Bum year

So goes beekeeping, last year was great

This is just a shitty year.

Lost 4 hives in late spring, caught two swarms neither survived, lost my biggest hive , just gone in space of 5 days.  Lost another hive for no reason and then my biggest honey producer lost the queen right in middle of season , they did requeen the hive themselves but put a damper on my season.

Left the boxes on and hope o harvest in fall.

Down to 3 hives , but all are strong at present. One is bearding so need to get in but last 3 days have been drizzling or just plain raining.

Unique bee hives in China

Imagine having to work these hives

Feeding piped in

Hives in Taiwan with covers and feeding pipes

Beautiful multi colored hives

Beautiful multi colored bee hives

Bee hives can be any color under the sun, look how interesting they can be...

Tough Winter

From 7 hives , down to 2 , but two very strong hives at least.

Probably magnified by my own lack of proper winter prep. Did  not add top feeders like last year as the weather turned while I was away.

But in January we still had 5 hives that all had food , and the very warm days over a two week period plus early flowering Maples got the bees working and soon I had robbing going on because I chose to open feed stupidly.  By the time I stopped it - was too late. Since then we have had few days that the bees were out and about and my real job has kept me away from the hives during the week (when the weather was warm) , as it was raining most weekends.

But yet again the Wayne's bees have proven to be the solid survivors.

Spring prep : 
I will put some swarm traps out, as well as work any swarms I hear of in spring.  In addition I still have bees in the walls of Ballinger academy , so will do a trap out again and build up a few nucs.

Warm weather this weekend according to the forecast , so will be opening the hives to check on health.

Cold wet December

Not much going on at this time of the year.

Sadly lost one of the Boy Scout hives, but the other is strong and will watch it on warm days.

My 4 hives all seem to be ok, even though one is very small and not likely to make it all winter, should have done a combine.

Haven't had any time to pick up the last hive still sitting at Wally's, last he checked it was fine.

Happy New Year and happy beekeeping.

Hives Hives Nucs and more

What a crazy few weeks I have run out of deeps, run out of wax foundation, run out of frames, and yet still more bees are coming out needing new homes. Had to provide brood frames to a few hives to make new queens, Allen's hive lost their queen , one of the Scout Hives lost their queen, pulled a frame for the original trap out, and the new trap out Lol

Helped Wally on a trap out, filled 5 frames in 2 days......

Will deliver a 10 frame box tomorrow to take its place .... Helped on a swarm on a chimney, well in a chimney firstly, then on the chimney a few days later, they refused to leave.

Removed supers full of honey, added supers of new foundation, added super to a 5 frame nuc too (making a 10 frame dble decker) , will have to make another 5 frame super for that nuc hive Back in the shop, I am scrambling, have built another 4 nucs,

2 full hives , tops and bottoms, need 3 more.... I have so much sawdust that I have had to clean up, and get a dust system ,but building my own to save money.

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.

Bees and Boy Scouts

My son moved up to scouts , and I was asked to do a talk on bees

This generated some interest and we held an info session at my hives.

9 boys and parents arrived and 3 leaders. Much more than I expected

Two of my mentors also came to help me. Rob and Wally. Neither bothered with a bee suit , but I donned all my gear to show everyone what it looked like. We showed the boys how to light the smoker and opened up one hive , puling frames and showing brood , eggs, larvae and new bees. Did not spot the queen but also did not try too hard either.

Lots of great questions

Late season lessons

Damn Small Hive Beatles are a pain

While I Have not yet seen any damage inside the hives, I certainly am seeing plenty of beatles in all but the big hive. The big hive has some mean bees at times, so my guess is that they also go after the beatles like they go after me :-)
I have done a permethrin soil drench and we have not had much rain, so it should work, will do another drench this coming weekend

I pulled another two full boxes of honey off the big hive this weekend. That makes it 4 supers of honey his season, wow , these girls know how to work. I almost forgive them for tagging me each time I work the hive - almost !!

I continue to learn each time I work the hives, the Ballinger swarm bees are very calm, never seem to worry about me working them, but are also slow to build up, while it was a tiny swarm we caught, they are only just filling up the last of about 18 frames now, still some open wax foundation, but brood pattern is good, and stores look fine, I will continue to feed once a week.

The Waynes bees are awesome, good brood, good build up and great stores. One of the two Hives is slightly busier than the other and filled their first super about 2 weeks before the other. Feeding them both to help draw out the foundation in the supers.

I am hoping all three smaller hives will fill at least one more super during the late summer flow

Back to the beatles, i found a nice site that detailed a beatle trap using a CD jewel case, I made 8 of these, and concocted a bait,using pollen patty , honey, and Boric acid (roach bait)

After 3 days I checked the traps and found a few dead beatles, but suspect that i need more honey to get them in...... Will check them this weekend and then adjust the bait again. I did look for Roach Jell but cannot find it locally, but I did find some Ant jell using Boron , so might try that now

How the time flies.....

We are already mid July and the NC dearth is probably on us. BUT My bees are working something local as pollen is still coming in (visual observation), but with so little rain there cannot be much nectar.

The hives are booming. The big hive has already produced 4 boxes of honey this year and is still 4 boxes tall. Only take the top box off each time and move frames around to encourage work in all regions.

The Ballinger swarm is the slowest hive but doing well. Plenty brood and 3 frames of honey stores full and at least 1 full of pollen plus scatterings on oter frames in deep Plus started new super as well. Feeding all the smaller hives. About a quart every 5 days.

The Waynes bee hives are both doing well. I am seeing small hive beetle in all hives, quite a few , but have not seen any damage yet and bees chase them whenever i open the hive. Kill any i see too. Have drenched the ground once and will do it again tomorrow. Ants remain a nuisance. I have ideas and must implement them sometime whenthe heat wave is over. 97 deg today with 98 forecast tomorrow. Phew!!

I am seeing some cool bearding in the hot evenigs. Will up load some pics soon.

So yesterday we opened all 4 hives

Been feeding the 3 new hives for last week or so, boy are they drinking up the syrup. Up to a gallon in 36 hrs.

Was worried the feeder was leaking , so checked the other hives and all are the same .... busy bees. I added some Honey Bee Healthy to the syrup, and this certainly had them excited.

All 4 hives have great laying patterns , we have almost 20 frames with half capped honey, already removed 12 frames from the big hive (Marc) . I always seem to get stung when opening this hive, and each time on the hands for some reason, I wasn't even on the hive when I had two bees hit me on my left hand. The queen is now laying in 3 boxes of this hive. We saw good brood in box 3 (Deep plus two Supers)
Very little in way of Mites or Beatles , we opened some drone cells and did not find a single mite in 5 cells. Saw only one beatle in the 4 boxes we took off. Nothing in the trap.

The Swarm hive is growing well and have worked 9 of the frames , so we moved frames around so they work the remaining side to draw it out. Have a super waiting if needed.

The two new Waynes Bee nucs , are also working well with great laying patterns , good stores already too. These are relatively calm bees too.

Once again I learned from Wally as he moved frames around to make the bees work all the frames. He approved of my wiring :-) after giving me a lecture about it previously.

I have discovered a new sw , that works wonderfully to keep track and record my hives.

Called Hive Tracks it is an online sw created by a team from NC, very intuitive and works on my iPad too. It has direct links to Weather Channel online, so even if you are updating a previous date , it can pull the weather from that date and time, NICE !!!
So in my case I created my hives and was able to use the original date and still pull in the weather from that time and date.

The swarm settles

Already first day the New swarm bees were bringing in pollen , usually
a good sign that they are rearing brood. Lots of entrance activity so
far too.

Wally suggested I leave it alone for a week and then move the frames
into my box. If strong they will go into a 10 frame langstroth , if
not into a nuc. So yesterday I built my own plywood capture box in
case i need it. It actually will take 6 or 7 frames at a squeeze. I
used external dimensions but used 5/8 plywood to build it ( scrap I
had lying around) and that is why it takes a few extra frames. Solid
bottom so easy to carry too. Still need to make an inner cover and
outer cover, and have cut the plywood to do so but ran out of time
last night.

I have chosen not to feed this hive yet, we will see after a week.
Wally put a frame of pollen and honey into the nuc , as well as a
frame of capped drone brood, so they have " things to do". Lol. The
reason not to feed is because the much stronger hive might rob it, and
also the flow is on with Tulip poplar in full bloom so no storage of
food.

Pretty cool that I now have two hives and yet the original bees I
ordered are still not here. Hoping for next weekend.

The first hive is booming. Supered up again this last Sunday as the
super from the week before was almost full. Weighed plenty.

Starting to plan to improve the hive location - decided I will build a
bench behind the hives and make a nice long rest for the hives , with
place for some 8 hives in total. The idea for the bench behind is
because everywhere I go beeks are putting things on the ground. Might
be nicer to have a work area close to the hive. in theory I might even
be able to build a storage cupboard. Will see about going too far :-)

--

Regards
Rick

http://zenzele-brewery.blogspot.com/

http://ballingerbees.blogspot.com/