Lonely...

Earlier this week I took down the dead Green Hive and cleaned out the frames of the dead bees. I stored the hive in my garage for the time being, until I have a need of making a new hive.

Looking out my back window, those other two hives look so lonely!!

Also, this is the last day to follow this blog in order to be eligible to win my last jar of fall honey! This evening I'll use random.org to pick the winner, and the jar will be on the way!

So far so good...

The weather was warm last Friday, and the bees were out. You can see they hanging out on the front of the hive, with the snow still visible in the background:

My wife was out on the front porch that day, and told me a bee came up and landed on her arm to rest. I told her that 3 years ago she would have probably freaked out and frantically tried to brush/shake off the bee; but now she just waited for the bee to decide to take off on her own!

Today was even better for the bees - the weather was great, a lot of bees were flying, and some even managed to find pollen from somewhere. There were a few bees (not many) coming in with a dark pale yellow pollen. I couldn't get a picture of the bees with pollen (those bees are fast!) but you can see in this picture the bees coming in:

I also had an interesting thing happen today; last week I took off the top box of the dead green hive. I took pictures of the dead-out for my last blog post, and I just put the box on it's side in the back of the garage.

Well, with the weather so nice, we had the garage door open all day. My bees managed to find that box of frames (which still had nectar and honey in it) and told all the other bees, and we had a bee smorgasbord (FREE FOOD!!). My son Jacob was not pleased one bit with a garage full of busy bees! I walked over and grabbed the box and moved it out to the back deck so the bees could have it, but it took hours before the bees stopped checking out the garage (where's the food? where's the food?). I should have known better, as something similar happened last year.

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Don't forget I'm giving away a jar of honey at the end of the month; see the blog post here for all the details!

This is What a Dead Hive Looks Like

I mentioned in previous blog entries that one of my backyard hives is dead. The weather was nice enough that I started taking it apart (this spring I hope to start a new hive in it, so I need to clear it out).

I took off the top super, and started taking out the frames. Here's what I found:

If you look carefully, underneath the dead bees on the comb surface, are dead bees head-first in the cells. The poor dears died trying to get the last licks of honey out of the cells. This is the classic evidence of starvation. Every beekeeper knows it, and every beekeeper dreads it.

Also, you can see not too far away from the mass of bees the light glistening off of liquid in cells. I do not know if this is honey/nectar, but it very well could be. In very cold weather, bees won't "break cluster" to even go inches away, and can starve in 3 days if there is no food.

In the second picture you can see the blue dot on the queen's back. She was in the middle of that cluster, nice and warm originally, but she too died with her daughters. Very sad. That was one of the queens that I reared.

I can learn from this experience that I need to put the bee candy on the hives (as food insurance) a lot earlier than I did. The weather was so cold so quick, I thought the bees had enough food. But obviously not.

In the Home Stretch...

It was a nice balmy day today, with the temperatures in the mid 40's (°F). I did a quick check of the bees in the backyard, just lifting up the cover, and you can see above what I found. There's a 2" shim above the frames that you see there, so that's the space the bees (and sugar) are occupying. Both hives looked about the same - that is good. The white you see is the "bee candy" (sugar patties). Also in there somewhere is a pollen patty - I'm not sure where it is; it could be that gap in the middle.

So unless something drastic happens, I think these two backyard hives will make it. I'll keep checking during the cold weather to make sure there is enough sugar. When the weather warms up, and is relatively steady, I'll start feeding sugar syrup. Also, I haven't seen moisture building up (which is the other thing - besides starvation - which can kill a hive in the winter).

In a related note, I placed an order for two packages of bees (with queens) - the owner of the Sutton hives wants to re-populate them. They should arrive in early April.

A Honey of a Giveaway!

For most of my life, I didn't care about the various seasons. When it got warm, it got warm. But since I have been keeping bees, I have been more aware of the life cycle of the bees as it relates to the seasons.

Spring is when the bees come out of their hives and start looking for pollen. It's the start of their season.

In celebration (and encouragement) of Spring to come as soon as possible, I have decided to give away a jar of honey!

Here's what you need to do to win a half-pint jar of Steven's Bees honey:

• You can get one entry by clicking "Like" on my Steven's Bees Facebook page (see the "Find us on Facebook" banner at the right)
  
• You can get an additional entry by "Following" this blog with Google Friend Connect (look for "Followers of Steven's Bees" a little lower on the right)
  
• So you can have up to two chances to win if you both "Like" the Facebook group and "Follow" this blog (note: you do not have to leave a comment on the blog like other blogs' contests. It won't change your chance of winning)
  
• On or around March 31, 2011 I will have a random number drawing for the winner of the jar of honey
• I will then mail the lucky winner the half-pint jar

So that's it! I look forward to finding out who will receive the honey!

(I am solely responsible for determining the winner, and all decisions are final. It's only honey, after all!)

Bad news in Sutton...

Bad news for the Sutton hives - both are dead.

When I visited them last month, only one hive was dead. I put sugar candy on the live hive, with hopes that they would make it through the winter.

This was the sight when I arrived to check the hive today:

You can see the bees had eaten the center of the bee candy, and there was plenty left. But the clue to the bees demise is all the brown spots you see - that's a sign of Nosema.

So the Sutton hives are no more. I need to contact the owner to see what he wants to do - if he wants bees next year, we'll have to get a package or two of bees.

So the current count is:

• Sutton Hive 1 - dead (Nosema)
• Sutton Hive 2 - dead (starvation)
• Green Hive - dead (starvation)
• Pink Hive - living
• Brown Hive - living

Bummer.

Mid-winter Checkup

I just noticed it's been a month since I put up a Bee Blog post. Like I have mentioned before, the winter time is when you do as little as possible to the hive (how would you like it if in the dead of winter a giant hand came and lifted off the roof of your house, letting out the hot air??).

With the recent snowstorms, the snow has built up under the hive stands, and it looks like the hives are sitting on the snow. Here are some shots from Feb. 8 when we had a very wet snowstorm, and the snow stuck to the tree limbs. Very pretty, but very non-fun to shovel!!

Remember, there's about a 2-foot tall hive stand those hives are on, so you can see how deep the snow is! Other than the snow, the weather was not windy at all, and I am confident the bees were snug in their hives.

I actually did a quick check of the backyard hives on Jan. 29. I wanted to see how the bees were taking to the sugar candy I put a couple of weeks earlier. At that check, the brown hive had bees all over the bee candy, which is a good thing. The candy provides energy for the hive, since they have run out of honey. On the pink hive, there was just a bee or two on the candy. This tells me that either the hive is weak, or that the bees were still lower in the hive and had honey to eat, and they didn't have to be at the top looking for food. The green hive was still deader than a doornail...

We've had a couple of extremely warm days (relatively speaking), around 50 degF which allowed the bees to fly. One of those days was Valentine's Day, and my wife took some pictures of the hives. You can tell that there are bees outside on the hives, but not much else:

She also said that the bees in the brown hive were clearing out dead bodies, which is a good thing for a hive to do. I did see a lot of dead bees in the snow in front of the hive too (some of those may have been flyers who got too cold and didn't make it back to the hive).

Today was another 50+ day, so I took the opportunity in the late afternoon to check how they were doing with their candy. I wore my bee suit coat and veil this time, as I learned last time it isn't too cold for a worker to fly up in your face and sting your head!

The brown hive had a whole lot of bees between the top of the bars and the inner cover. That is where the bee candy was. They had eaten a lot of the candy, but not all of it. It looked to be a good healthy number of bees, so I put on another disc of bee candy, and also put on a pollen patty to help feed any brood the bees may be raising. The bees pretty much covered all of the top of the bars in the hive.

The pink hive had the same appearance, with a lot of bees covering the top bars. I guess they finally ate their way to the top. It looked to be the same strength as the brown hive, so that is a good thing. Again, I put on another disc and a pollen patty.

Green hive - still dead (hey, I can hope!!). Tracy said she saw a bee or two checking out the green hive, but they were just visitors.

So it looks like this spring I'm going to try to re-populate the green hive with a split from one of the other hives.

I put bee candy on the Sutton Hives at the same time last month that I did the backyard hives. Seeing that there is still candy left in the backyard hives, I can make a trip over to Sutton this weekend or so to feed that hive.

I am getting really excited for Spring to come, so I can get these hives going!

Ouch!!!

At Friday's Bee Club meeting, Ken Warchol (Worcester County Bee Inspector) mentioned that he is seeing a lot of starvation in hives this winter. We had a poor nectar season last year, and it didn't get cold until later, so the bees ate their stores more (when the bees are cold and in cluster, they don't consume as much food).

I made some bee candy last week, and took the opportunity today to put some on the hives. Usually you don't have to do this until mid February, but as Ken said, a lot of bees are starving.

I hadn't been out to the Sutton hives in a while, so after wading through over-knee-deep snow to get to the hives, I took a look at them.

It turns out that I think the left hive is dead. This was the hive which was started up from a package last spring. When I opened up the top, I could see unmoving bees in between some of the frames. I cracked open the two hive bodies and took a peek, and saw more dead bees. I tapped on the side, and heard nothing. So I fear for the worst. I went ahead and put the shim on and some bee candy, but I am not hopeful. But I was surprised by one of my hives last winter that I thought was dead, so who knows!

The second hive, which was the hive which came through the winter last winter, had about a 6" cluster of bees visible at the top bars. In the following picture, you can see them in the upper right corner (in between the bee candy).

That's a very small cluster, but they may make it through the winter.

Back home I went to my backyard hives to put some bee candy on them as well. I started with the Green Hive, and saw no life there as well. Saw some dead bees, and no sound. I wasn't too pleased - that was a good hive going into the winter. Again, I put a piece of bee candy on it just in case.

The then opened up the Pink Hive (middle hive) and didn't see any bees on top. But then I heard the hive start to roar (in protest), and a couple of bees came up to the top bars. I quickly put some candy on and closed it up. Because I didn't see bees all the way to the top, I am hopeful that they had honey in the hive they hadn't eaten all of, and still had a good amount left.

Then I opened up the Brown Hive, and woah! I was very surprised to see this:

They were all over the top bars, and on the inner cover as well. While that is a great number of bees, it also means they were out of food. I gratefully put on about 4 sugar patties, and the bees were very agitated. They flew up into my face (I was just wearing my winter coat and hood, which is usually find in the winter), and I got a sting on my forehead for my efforts! (as an aside, that was my first sting for the season - I made it through the spring, summer, and fall without a sting, only to get one in the winter!).

So the tally so far:

• Sutton Hive 1: small cluster, may not make it
• Sutton Hive 2: dead
• Green Hive: dead
• Pink Hive: cluster low in the hive, will probably make it
• Brown Hive: big cluster high on the top bars, with feeding will probably make it.

I'll keep up on the feeding for he winter and hopefully those 3 will pull through. My plan for the spring is to do some splits to make some nucs.

Bee Club January Meeting

Yesterday was the January meeting of the Worcerster County Beekeepers Association. I hadn't been to a meeting since October, as for November and December I had conflicts for those meeting dates.

That night's meeting was a dinner meeting (always a good affair, as beekeepers love to eat!), and we had a special presentation by Loree Burns, who wrote a book The Hive Detective. The book is a science-oriented book geared toward children (6-14), and discusses the Colony Collapse Disease (CCD) problem facing bees.

Her presentation wasn't about the book itself; instead it was about what she learned while researching the book. It turns out some people in the WCBA were instrumental in helping her with the book. Loree isn't a beekeeper herself (yet, she says), but she has attended bee school in the past, and thinks someday that she would like to be a beekeeper.

The presentation was extremely interesting, and what I found fascinating is some of her observations coming from an "outsider" to the beekeeping community. Some of the things she said she learned:

• Bees are not scary. That's the first impression that kids and adults have when they hear about bees - the stinger!
• Bees are fascinating. The biology and social structure of bees and beehives is very interesting
• Honey is good for everything. You can use it in most cooking
• Beekeepers are passionate. They love to share their knowledge and are very selfless about it.

As she was discussing these points, I found myself nodding in agreement with most of the other members of the club. Beekeepers really are a different sort of folk, and it's all good.

She ended the presentation with a quote: "Keeping bees is an art, a gift, an obsession... and a mighty fine way to spend an afternoon."

Before and after the meeting she was selling copies of her book and signing them if people wanted (I didn't pick up a copy for myself there). Another member of the club donated 3 fully functioning beehives (with bees) to use for raffles, and tonight was the first raffle for one of the hives (the bees are available for pickup in April; obviously the winter isn't a good time to move beehives!). I bought some tickets, but the Christensen luck holds true and I didn't win.

It was good to see people I hadn't seen for a while at the club. This year has some exciting events planned; I'll post details on the WCBA Facebook Fan page later.

Flying and Candy!

Happy New Year! And what a wonderful way to start the new year - with temps about 52 degrees. I decided to walk back to the hives (first time in a couple of months) and see what was going on, and I was very pleased to see bees flying in and out of all three of my hives!!!!!

I was so excited about it, I even made a short video:


It started getting cold around the first part of November, and I hadn't checked on the bees since then, so it was very gratifying to see that there is some activity in all the hives.

I have my doubts that the hives have enough food to get the bees through the winter without some help, so today I decided to make up some Bee Candy. It's basically sugar candy that they can eat in an emergency. I got the recipe from another beekeeper's blog. I bought a candy thermometer a while back so I had all of the tools.

Here's the pot of sugar with the corn syrup and water:

Let me tell you, stirring 10 pounds of sugar with corn syrup sure puts my muscles to the test! I even had to switch to a stiffer spoon, so I didn't bend it. After a lot of stirring and a lot of heating, things finally got a little easier. But it still took over 1/2 hour of cooking (and did I mention stirring?) before the solution got thin enough to easily stir.

I had never made anything needing to boil sugar for candy, so it was a learning experience. Item #1 learned: boiling sugar syrup is HOT if you get some on your fingers. Item #2: EVERYTHING is going to get sticky, so be prepared.

After the candy reached the correct temperature, then cooled down a bit, I poured it into paper plates:

Item #3: you should not use the simple thin paper plates. Even though I used two plates per patty, it was a little flimsy and some of the sugar syrup spilled (see item #2 above). Next time I'll get Chinet plates.

Now that the candy has cooled mostly, it doesn't seem to set up as hard as I would have thought. Maybe I didn't let the temperature get high enough (although it did say 240 on the thermometer). But it'll do just fine when I put it in the hives. All in all it made about 13 plates of candy.

I'll probably put these in my hives this weekend; and maybe make a run to Sutton as well.

Here's to a prosperous new year for the bees!!