A very busy Bee Season

So far I have pulled three supers of honey, added a total of 6 supers to my hives, built 3x new hives, added two NUC's to the Apiary, and one hive of Trap out bees from the Ballinger Academy. The trapout is not finished and the capture box is again being worked by the bees , need to add another frame of brood to it.

The Scout hives are both working well, and we should see good growth soon from the 10 frame hive. The pkg we installed last weekend , so will take a bit longer.

Pics soon

April , booming begining.

The spring has been a boomer of a season, the mild winter moved right on into an Indian summer, temps in 70's and 80's mid March, and plenty of pollen and nectar. All hives have been growing, but last weekend when deciding to do a split we discovered a queenless hive, one of my Waynes bee hives had no new brood or eggs and a capped queen cell. Either they swarmed, or we damaged her on our last inspection. No matter, the bees are still working the hive well, and soon there will be a new queen. All hives already have a new super on. I also have a nuc on order for the 14th.

The first attrition

Well my original hive that took the late season mite hit, has not made it. On 28th Janauary, almost exactly a year after I first wrangled live bees with Rob and Wally, I noticed clear robbing signs at the #1 hive, opened it up and found a few bees frozen in a very small cluster of only about 6", food both sides of them , so the mites just hammered them too hard, and maybe the queen also failed late season..... Never checked for brood late season. She would have been at least two years old according to Marc. LIVE AND LEARN. The other hives are working well, good pollen going in and a gallon jar feeder in the yard is being cleaned outi every 3 days. Did one fumigdalin treatment as well, just to be sure. Was hoping to be able to open the hives today before the cold snap (20 expected Sunday morning) but too cold and windy, only 52 with wind, so left them alone. Will clean up the dead out tomorrow too, as it was raining last weekend and away all week. Hive #3 is strong so will make a split when it warms up. Might get a pkg too as Larry Tate has some left. Will add some pics soon.

Winter tasks

So with a rainy cold day, I retired to my woodwork shop , to mess with some bee hive stuff.
I made and nailed up 10 Medium Frames for the Boy Scout Project

Frames

Then I started to build 4x Med Supers for my hives, I cut the boards to length

First step cut to depth of a board

Setting the blade to the height Aligning the Tenon jig The final product

of one boardNow we cut off the unwasnted part of the tennon checking the depth of the cut

Getting ready to trip the tennon

Rabbit cut on both ends

Cutting the frame rest 3/8 rabbit



The final dimensional cutting done


Next the cove handholds, this is a 15 deg jig that slides into a dado blade, the board being cut is inserted face (outside) down, an the top is also DOWN.





Cut board folded over a clean cut with 4 deg undercut as well as blade is at 19 dg

New Year

Well my first year of bees faded away, and I have learned a lot, but have so much more to learn.

So far the bees have done fine, with such a light winter, and they have worked many days, in fact even saw pollen last week. All the hives seem to have good stores ( heave test)

On Dec 31st, witha temperature of 63 deg f, I have a video of new bees taking an exploratory flight, a first I thought it might be robbing, but nope, and within 10 minutes they had gone back inside.

I am also open feeding in the bee yard, 2:1 syrup with splash of Honey B Healthy. Works very well from a 1 gallon pickle jar , raised on two pieces of wood.

If the weather stays so warm, then mid Jan, I will be adding pollen substitute, and brewers yeast.

Winter check

So I am walking in the yard, and see a Yellow jacket walking Oh so brazenly into one of the hives. Now a week back I checked the heft (weight) of all the hives and this one was a tad lighter than others.

So I panic...... good reaction.

I open the hive, temps around 48-49 deg F, but almost no wind, ..... I see no bees in the top super, NOW a total freak out, I lift the super off the deep,..... ahhhhhhhhh a nice cluster of bees across about 4 frames and they are pissed at me, I get a tag and a few follow me about 20 ft away.

Having lifted the super I know why the hive is light, as I check the frames (still without any gear), I find all 4 frames on West side are empty.

I cover the hive and head up to the house , open up the freezer and pull 3 full capped frames of Honey I had saved.....pull 3 empty frames and add full frames into the super and put it all to bed after taking another hit.

Whew !!!!!! At least I know the hive will be OK for next 6 weeks.

Still watching out for the damn Yellow Jacket too.

Wrapping up an interesting season

My original hive was gang busters on honey, I eventually pulled 4 full boxes plus a few frames.

By end of season things quietened down and I continued to feed the other three hives.

The damn hive beetles became an issue and I played around with CD jewel cases as traps with some bait in them. They worked ok but each hive was different, which was surprising. One hive propolised the trap closed, while oters let them be.

Towards mid Oct I found some brood trouble and Don Hopkins , our inspector, came out and diagnosed varroa Mite problems, so we treated with the new Mite Away Quik Strips, and did all 4 hives. Saw large mite drop in 24 hrs, I next checked day 3 and again day 10, ( when i removed the strips) each time saw plenty mites and in one of the hives- dead Beatles too, but none in any other hives.

Still seeing pollen coming in on warm days despite it being December. The lightest hive has dry sugar food on top of inner cover. Will be watching it carefully.

Looking fwd to spring.