April inspections

We did an inspection of the bee hives on April 11th.  It was a very warm day.  Aggie had been concerned that her bees were gone up until this day.  

The first 5 pictures are from our friend, Aggie's bee hive.  You can see her bees are very busy.  The hive looks to be healthy.  We added a super after this inspection so they will have room above to put the honey and room below to raise the brood. 

Now we go to our two hives.  The yellow one has been the strongest in the past.  We found a lot of dead bees from the winter.  We do not know if this is more than expected as this is our first year as beekeepers.

This is an example of the frames in the yellow hive.  Plenty of honey in the top but not much in the way of brood.  We did not see the queen but we often did not last year.  There were a number of live bees but now near as many as we saw in Aggie's hive.

These are from the green hive which has been our weaker hive.  We did see the queen a few weeks ago but it does not look like she has been very busy laying eggs.  Again, plenty of honey.  The bees all looked healthy.  There were no obvious signs of disease or infestation.  The green hive did have a spider and some webs in the bottom which may have been from was moths but not an infestation. 

 The bees you see here are dead, probably starved in the winter.  If they cannot get to the honey, they starve.

Can you see the concern on the inspectors' faces?



What now? 
We will wait another week and do another inspection.  We see bees coming and going every day that it is warm.  We can hope that the queens are still there and are getting busy.

Stay tuned.

Warm Day in February

All winter bee keepers have to just sit and wait and hope.  When the temp gets above 50 degrees you will see a few bees out for a potty break.  They will not potty in the hive.  What we thought was our strongest hive, yellow, had not had any bees out on warm days in the last month.  The green hive always had a few who would venture out. 

The last two days have been very warm and we were so excited to see bees out of both hives.  Friday it reached 78 and we decided to take a quick peek in the hives.  It is never safe to open a hive when then temp is below 60, this will chill the hive and cause the already over worked worker bees to work harder to get it warm again.

First we smoke the hive to cover up any pheromones that might tell the bees, "Intruders, attack".

We are only going to look at a frame or two.  Things we are looking for include, deformed wings, a sign of a disease.  Lots of dead bees, we know some are alive because we have seen them flying.  If all are dead, we  have a problem. And a food supply, honey stored in the top of frames.

We found a few dead bees on the frames.  That is expected because they will not all live through the winter.  Worker bees do live longer in the winter as they are not working as hard going out to forage for pollen and nectar. 

We found they still had honey stored up in the top of the frames, a few cells had brood (the queen will lay a few eggs in the winter).  Also the beekeeper in training spotted the queen on this frame. 

Overall the colony looked good and they still have honey.  All we need now is for things to start blooming and the weather to keep getting warm.  The red maple is starting to bloom and this will get the bees busy in a few days.

Winter Solstice Good News

All my beekeeper friends, and us included, worry that our bees will not make it through the winter.  We feed and feed and put in the entry reducer (to keep out mice) and worry.  One bee keeper has already reported that her bees died.  They will not die from freezing but can die from starvation if there is not enough honey stored up or if they cannot get to it.   It is not good for the bees to open the hive box when it is cold.  It has been a very cold December in NC. 

Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window today and saw activity.  The temp is 51 and that is barely warm enough for them to venture out.  Good news that we have live bees in both hives!!

Now girls get back in there before the sun sets.
Hang in there girls ... the days are getting longer!

Winter in the Bee Yard

Winter in the Bee Yard is rather boring.  The bees still fly when is it warm but not with as much energy.  This little girl came out one cool morning, checked out the temp and returned to the hive box.  The opening has been reduced by the wooden "reducer" to keep out the cold and hopefully to prevent the entry of mice in the winter.  Mice love to move into a hive box, it is warm, and there is a food source - honey.

This intruder must have thought is was safe to enter the hive.  Guess they showed him.

The bees are now all gathered into one big ball.  They will produce heat by doing something similar to shivering.  Ever so often the bees in the warm center will move to the outside.  They are polite to share the work.  Bees never freeze in the winter but they can starve to death.  It is our hope that they have enough honey stored up and will be able to access it through the winter to keep them going.

The bees have quit going to the feeder where we have provided them with sugar water for the past few weeks.  We will remove the feeders and now we can quit purchasing 25lb bags of sugar until spring.

More photos from Honey collection

Here are some more photos from the honey collection.

Yum!

Hot, sweaty and sweet work!

Robbers in Aggie's hive

Tuesday, August 31, 2010
We went to Aggie's to rob the honey from her bee hive.  This is quite a process and it involves taking what the honey bees have labored long and hard to produce.  That said, they just might resent us taking their honey.

First we smoke them, which mostly covers up any alert, intruder, attack pheromone they might produce.  We do not want everyone to get upset with us.  Here I am with all my protective gear ready to smoke them.

The top compartment is called a super.  It has smaller frames.  The queen is kept down in the hive bodies by a queen excluder which is a screen that allows the worker bees access but the queen is too big to squeeze by.  This keeps her from laying eggs in the super and the honey bees use these frames for just storing honey.

To get the bees to leave the super we spray a product called Bee Gone on felt inside the top of a cover.  They cannot stand the smell of this product.  They will leave the super and go down into the hive body after a few minutes.  We waited about 15 minutes and opened the hive and low and behold only a few hold outs (bees who must not have a good sense of smell).

Harry removed each frame...blew off the remaining bees and placed the frame in a hive body we had positioned in a wheel barrel.  I quickly covered it with a towel.  We did not want the bees to find the honey.

Note:  the limit of his protection was long sleeves.  Bees like him.
He is using a neat little clamp that makes lifting the frames much easier.  Bees have stuck the frames into the hive with their propolis.Perhaps this is to make it difficult for us.

Once we had all the frames in the wheel barrel and covered for security reasons (we did not want the bees to know thieves were at work) it is off to the garage.  You have to work with the honey in an enclosure or the bees, yellow jackets, and other insects will find you.  Who needs that kind of competition?

We are members of the local beekeepers association and have use of the honey extraction equipment.  This includes the extractor, hot knife, and a plastic tub for catching the wax.

Aggie is removing the wax capping using the hot knife. 



We all had to try this.  This is the most fun!

Frames are then placed in the extractor and spun by turning the crank.  It works like a centrifuge and spins the honey out of the comb.

Unfortunately my camera battery died about this time.

The next day Harry cleaned up the extractor.  Well he thought he had cleaned it ... and he looked out to find the bees did not approve of the cleaning job he had done and they were finishing it for him.  They took every last drop of honey form the extractor.

This is the beautiful result.

Keep your hands off my honey.

How did Jack Trap's chickens get in this blog?

Swat Team Alert

"A Wake County sheriff's deputy found himself

in serious need of a  
SWAT team Tuesday after getting into a standoff 

with a huge swarm of  
bees that covered his police cruiser."
 
I'm giving them big points for the SWAT team pun!
 

Click here to see the whole story complete with picturs

Swat Team

Another story sent to me from the Garden on The Edge shows a unique way of observing bees. 
Click here to see the pictures of the bees under glass. 
Bees will fill the space, no matter where it is. The Langstroth hives that most beekeepers use is designed with what he (Langstroth) discovered to be “bee space” (~3/8”). The space between the frames is just enough that they will build out the comb on each frame but not get carried away and fill it like they did in the jar. There is enough space for two bees to pass one another after the comb has been built out.