Quality time with the bees

I spent nearly three hours with the bees today. I had to refill my smoker twice, but it stayed lit! I feel like I haven't really spent a lot of time with the bees this summer - life has just gotten in the way and I have been more of a bee-haver than a beekeeper. This is just not how I want to live my life - keeping bees just helps to keep me in a good place.

We are experiencing a dearth right now. This means that there are very very few plants with nectar and pollen. Leave the clover in your lawn if you can.

Soo what's happening in the hives, you wonder and how about that honey...

Well, Sun's hive is just fabulous. There are gobs of bees and they are working to fill the four honey supers on there. I way over did it and they would be fine with three, but had the extra one and they are working it. They don't have a lot of pollen, which is a concern. She has a great laying pattern.

While I was working the colony, I had it open for a while. We got an unexpected visitor. Look on the bottom of the picture on the edge of the box. A bumble bee flew in and walked down in the frames. I was so surprised. She actually went down on a frame and only popped out a few moments later. The honeybees just ignored her.

Magenta's hive is doing well. They aren't putting up much honey but that is fine. There was a good amount of larvae but once again, not quite as much pollen as I would like to see. I took a couple of frames of honey from them.

True's hive is a hot mess. They are once again superceding. This is not an emergency supercedure - there are four cells that I could fine and they all are pretty big. Only three have larvae in them. If you look carefully you can see one of the princess in the top most cell - there is a blob of white. That blob is a combination of the larva and the royal jelly they are feeding her. She is positively swimming which means that they are doing well as a colony.

The other things on the frame that look like bullets are drone cells. Drones are bigger than worker bees so their cells stick out a bit.

Strangely enough, these bees were really calm even though I had to take their hive down nearly to the bottom board. They have some honey put up but I didn't take any yet.

I am going to try and get honey extracted for the fair again this year. I will be defending champ and there are no duplicate names on the trophy I have. My expectations are quite low since I am extracting quite late, but we shall see.

Update from June 5

I have one 1 lb jar of honey left at the moment from last year. Let me know if you are interested in purchasing it.

Ah, but what about this year? It is official, there is people honey! Out of three hives, only ONE hive has honey at this point. Sigh. I really had hoped that we'd have more going on by now. But on to the official report.

Ruby's hive is looking quite fine. I am baffled by their insistence of having both swarm cells and a partially constructed supercedure cell, but nothing is happening in either one of them. I saw eggs, but not many in the top box. My husband and kids helped me out by spinning out two frames from the brood chamber and I replaced them. This will give the queen more space to lay eggs. Their two honey supers were empty.

Sun's hive is amazing! What a boatload of bees they have in there. I had put on two honey supers and a ross round super for making honey with the comb still in it. Alas, my best wax makers failed me. I took the ross round super off as well as the queen excluder. They had no honey in the supers, but I gave them a fresh frame to build out and an empty for the queen to start laying in.

True's hive - yes, the new queen is OUT - is doing fantastically! She has to be out as they are much gentler than last time I was in the hive. I didn't mess around in the hive - I will give it one more week and then dive in. But, and this is the amazing part, there is honey in the supers. Yes, we have HONEY! I gave them the ross round super just to see. They are slow wax builders so it might not work this year, but I have high hopes.

Yay!!

Report from 5/1

As is typical around here, things are a bit unpredictable. I spent hours, yes HOURS, in the hives yesterday. I cleaned them down to their cinder blocks and it was pretty disgusting at points. Nonetheless, there are few better ways to spend a warm afternoon that upto my neck in honeybees.

Joy is the oldest, so let's go to her first. She's just finished her second winter and that is getting pretty old for a honeybee queen. They can live as long as four years, but generally two is tops. Joy has a nice strong laying pattern and a fair number of larvae coming up. I didn't see many tiny larvae so that had me a but concerned. What really concerned me was that these bees were jumpy. So I looked carefully through the hive and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a tiny swarm cell with a princess inside. Joy is going to be leaving and taking bees with her and a new baby will be out soon. This hive has had Hope and Joy as queens. Any suggestions on the new queen's name?

Sun is about two weeks younger that Joy and she has a nice laying pattern too. Not quite as strong, but there is little evidence of swarming and they are building cells nicely on the foundation I gave them. This hive had the oldest, ugliest frames, so I switched them out and gave them the next best ones I had so in the end, they got four new frames.

I don't think Ruby has a clue what to do. She is a young queen and started out this spring looking good - nice laying pattern and lots and lots of brood. Well, now things have changed. She's a mess. Her laying pattern is patchy. So I was not entirely surprised to see a supercedure cell being started - this means the bees think she needs replacing. It wasn't complete but I marked the frame and will go check in a few days. They also had a ton of queen cups. This is just the start of a swarm cell but they were all dry and empty.

I would prefer a supercedure of a queen over a swarm. With a swarm you not only loose a queen but a bunch of your most experienced bees as well. A swarm can set you back nearly seven weeks, and a supercedure maybe four weeks.

It is shaping up to be a dramatic spring around here.

While there is a lot of drama going on, I did put people honey frames out. No idea what that's going to do for the bees, but just in case they feel like putting up some honey, they have room.

Report from 4/18

The girls are doing well - they all have babies cooking and the foragers are flying.

All the hives have swarm cells though. This is completely confusing. There is plenty to do, the queens all have space to lay and yet there are swarm cells?? hmmm.

Perhaps they don't have enough to do or are just in wax making mode without a genuine outlet. Well, I gave them outlet. I took out five frames that were the oldest frames in the top boxes and let the girls start fresh with foundation. So they have plenty to do. As soon as these get going well, I will do it again and again so that each hive has between 25 and 33% fresh frames. As the wax gets older, it not only accumulates pesticides and other nasty chemical, it also gets just plain dirty.

And the big news - we saw our first Dandelion in the yard - two bright yellow faces that had already been pollinated so the bees already got there. This means it is time to give the girls some people honey frames!

Yay for honey!

The good, the bad and the painful

First the bad.
We didn't find any young larvae in Joy's hive. We went in to give them some empty frames so she'd have room to lay eggs. We found plenty of capped brood, meaning the larvae are at least nine days old. We gave the hive a frame with young eggs (under three days) just in case. Just in case what you wonder... in case Joy is no more. They can make a new queen out of any old tiny egg. If she is there and doing well, then these eggs will be just a bit more brood - no harm done..

The good.
Sun's hive is rockin'! We took seven frames of people honey from her hive - yep you read right - PEOPLE HONEY. Whoo hoo. Sun had lots of brood and honey. We extracted honey from ten frames in total and got about three gallons. Yay!

The fabulous.
Rose's daughter is gorgeous! Yep, we actually got to see her in all her magnificence. She's a really nice size and the bees are quite plentiful in this hive despite swarming. (Which, we never did see.) I would have taken pictures, but I was too scared to remember! No name yet, but I am still taking suggestions.

The painful.
After coming in from extracting, I thought to myself that it has been over a year since I'd gotten stung. Ahhh the hubris. Sure enough, I went out to plant some basil I got at the Millbury MOMS Club Annual Banquet and a bee got caught in my hair. You can guess the rest of the story. Mike was amazing and got the stinger out super fast.

Let me know if you are interested in purchasing honey this year - we will be selling again in August! Yay bees.

The good, the great and the downright Joyful...

First the Joyful
Joy's hive is honeybound. We spent last weekend checking the bees, took out six of her 20 frames, spun out the honey and returned two of those, plus four "blanks" for the bees to make in to honeycomb. And less than a week later, they are filling those up with honey AGAIN! Hello Joy... make babies and put the honey in the people-honey boxes.

There is at least 25lbs of people honey in her hive. There just should be more.

The great!
Sun is AWESOME! She's makin' babies like crazy and filling up the people-honey boxes, or honey supers in bee keeper lingo. Her girls are always a bit jumpier that everyone else, but that seems to be the personality of the hive.

Then the good
Rose is clearly a good queen. The bees are super calm and there are LOTS of them. She might be be just too good of a queen. With all the bees in her hive, even with three honey supers, they are going to swarm. Yep, Rose is leaving and taking a bunch of bees with her. I expect the swarm to leave any day now. When we checked the hive, the very first frame I pulled and an uncapped queen cell and a lovely capped cell. Sigh.

I will keep my eye out for the swarm, but I am not really interested in a fourth hive right now. If I did find it and get it into a box (and that alone would be worth taping for the laugh factor!), I would have to get them going in their own hive. I could combine them with my weakest hive in the fall, but as it is right now, they are going well.

Rose does have a lot of honey on the hive. They have at least 25lbs of people honey ready to go, so I am confident that even with a new queen (who better be a slut and mate with a LOT of drones), we will still have plenty of bees for the winter.

Any name ideas for the daughter of Rose?

Still learning

I checked on the girls today and they look great. It looks like the skunk guard got tipped as some point recently and something (possibly black and white) was biting or scratching Sun's hive. The bees have a funny bottom board that they like to use as a back door entrance. I think this is why the beastie was bothering the girls in middle. Given that they are New England bees, that is no surprise - no one around here seems to actually use their front doors!

Joy is teaching me yet again that she knows how to be a bee better than I know how to be a beekeeper! I put honey supers on all the hives a couple of weeks ago. Joy's bees had done nothing on the bottom super so I expected that the honey super would be merely a plaything for them for a while. Alas no. The wax on the bottom super needs to be cleaned out - dead bees, bits of wax, and other detritus litters the frames.

They are either being lazy or just don't like that wax because Joy decided to lay eggs in the honey super frames! Grr. I don't like using a queen excluder between the brood boxes and the honey supers as I don't think the bees like to go thru them and I get less honey. Nonetheless, I put one on today - after assuring myself that she was in the brood box. (She is a really pretty queen!)

Pink's hive is doing beautifully. I could watch her bees all day long. Pink's laying pattern looks like not only did she read all the books, she probably wrote them! We have our first capped honey cell - yep - cell singular! Her hive smells so good - all business and wax.

It was a great check - and my smoker stayed lit the whole time!

Feeding time at the hives

This is the time of year when the queen will start laying eggs to make more workers for the spring. The bees raise the temp from around 60 to 93 degrees.

Most beekeepers feed their bees sugar or pollen patties. I had three sugar patties left from last year, so I thought perfect - I have three hives why not use them. I went out wearing my regular orange coat and orange gloves - what a beautiful day!

I didn't exactly rip open the hives, I cracked the inner covers open about two inches and slipped a disk of bee candy in. The bee candy is sugar and corn syrup cooked and cooled in a pie plate until it forms a rather hard disk. One disk had cracked in to about 10 pieces, but they are all usable.

I checked on Pink's hive first and found a few girls out and about.

I slipped the sugary disk in and found part of their pollen patty from Oct still there. The girls should eat that soon.

Sun's hive was pretty much the same but there are way fewer bees. They had not consumed any of their pollen. I am most concerned about these bees and will keep a close on them.

Then I went to Joy's hive. WOW. I could hear them buzzing the moment I touched the outer lid of the hive. I made the mistake of trying to slip the broken patty into their hive. They were all up in arms and one tried to get in my hair.

Have I mentioned I HATE bees in my hair.

I closed the lid best I could and made a beeline to the shed to get a veil. Sheesh. So with veil on and hive tool in hand, I re-cracked open the hive lid and maneuvered the sugar pieces so that the lid would close properly. The sugar bits were COVERED with bees and there were a handful of girls still flying around.

If Sun's hive doesn't make it - and I hope they do! - I will manipulate things so that one of Joy's daughters becomes the new queen in that hive.

Joy ROCKS!

I love being a beekeeper.

Stay of Execution

I asked our bee inspector Ken Warchol to come visit my hives to help me get rid of Pink because I was planning on combining Pink and Sun's hives for the winter. I am SO glad I asked him to come over.

He said that Pink's have was the stronger of the two hives and that he thought all three hives were good and strong! Yay! And being the great teacher that he is, he explained to me how to tell - essentially if on a cool day the bees are still in the top box across all the frames, there are plenty of bees.

On the other hand, and isn't there always one, all three hives need more honey. I am trying to feed them honey but it might be too chilly for then to take a bunch of honey. With the extra cold weather these days I am going to offer them sugar water as well and then treat them in the spring for the intestinal parasites bees get.

On his way out, Ken had one of Pink's girls on his hat. She'd gotten a bit chilly, so I took her home.