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!!

End of the Year Recap

I got an e-mail from a work friend wondering if I had taken ill, as I had not updated this blog in a while. I was touched by his concern for my health, but I explained to him that during the cold weather, there isn't too much to do with the hive. Since I haven't updated the blog since November 13^th, I thought I'd do an end-of-the-year recap, with some ideas for next year.

Looking over the blog posts for 2010 (there were 61 of them), I would rate the year as "good" for the bees. I didn't have any catastrophic losses - just a queen here or there. But I counter-balanced that with the few Nucs that I created. I started a new hive in Sutton (from a package), and those hives did well. The yearly inspection from the county bee inspector gave me a clean bill of health - no parasites and pests to speak of.

One thing which did not go well was my honey production - or should I say my lack of honey. Only the Sutton hive produced any excess honey. I am at a loss to understand why the hives in my backyard don't thrive. Even the numbers of bees was less than I would expect (based on comparisons of the Sutton hives).

I ended the year with a lot more equipment than I started with. Between buying some used equipment, a run to Mann Lake in PA (during my vacation), and constructing some items, I am all set with enough frames, etc. to handle any issues. I also have about 3 Nuc boxes.

I hope that the bees make it through the winter - I am planning on cooking up some "bee candy," which will be supplementary winter feeding for the bees. There's not much to do in the way of inspections until spring, so I'll just lay low and get back into the habit of going to the WCBA bee club meetings (in Nov. and Dec. I had some conflicts, so it's been a while).

What's coming up in 2011? Who knows! I think I'll make some spring Nucs like last year. Hope to be able to extract some honey! Other than that, we'll just play it by ear.

So if you are a reader of my blog, I say thank you. If you haven't been to my Facebook Fan Page, please go and "like" it.

From my family to yours, many wishes for a prosperous 2011!

Ready for Winter? Not Quite...

Today was great bee-weather! The temperature got up to 60 degrees, and the bees were out this morning. Here is a picture of my backyard hives:

I took the opportunity to go visit the Sutton Hives. I hadn't been over there for a couple of weeks; last time I left some sugar syrup. Sure enough, it was empty when I visited today. But I also saw that there wasn't much in the way of stores there, so I am going to have to feed some more. I thought I would be done for the winter preparations, but not so!

Here is a picture of the Sutton Hives:

I'll probably feed my backyard hives as well.

More Winter Preparations

The bees are into the winter mode of operation - with the weather being cold (less than around 50 degrees) they don't go out. So they stay huddled in the hive passing the time (do they have cable TV in there??)

I have a couple of liquid syrup feeders still on the backyard hives, and I went out to check / remove them. I still had some feed for the Pink hive (since I used smaller jars on that hive), so I put that jar on that hive. It turns out the Green hive still had about an inch of syrup in the feeder. I didn't take off that feeder - I'll check in a week or so and remove it if they still haven't taken it all in.

Some people wrap their hives with black roofing paper for the winter. The purpose is to keep drafts from the hive (since hive bodies don't always fit together perfectly, especially over time). Last year I didn't wrap my hives, and I won't this year either - they sit at the edge of a wooded area, and I feel that the drafts won't be too bad there.

There are two other pieces of preparation I do. One is to add a piece of Styrofoam insulation in between the inner cover and outer cover. I buy a large pink sheet of it from the hardware store:

Then I put an inner cover on the sheet and cut out a piece slightly smaller than the inner cover. Then I cut a small channel from the middle of the piece of Styrofoam (where the hole in the inner cover) to the outer edge (where the notch is in the inner cover). This allows air to flow out, taking moisture out as needed. Here's a picture of an inner cover and the resulting piece cut:

One of the things which will kill a beehive over winter is for moist air to hit the top, condense, and then drip cold/freezing water on top of the bees. Having the channel is supposed to keep the air moving a little. I also put a piece of Styrofoam loosely under the bottom screened board, just to keep the wind from whipping up through the screen unimpeded. Last year things worked out well with this arrangement, and I am hoping for similar success this winter.

The other item for winter is a Mouse Guard. Since a beehive is nice and warm in the winter, it makes an attractive place for a mouse (or family of mice) to spend the winter. Since the bees are in a cluster and can't leave it, the mice won't be bothered. But they make a terrible mess of a beehive - they chew the wax, bring in nesting material, and urinate everywhere. So you put a metal guard over the hive entrance with holes big enough for the bees, but small enough to keep out the mice.

Last year I forgot to put in the mouse guards, and was lucky to not have any visitors. This year I wanted to put them on. But I had a problem - I didn't have enough (I forgot to buy one when I bought the Pink hive, and the Sutton hives don't have any).

Here's a picture of a regular wooden entrance reducer (in the foreground) and the metal mouse guard (background):

So I decided to make my own. When I was at the hardware store buying the Styrofoam, I bought a strip of aluminum corner material you use when you put up wallboard. I cut the pieces to size (easy to do with heavy scissors) and drilled some 3/8" holes (same size as in the other mouse guard). Here are the results of my labor:

Pretty inexpensive! I went out and put the mouse guards on my hive (using thumbtacks and a hammer). I had a lone bee come out and check me out, since I was pounding on their door!

I still need to put together a few 2" shims to use when/if I need to feed some fondant in the winter. I'll put the shim under the inner cover, so it leaves a gap for the sugar fondant.

[Update 1/8/2012 - corrected hole size from 3/4" to 4/8"]

Pack it up, girls!

We've had a few weeks of really fall weather now, but today was amazing - a true "Indian Summer" day. The temps were in the high 70's, so it's time to check the bees. I had wanted to see if the pink hive was going to finish off the honey, but it was not meant to be. So I removed the queen excluder, whipped up a batch of 2:1 sugar syrup (from 20 lbs of sugar), and prepared to feed.

Brown Hive

A few weeks ago I put a pollen patty on this hive, and today when I checked, the patty was just about gone. So I can remove the shim I put in to leave space for the pollen patty.

One thing I noticed when I lifted the inner cover was that there were a ton of bees clinging to the underside of the inner cover! Here's a picture:

They weren't agitated or anything, just hanging out. The only thing I can figure was that there was extra space under the cover (from the shim for the pollen patty) and they were just resting.

Green Hive

The green hive also got a pollen patty last time, but they hadn't eaten it all. Here's what was left (which is most of it):

So I left it on, and left the shim on as well.

Pink Hive

Nothing remarkable to report on the pink hive. It is still the strongest (based on the number of bees I see coming and going) of the three hives.

So I put the feed on all three hives. It is 2:1 sugar syrup, which should encourage them to take it and store it away for the winter. I also added a bit of my "secret ingredient" (which is a little lemongrass and spearmint oil) as a stimulant.

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Like I said, the bees were very busy due to the nice temperatures. They were actually finding some pollen to bring in!

And I made a video so you can see how fast they are coming and going:



I guess bees don't let any opportunity to gather more and prepare for winter go to waste!

As far as preparations for winter go, I have very little left to do. I need to add the top and bottom pieces of insulation, and the entrance mouse guards (don't want any visitors!). I don't wrap the hives for the winter, or do any other preparations. Hopefully they will come through OK!

Here are the three backyard hives with the extra supers (covering the feed buckets):

The House Smells Like Honey!

Yesterday evening I started the process of extracting the frames I had. I wanted to spin them out last night, so the honey would strain through the strainer over night.

So I starter by setting up the extractor that I borrow from my friend Joe:

Here are the frames that I am planning to extract:

First step is slicing off the caps. I don't have an uncapping knife, so I just use my wife's bread slicing knife. It works just fine - I don't need to heat the knife or anything - it cuts through just fine. I did have to use the capping scraper a little, as some of the frames weren't built out enough to cut with the knife.

Then came the fun part - the spinning! For some reason this time the cage holding the frames was very off balance. It shook like an unbalanced washing machine! I had to get my kids to hug the extractor to try to keep it from walking off the table. I didn't have anything to secure it to, so it was an experience.

Here is the first of the honey coming out of the extractor:

You can see that I have a 2-stage filter set up - a 600 micron (coarse) filter, followed by a 400 micron (fine) filter. I initially had a 200 micron filter on the bottom, but hardly any honey was coming through. I suppose I could have set up a space heater to heat up the honey and make it flow more, but I just swapped the 200 for the 400 and it worked fine.

I was left with the cappings which still have hone in them. I put them in a colander and strained out a little more honey.

No, this isn't the level of honey in my bucket (I wish!). It's the honey sitting in the 200 micron filter which wasn't flowing.

I ended up with only about 3" in the bucked, which I weighed out to 11.5 lbs. It isn't a lot of honey. I probably left a pound or 2 in the frames, as I couldn't really spin the fast (due to the shaking). Heating up the frames a little would have helped, but oh well. I'll put out the frames for the bees to clean up so nothing will be wasted.

Here are the jars I filled. I'm probably going to use a lot of it for Christmas gifts for family and friends.

I thought the honey looked darker, but a side-by-side comparison of a jar of this honey and a jar from back in August had them looking identical. But the flavor this time seems a lot stronger, maybe due to some goldenrod.

I was hoping to extract some frames out of my backyard this weekend also, but I did a spot check and only about 15%-20% of the frame is capped - way too unfinished to extract. We've had a lot of rain this last week, so I am hoping with the dry weather, the bees will evaporate and finish off the honey. If they don't, I'll just leave the honey for them for winter.

Sooooo close!!

My friend Tom keeps reminding me of the last time I updated the blog - it was September 6. So it's been a little over a month.

I had a chance to do a couple of inspections the last couple of weeks. On Saturday 9/25 I checked out the hives in my backyard. It was nice to spend some time arm deep in bees - it had been too long, and it really felt good to get back in (strange as that may sound). I'm going to have to come up with a better way of documenting what I see in the hives, as I can't remember hive to hive what needs to happen, and just taking pictures sometimes doesn't do it. But I did take lots of pictures for this post!

Pink Hive

This was the hive I did not put sugar syrup on. I wanted to see if the hive would collect any honey, as they had a start last month. Well this time I found something very interesting.

The hive had filled the top super with nectar, but hardly any of it was capped, as you can see in this picture (look at the shiny syrup in the open cells):

To further add to my confusion,I found a lot of uncapped nectar in the next super down (the medium, which was being used for brood).

Now, the optimist in me says, "yea!" the bees are doing what they are supposed to do. But then I remembered that early in the month I put sugar syrup feed on the other two hives, and it is possible that the bees from the pink hive went to the other hive and stole some sugar. But I really haven't seen any evidence of robbing - no nervous bees, no bees crawling in the access hole, etc. Adding to this thought is the fact that up until now, this hive hasn't put away much nectar, and now a bounty? Suspicious.

I'm going to let them continue to work on the super, since they are soooooo close to capping it off. We've had a bunch of rain in the past week, so it could be they haven't done much. I'll check this weekend.

I also saw the queen in the pink hive - it's been a while. Look along the bottom wooden part of the frame:

And here's a good shot of some brood in the hive. Nice pattern:

And a good number of bees on top of the bars of the lower box:

And more good patterns in the bottom box:

You can tell I like taking pictures of the bees! This hive is the one I have the most hope for coming through the winter.

Brown Hive

The bees in the brown hive are doing a great job putting away the sugar syrup I have been feeding them:

You can see a good crown of capped "honey" with the nectar in the middle (with pollen) still to be capped. Good brood pattern in this hive as well:

Green Hive

The Green Hive also is putting away syrup for the winter. You can see the food along the edge of this frame, with brood in the center:

And I saw the queen in this hive too - I haven't seen her since I did the combine to create this hive:

Last Saturday I also got a chance to go out to the Sutton hives. It has been even longer since I visited these hives - clear back on 8/13.

Sutton Hive #2

This was the hive started this year from a Nuc. I had a difficult time prying up the top inner cover - the bees had attached it with a lot of propolis, and connected it with a stiff wax (which I think was mixed with a lot of propolis, as it was very stiff). In this next picture, look along the top and bottom edges at all the propolis, and you can see the wax on the top bars:

They had also added a lot of propolis along the side of the frames under the frame rest, so I did a lot of scraping (almost chipping) to get the frames out. I accidentally broke one the of the frames trying to lift it out. It was full of honey, so I just put it back, after marking it with a paint pen so the spring I can swap it out.

Here is what I found in the hive, a large frame of capped honey:

But I am not fooled in this instance - I know this is probably sugar syrup mixed with honey, since early in the summer I fed this hive a lot of sugar. They put it away nicely. Generally I don't like messing with the "honey" in the brood boxes since you can't be sure that it is honey (especially if you feed).

I did a frame-by-frame inspection of this hive, and saw lots of good brood:

I didn't see the queen, but saw lots of young larvae so I know she is there.

There was a medium super of undrawn foundation on the hive, which I took off, since the bees had done absolutely nothing with it.

I put a bucket of feed on this hive; it looks good for the winter.

Sutton Hive #1

When I stole the honey from this hive, there were some frames which hadn't been capped which I left on the hive. I also put on some empty frames to see what they would do. All told, there was one medium super (with undrawn frames), and two shallow supers (with drawn frames). I checked, and here is what I found:

Since I was going to start the winter feeding, I pulled off all of the frames. There were about 8 total frames with something in them; every side had capped honey except for two sides (which contained uncapped honey). I will extract all of the capped honey, and leave the unfinished honey in the frame, so when I set them out for the bees to clean, they will reclaim the nectar.

Here's a nice shot of the Sutton hives, looking good for the winter: