was a fast call, bees were on a stone wall just sitting in the sun.  I grabbed them and hit the road.  This was a huge box of bees.  I mean HUGE.  I had a hard time getting them in to a hive box.  Only got half in and had to keep sweeping them towards the entrance.  Wow. 

Keep the calls a comin.  If I'm not available, call the guys on the MV beekeepers page.

New Swarm Call

Fantastic!  I was sitting out on the deck enjoying the weather and I got a call from Bernie Andrew.  I'm on the MV Beekeeper's list for wanting swarms  This swarm happened to be in Mendon IL, only 6 miles from my house.  Great!  I jumped up and grabbed my swarm gear.  The heck with the weather.

I asked Avry to ride along, my daughter.  She has never seen the bees like this before, so it was all new to her.    These bees all congregated into a small tree about 5 feet off the ground.   This is call #3 in a week, the first were in a 3rd story apartment building and out of reach, the second (read below) were inside a hallowed out log and we had to cut them out. 

These bees just needed a mist of sugar water so they wouldn't fly around a lot, and a snip of the tree limb.  Bam!  They went in the box.  I grabbed a few stragglers that didn't make the box and sealed it up tight.  Duct tape really can do everything.

Then to my bee yard.  This is hive #7 at my house.  I had the box ready and leveled and I was glad I had thought ahead.  I put in some "borrowed" frames (I was running low) and installed the bees.  These gals were really calm.  They just went right to the frames and box.  I shook the rest in and put the lid on tight.  Next just tap tap tap on the box so the queen can tell the bees where she was located.  They just flew right on in.  Love this swarm!

Thanks for the calls, keep em coming. 

Bees for Lunch

My friend, Jackie Weisenberger seems to know everyone.  Today, she took a call from a tree trimmer in Quincy who got half way through a tree and found bees.  BUNCHES of bees.  So they called me.  Yeah!  A bee call.  Only I know nothing about how to get bees out of a middle of a log, so I called Paul Woodworth (bee mentor) and he agreed to go with me to get bees over lunch.

When we got on site Paul snapped a photo of the tree, it was pretty good sized and the bees had just recently located there.  I'll add the photo when I get it from him later.  There were three combs, but all were just wax drawn, no larve or brood.  So this was just sheer luck we got the call and the bees before they had fully settled in the tree. 

They were tough to reach, the rotten hallowed out tree had lots of places for the bees to hide.  Paul kept telling me to mist them with sugar water, brush them and hold the box flap.  He then pulled up the log and bumped them hard towards the box.  I felt like I needed one more hand.  Or at least a left as good as my right.  But after about an hour, these peaceful bees were all gathered up.

We ended up keeping part of the log, we felt the queen was deep in there so we took a piece and taped it in a box.  Then we had our gathered bees in box #2.  Now just a short drive to the bee yard to install them.

Paul instructed me to keep the log in the bottom box, and frames in the top.  This way the bees will naturally go up and settle where they can easily build comb and the queen can start laying eggs.

OI emptied a bottom box, and made room for the log.  Guess what?  No picture, again, not enough hands. 

Then misted them really well so they would not fly when I opened up the box to place the log.  Very quickly added box #2 to the top with the frames.  I also misted the frames with sugar water, they seem to like them better that way.

Next I emptied all the bees from box 2.  That was a chore, it was full of bees.  I misted, brushed, misted brushed.  You get the idea. 

Can you see the log way down in the bottom?

When I got as many in as I could, I put the inner cover, then cover on.  Only this hive was new to these wild bees, so they couldn't find the door.  I tapped the bottom box so queenie would send them message "To Me!" 





Check them out moving into the opening. It was fun to watch. They just wiggled along to the opening.  I had to brush some off the top edges of the hive towards the opening.  It would have taken them hours to get there. 





So then I filled the feeder and just watched for fun. 

This is one of the neighbors.  I had put some comb out that was old, they keep coming out and dragging it in pieces.  Who would have thought that small piece was so valuable to them. 


What a fun day, and it took about 2 hours. Okay, long lunch, but still better than left overs I had planned. 

Thanks to Paul for helping, I would have never gotten the log split to get these lovelies out.  Sincere thanks!

Hive Inspection

Yesterday the weather was good, so I had a chance to dig into my hives and make an inspection.  I was very excited to check my bees progress, so I forgot the camera.  I've added some stock photos for you to see.  There are 4 hives on the north side of the property.

Hive One is a full year old, and very busy. The queen has been laying very well.  She was laying in each cell without skipping cells, and it appeared she was laying several per day.  The 10 bottom brood box frames had lots of larva, and she had to be laying well to have so much in the bottom.  I was pretty pleased to see this.  This hive is the one that was knocked over in last June's storm and got wet.  It had been sluggish all the rest of last year.  I filled the feeder with sugar syrup since we were expecting poor weather (cold and rainy) for he next couple of days.

Hive Two is my jumbo package.  I believe that two of my package bees actually merged into one hive.  I guess they did not like their other queen.  This was just a theory until I opened it up.  Wow.  was it busy.  There were as many bees in here as in Hive One.  Lots of new brood, and many new bees coming in the next week.  That makes me excited for all the production I can expect earlier in the spring.  At the rate this hive is perking along, I'll be ready for a shallow in about 2 weeks.  Which I feel is early.  I'll have to ask at the next bee meeting.

Hive Three is struggling. It has drawn out comb well.  Yet only about 3 frames worth of comb.  Yet, it' full of larva.  It could be that some of the package bees did not stay with this hive.  The population is lower than what was put into the hive.  Yet they have enough that in a week or so when their new cells start hatching, we'll have a good bee population by mid June.  The queen here is definitely working hard, she just doesn't have enough bees to build more comb for her to lay more eggs.  Time should fix this problem.  Fed them and moved along.

Hive Four is a gift from Paul Woodworth.  I had lost a hive (which I now think merged with Hive two) so when he got a call about a swarm from someone wanting it removed, he brought it over.  My assessment of swarms is that they are more aggressive bees.  They are unsettled and seem to really PING the face mask more than the calm settled bees. They were in the box about a week before my inspection,  I should have tried to get in there sooner.  Weather kept me out.  When I lifted the inner cover, they had drawn down from the top.  Beautiful comb, but it couldn't stay on the cover, so I had to cut it out.  I tried to attach to some empty frames for them, but I'm not sure they were happy with me.  I pulled their original tree branch out and filled the box with frames.    This hive is strong, has many bees, and they way they all stayed together, I believe the queen is in there, although I did not see her.  I will check it again soon to ensure she is laying.

It was such a nice morning, I ended up just watching the bees flying into the hives all full of pollen.  Their "Fanny packs" were all bright yellow.  I find that fun to watch.  They just continually drop into the hive opening and deliver the goods.  I think the UPS business model must be based on bee operations.  Very efficient.  This photo shows a bee with his packs full.  The bright Yellow. 

Batty Weather

This weather is driving me batty.  I worked yesterday to prepare for a hive inspection this morning.  I have all my additional boxes ready, just in case it's time to add another deep.  I have extra frames nailed together, painted, and filled my sugar water feeders.  What happens?  It's too cold and windy to venture out.

The bees do NOT like cold spring days.  Nor wind.  So I'm in the house anxiously waiting for the warm happy bee weather to return.  My poor bees!  Trapped in their hives with no foraging.  My empathy is in overdrive.

One Flew Away!

I got out to check the bees about a week ago, one of the five new package bees decided they didn't like their new home. They just flew away! I was very disappointed. Yet one hive is doing GREAT. It's almost completely filled the bottom brood box and I went ahead and put my second box on today. The other here at the house is doing OKAY. Those gals have drawn out about 5 full frames, so working half the speed of Hive Glorious.

All hives have been fed so they will not long for food supplements. Next bee meeting is Tuesday night. Hope to see anyone interested in bees at the meeting!

Home Sweet Home

Have you ever noticed that no one ever says, "Can you pass the salt?  Thanks Cornsyrup."  Nor do they say "Love you Saccharin," or "Come home safe Stevia." It's always HONEY!

Back to the big day story!

Ready and waiting-my new hives

Now I've got three more packages to go at home.  These babies will be my obsession for the next few days.  I'll check them constantly!  Yet, I don't need to.  They are bees.  Naturally, they will be fine.  They've been taking care of themselves without me looking in on them every day.

I followed the same install plan as I did at my mom's house.  Shake the bees into the hive, install the queen, and feed a little.  Here are some pics.

Package #1 into the hive

The Queen comes in a special little cage.  This protects her in transport from the other bees.  Once she is settled, and the other bees accept her as queen (they will only keep 1 queen in any hive) I'll let her into the hive to start laying. She's bigger than all the other bees. And Fast!  I had a hard time getting her all in one shot.

Here you can see her, she's almost twice the size of the other bees.

 

Can you see them flying into the top of the hive through the "Inner Cover" hole?  They can tell their queen is in the hive and they are going to her.

 I'm sure if I had the world's best mini cam, I could see them in there cleaning and drawing out comb.  Love those busy bees.  Not a lazy one in the bunch.

Hive #3

 After about an hour of fussing over them and just enjoying then finding a new home I packed he lids on and hit the deck for some relaxation.  After a quick refreshment and dinner, I decided to go back out for one more look.  After two hours, about 90 percent of the bees have made their way into their new homes.

Now time for a back massage and good nights sleep before I go out and start spying on them tomorrow.  What a great day of beekeeping.