Close up look at Bees

What are the major problems facing bees?  Chemicals?  Loss of habitat?  or is it Varroa?  Take a look at this Ted Talk with some amazing video of bees growing in the hive.

Welcome to April and warmer weather in the forecast.  The shiitake mushroom logs here are newly inoculated and will be ready for the next stage of the process in 6 months.  The logs from last year have already produced this year, which was a surprise.  We enjoyed mushroom risotto and still had enough to fill up the dehydrator for using later.  Craig is exploring ways to expand the mushroom production on the farm so we may have more information on this soon.

Welcome to Spring 2015.
     Even though it doesn't feel like spring this morning, we have great hopes of a spring-like week leading up to Easter Sunday.  I decided to reactivate the blog to make a place to document all of the bee activity going on around here.  Last weekend, on March 22, we installed 10 new packages into hives down at the farm.  It was a cool morning but warmed up into the upper 50's which made the transition nice.  Our friend Dave helped Craig and I documented the process.  After our bees were installed, we drove back to Cary and installed Dave's 2 new hives.  He's beginning his beekeeping this year so we are hoping for a great season for strong colony growth.

These are the hives installed.  The top super covers the package box and will be removed once all bees move into the lower hive box.  

Taking inventory the week before the install of the new bees.

Here's the sample of the branding iron that we designed for the cutting boards that Craig builds and has for sale.

Here's the new bee yard at the farm.

Bee yard at the farm with queen castle in the foreground.

The truck is full of 12 packages ready for their new homes.

Dave is ready to get to work.  The truck bed is full of sugar water that will be placed in the feeders for the hungry bees.  Once they transfer into the hives, they will have lots of this to sustain them while they build their new colonies.  

One of the packages of bees that we purchased from Big Oak Bee Farm in Raleigh.

The packages came with 30,000 bees or 3 lbs.  They also came with a fertilized queen in a queen cage.  Craig is removing the sugar water feed that is also placed in the boxed package.

Removing the sugar water can.

The next package waiting to move into the hive.

Finishing up and the bees are starting to move out and about.

Dave and Betty's bees waiting on installation.  These will be the first beehives located on the golf course at
MacGregor Downs. 

Getting ready for the installation of Dave's bees.

Dave and Craig getting started.  Betty and I observed.

Dave is getting the queen out of the box and removing the plug so that she can emerge once they workers eat through the sugar plug. By that time, the bees in the colony will have accepted her and they can all live harmoniously. 

Almost finished with these two.

Summer is here and the bees are buzzin'

Ben showing nice laying pattern on a frame with capped honey on the outside and top.

Well, so much has happened since my last post so I'll try to do a quick recap of what's been going on. We consulted with Ben Crawley on May 10th to help us determine exactly what was happening with our bees. We increased from 3 hives to 8 over two months because of the swarming and our catching the swarms. Craig made several trips to Busy Bee Apiary to pick up extra hive boxes and frames to have available for the splitting and swarming. Ben was a tremendous help and he marked the queen in each hive. We learned that we have some strong hives, with only one needing a bit of help with feeding. We also learned that we needed to take some honey to make space for more honey while it was flowing. While Ben was here to help with working the hives, we cleaned off comb and cut down queen cells in a couple of frames. The three hours spent with him was well worth the cost because we learned so much about where we stand at this point.

Equipment in these pictures.

A couple days after getting deep into the hives, Craig and Jim drove to Brushy Mountain in North Wilkesboro to get the extractor and the decapping bin. We were ready for taking our first honey. That weekend, we put on our gear, got our smoker ready and went forth to take some frames of full honey. Craig had plenty of replacement frames ready to put into the hives. We had a plastic bin with a lid and each fully capped frame of honey that we took from the hive had to be brushed to remove the bees. They didn't always agree with the process and we got a few stings on our hands. Once the honey laden frame was placed in the bin, we quickly capped the bin and moved on to the next frame. In all, we took 14 frames of honey which resulted in about 4 gallons of honey. The process went smoothly and I really enjoyed taking off the caps and Craig enjoyed running the extractor. The pictures below will give further details.

Bees are CRAZY today!

Here are some drone comb that we reomoved from between the frames.

Today we entered all 8 of our hives. If you have been following, we only had 3 hives last year but due to swarming and recapturing, we now have 8. So as we entered the hives, I marked the hive boxes with a number so that we can keep accurate records. I understand that if you have hundreds of colonies of bees, you must have an accurate system of documenting the health, status and how you worked the hives. Starting with 8, that's more than we are able to talk about without a system. I'm still looking for an online documentation program that is free so let me know if you know about one.

Well, we realized that two of our hives are probably without a queen and may need to wait for the workers to raise a queen or our question is, should we buy a queen and reintroduce to the hive.

When we opened hives 4 and 6 we found a lot of worker bees, a large number of drones and lots of honey. The brood seemed to have all emerged and there were NO NEW EGGS. Alert, Alert. Where is the queen. Well, either they are slow to start a new queen or the one that they had didn't come back from her maiden flight. I have wondered where those queens fly to get fertilized? Do they go out with drones from other hives? Drones from their own hive? Anyway, each drone that mates with the queen, dies after the process.




Anyway, we are doing the best that we know for now and feel that our hives are doing well. I'll let you know more next week. Today I got stung on the hand and Craig on the neck. I'll post pictures of his sting from last week. You will understand why he has an epipen.









Ending on a happy note. Happy Easter.

Art work by Brinae. Such a great illustration of my favorite! Thanks Brinae.

And another one of her favorites. She has experience drawing Winnie the Poo for many years! This is one of her favorites and one of the first pieces of art in her new sketch book.

Really? Seven hives in our Backyard?

April 7, 2011

Well, here we are at the beginning of Spring with seven hives in our backyard. We never intended to have more than two or three hives on our acre lot but the bees had a different plan. Swarming results in splitting and splitting requires more hive bodies (called deeps). Newbies to beekeeping, we had no idea that bees multiply so quickly after the winter solstice. After that point during the winter and when the temperatures are very cold, the queen gets on with her laying of eggs. Mark that up to winter boredom. They are all balled up yet having a huge birthing celebration. Everyone gets very hungry and it is common for colonies to starve during this time because they are working hard to keep the hive warm for their little ones. It reminds me of how I would wake up several times a night when my babies were newborns to make sure they were warm during the cold winters.

So after using honey from the stores during the winter, as soon as the earliest food resources start to blossomi in early spring, the colony growth takes a giant step. More brood emerges and the queen has more space for continued egg laying.

When you start raising bees, this aspect is important to understand as you move into spring - after acquiring bees the year before. Our good friends, Linda and Jim, had their first swarm today. We feel like pros after four swarms so Craig was free to go over and help them gather up the swarm and place them into a new hive box. Unfortunately, this was not what they wanted so they left that box. We would love to think that they returned to their original home or hive but that is most likely NOT what happened. I'll post later any information about their hives. By the way, they got their bees the same day as we did and our colonies have all split so it was just their time. Good luck Linda and Jim.

Here are some pictures from last year when we installed our bees. Enjoy.