Hive Inspection

It has been a few weeks since we set up our bee hives for this year, and this past weekend we decided to inspect to make sure the queen is alive, thriving, and doing her job.  

When doing this type of inspection you look to see if you can spot the queen, check for brood cells (chambers containing larva), and check for larvae themselves.  We didn't spot the queens in either hive, but we didn't check each frame of bees for her.  We try to disturb the hive as little as possible.  We did however see many brood cells and larvae, so we are satisfied that all is well.

In pulling out one of the frames, a larger brood chamber was damaged and unfortunately, a bee pupa fell out of its chamber.  We left the pupa on the bottom of the hive, but before we had finished with the inspection, a worker hauled it outside, where I picked it up to examine it up close.  Looks just like an adult bee, only colorless. 

 I think it is beyond cool, but the rest of my family are not so impressed.  They just shudder and walk away.  What do you think?

Setting Up The Hives -2013

Whoa! Time Machine has transported you back to May 4th, 2013 !!  While you're here, check out our hive set up day!

 Remember the boxes-o-bees in my laundry room?  Well, we decided to give them their own space outside...

Steve and I each have our own hive this year. I informed him that my gentle and mellow Italian bees will far outperform his sweet, yet impulsive Carniolan (Carnies for short!) bees.

Here's me opening my box-o-bees to remove the queen and make sure she is still alive.

 

 The queen is in her own tiny screened box. As you can see, she is popular already. She is packaged this way so that the colony can get used to her smell and accept her as their queen during their travel time in the box. The box has a cork in one end which I had to pull out and replace with a mini marshmallow. The idea is that the queen will eat her way out from her end, while attendants eat through from the other end, eventually freeing her from the cage. It should take about 3 or 4 hours.

 

 Shaking/dumping bees into the hive box. This is pretty exciting, and they don't mind it as much as you would think.

 Here I'm putting the queen's box into the hive box and I'll sandwich it between frames to hold it in place.

 Replacing frames before closing up the hive box. (Yes, I am completely aware that I am a fashion nightmare!)

 

Here's Steve dumping his bees into the hive.

 Steve sprayed his bees down with sugar water before putting them in the hive, so they had wet wings and didn't fly as much as mine did. Here they are in a big pile on the bottom of the hive so he is gently spreading them out so they aren't crushed when he replaces the frames.

Placing the Carnie queen. 

Putting a lid on it.

Now we'll leave them alone for a week or two, when we'll inspect the hive to make sure the queen is laying eggs. 

Now go. Get out of here and back to May 27th where you belong.  Nothing more to see here.

Bee Day

I have approximately 14,000 bees in my laundry room.

 Don't worry, they are contained!

We brought them home last night, but since we didn't want to contend with the evening's alternating rain/sleet/snow, we decided to put off hiving them for a day.  That meant we needed to feed them.   

Feeding them while in their boxes simply involves spritzing them with a  sugar water solution through the mesh.  They lick each other and, Voila! Bee dinner!  We didn't want to do this outside or in the garage for fear of freezing them, hence their residency in my laundry room.  

Bees with pollen patties (front, left) and 5 lbs. of delicious dinner starter!

See, not weird at all!   I bet lots of people feed bees in the laundry room!

Today is forecast to be rainy and cool, but we have to get them into their hives so they can release the queens and get busy.  At least it's not snowing!   Hopefully I'll have pictures of that to share soon!

Sweet!

Mistress of the Hive!

During the most recent peek into our  hive, we discovered that our bees have been quite busy filling 2 honey supers with, well, honey!   Wish I could say our excellent bee keeping skills had something to do with this, but really we were pretty hands-off and just let the bees do their thing.

After taking the covers off of the hive, and smoking down the bees, I used a hive tool to loosen the wax around the frames, so I could pull one out to inspect it.

This little frame was sooooo heavy!  I was a little worried I would suddenly lose my grip and cause some bees to become very upset.  Thankfully I'm stronger than I think!  The white part you see is where the bees have capped cells of honey. 

And here is the hive magically put back together so you can get an idea of its size. 

Fashion Fail

 The top three are the boxes from which we will harvest honey for our own use. There is a sort of screen between the deeps and the honey supers to prevent the queen from laying eggs where there should be clean honey only. The top super, as of 2 weeks ago, was empty so I'm not sure they will be able to get to that before fall.  

 The bottom 2 boxes are where the queen lays eggs and where the bees store honey for their own use in the winter.  These are the ones we started with in the spring.  This is what it looked like then:

Our next step will be to harvest honey and extract it from the comb. Probably this weekend or next. Hmmm...better re-read that chapter in Bee Keeping for Dummies....

Coming and Going

The bees have been keeping themselves busy now that the weather is warming up again.  Last time we opened the hive, they had some good comb coming along, and things were awfully sticky in there.  So far, so good!

Our apple and ornamental trees have seen a lot of action his past week as they came into full bloom...

...and home base is a flurry of comings and goings.  No one cares a bit about me as I crouch in close to snap a few pictures.  The pollen sacs on these tiny bees are so huge; I don't know how they fly straight!

We'll open the hive again soon, and see what they're building in there.  My friend Margie is setting up a hive this coming weekend, too, so we'll have someone else to compare notes with.

Bees!

On Saturday afternoon, during his hour long drive home from the cities, Steve had 15,000 bees buzzing in his car. 

 Good thing they were in a box! 

We had been thinking about starting a bee-keeping venture for the past couple of years, but always seemed a little too late to place an order.  Colony collapse has also made bees difficult to obtain.  This year however, Steve was encouraged and directed by a bee-experienced friend as to when and where to purchase, so we finally made good on our intentions!

We let the bees rest for a day after their trip home and sprayed their screen-sided box with sugar water to feed and calm them.

The next day's weather (rain, wind and thunderstorms) was not ideal for setting up a bee hive, but the extended forecast (snow!) didn't seem the best choice either, so we decided to deal with the rain!

We chose a spot not too far from our house, but one  that also doesn't see regular traffic from playing children.  Shielded from northwest winds by our barn, near to our pond, and in the shade of a willow tree, we think this just might be the perfect spot for our bees to thrive.

The lower box holds 9 beeswax frames. The upper box is currently empty.

Not knowing exactly what to expect from 15,000 bees that have been living in a box for several days, Steve decided to suit up to transfer them to the hive.  

Smoke helps calm to the bees.  At this point they are all still in the box on top of the hive.

Here Steve removes the lid to access the queen.  She is contained in her own, smaller box with attendants.  She is "trapped" in her box by a piece of candy, which the worker bees will eat through to release her, once they are together in the hive.

The whole operation seemed to be a one-person job, so I stayed on the sidelines, just a couple feet from Steve, with the camera.  I didn't wear a veil or any special clothing and had probably 6 to 8 bees land on me. They were non-aggressive, and just sort of rested on my arms and back. Steve had maybe a dozen or so take an interest in him, and again, they just rested on his head, arms and back.  You can see them on his suit...those little black spots!  

The Main event...Dumping In The Bees!

Here Steve is holding the queen bee's box, preparing to attach it to the inside of the hive.  You can see  the bees clinging to the beeswax frames inside.  They are pleased!!!  On top of the frames is a bag of sugar water with a small slit  in it.  They will drink from this until there are flowers in bloom.

Finis!  The remaining bees eventually found their way inside .  We have to leave them alone to do their thing now for a week.  It will be hard not to check on them until then!

The whole experience was very reassuring of the gentle nature of the honey bee, but this may change somewhat come mid-summer when they actually have honey to protect!  I still think wearing at least a veil and gloves will be a good idea, because, for me anyway, instinct may over-rule reason if bees are crawling on my face!