Barefoot Rookie 'keeper

Update from home hives:
I lost three of my four hives this winter, even though it was quite warm compared to last year. My new 3#packages are arriving the week of 5/7 from H+R Apiaries in Georgia.  Last year the hives with the georgia bees collected 60 pounds of honey. They are hard workers and very patient as I rummage around in their hive. I have learned a lot from them.

Also at school we now have three hives. Two well established hives and one maverick. It's quite wild in the maverick hive. It looks like a top bar hive when in fact it is a langstroth. When we opened up the hive last weekend was a riot. I was stung 8 times. A drag. I think we will let them settle down a bit and get the smoker fired up next time.

life as a rookie.

Hive check in

Spring hive check in. Lost a few hives this winter and I have ordered replacement packages from H&R Apiaries.  Call Pearl, she will set you up. My H&R bees last year were amazing.

Making Fondant for bees

5:1

234 degrees

Anyone know what the sawdust looking stuff is?

Feeding the bees 2/11

Late Winter Hive Check in and Feeding

February 20, 2011
42 degrees in the sun
18 inches of snow on the ground
Bright blue sky, no wind

Two hives alive, one not (Hive two has died. Oddly it was the strongest in the fall). Another winter check in went well, but it was still sort of sad. When some of the more curious bees would come to see who it was, we would tell them to stay inside, because it was only us, the beekeepers. It is one of the greatest feelings to press your ear up to the side of the hive and hear the faint buzzing of the survivors. It is also one of the worst feelings to press your ear to a hive and hear nothing... That has only happened once, and I hope it will not happen again. The little bees are strong but in some cases the bitter cold is stronger. The bees also received a bucket full of thick, sweet syrup to help them make it these last couple of weeks. Many other beekeepers have said that their hives have made it through the heart of winter, but they run out of honey a couple weeks before the nectar begins to flow again. That must bee terrible, so to avoid it we fed them. Just hang on little bees, just a few more weeks.

Winter Hive Check-in

A rookie beekeeper

As a rookie beekeeper I do worry about the bees in such a big snowstorm, but honestly they are probably fine. I just can't help but think about them.

"I have read up on their astonishing winter habits. Bees metabolize the dense carbs in honey ferociously, generating heat, which they further augment by flexing their flight muscles, without moving their wings. Clustering around their queen to retain the heat is their means of climate control. Deep in the hive, the cluster expands and contracts with the temperature; the colder it gets, the tighter the huddle.

But can these cluster physics really maintain a constant central temperature of 70 degrees in a pelting snowstorm? “You bet they can,” said Leslie Huston, a Newtown beekeeper. “And in late January, if they have begun producing brood for the spring, the activity can raise the temperature to 90.” -NYT article here

BeeHappy Honey out in Pt. Reyes

Listening to sound of b

August 23, 2010 Warm Humid 6:12 pm

“Close your eyes. Listen to the sound of the bees”, I said to my mom.

If anyone had seen us I think they would have thought that we had been attacked by a swarm of mad bees. Instead it was just me and my mom, in our full bee suits, just stretched out in the grass. I thought it would be cool to lie down right in front of the front door of the hive and watch them. In a way become part of their colony for a few minutes. It was hard at first to be still and to just listen to the sound of the hives. Every now and then a guard bee would bump up against my veil just making sure I wasn’t an intruder.

The sound of the hive was so soothing. I have heard that the note that bees “hum” or “buzz” is b. Of course it’s b. Today it was a calm soothing b. Not an angry b, or an impatient b, just a comfortable soothing b. The hive also smelled so good. It smelled of a combination of honey, wax and propolis (which is basically sap). I actually would love to be able to bottle that smell and have it in my room.

“Oh, cr*p”, said my mom

It was the first thing either of us had said for several minutes so I was totally surprised to hear my mom yell out “cr*p”( she doesn't usually say that)

“I have a bee in my suit. She is in my armpit!”

“Just be calm and try to gently let her out” I said to my mom calmly, hoping that if I were totally calm she would be too. Bees can tell when you are alarmed, and they react to it with a sting.

Luckily my mom was pretty chill and didn’t freak out. She just rolled over, unzipped her suit and scooped the little bee on out. Nice job mom.

After about 10 minutes neither of us wanted to get up. We weren’t talking we were just listening, smelling and watching the bees. The bees are really active at this time of day because they are returning from their foraging flights and heading home for the day. It was a traffic jam as they entered the hive. We just stayed there and watched the whole thing and after a while the bees didn't mind us anymore. We weren't a threat, we were just part of their ecosystem.

Imagine walking along and coming across two people in full white bee suits (they kind of look like HazMat suits) lying down in the grass, not talking to each other, right next to three beehives. I guess our family definition of normal is a little different than others. Thank goodness.

Fall Maintenance From NYTimes Bee Section

October 7, 2010, 2:35 pm
By CHRISTOPHER TEASDALE

Despite the recent tropical rainfall events and microcells that have uprooted 100-year-old oaks in the Northeast, the early fall weather has generally been friendly to local beehives. The weather has been hot, and fall flowers, like goldenrod, have thrived. As I strolled through the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens the other day, scouting with a colleague to prepare for a coming school field trip, I was jealous that local Brooklyn beekeepers had it so good, as hundreds, if not thousands, of honeybees mingled with native pollinators on lush native flora in the park.

Although a healthy crop of honey is a tempting harvest for the fall, beekeepers know they need to leave enough for the hive to overwinter on. Generally, bees will store an arc of honey around the comb where the queen has laid eggs. Frames on the far ends of the brood chamber box are often fully stored with honey. A healthy hive will usually involve two brood boxes, and numerous frames will have full stores of honey.

Unfortunately, that was not the case with my hives. The summer proved challenging to them. Neither of my queens ever managed to lay enough eggs to get into the upper brood chamber; they were partly hampered by the lack of comb to lay eggs in – the wax production of both my hives was severely limited.

The lingering stretch of warm weather is the perfect time to get your hives ready for the inevitable winter chill. I follow three simple rules: 1) reduce and consolidate, 2) clean and store (a rule that I have underperformed on in the past), and 3) feed, feed, feed.

By reduce and consolidate, I mean to open up your hives boxes for a full inspection, consolidate the frames where the queen is laying into the center of the brood boxes, move the full frames of honey to the ends of the boxes, and generally create a space where the bees can cluster during the cold winter months. In my case, I was able to reduce two brood boxes down to one and put full frames of honey in the smaller super into the center of the box to give the hive easier access to their stores of food. Don’t forget to put mouse guards in!

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

Early fall hive report

I spent some time with my hives on Saturday, there is a lot going on there. The hive that was strong at the begining of the season is now quiet: healthy but quiet. The dark green Celtics hive (go Shaq) is really fierce and busy. Oddly this is the hive I was really worried about in the middle of the season. Now they seem to be the strongest. Lesson one. Be patient.

Outside hive number there was a little mouse. Really cute, but I don't want him in the hive, so I put the entrance reducers in the hive, that way he can't fit into the "front door". I have heard about mice that have crawled into the hive, looking for honey (smart) and then are attacked and entombed! The bees essentially coat the mouse in wax and propolis. The mouse is "mummified". Amazing. I actually wouldn't mind seeing this, however, I imagine it takes lots of effort for the bees to do this. I'd rather have them working on something else.

I have begun feeding them the syrup with the ratio of 2:1 sugar to water. It is time for them to begin to prepare the hive for the winter months. I am sure they have plenty of honey stores to make it through. I am not going to medicate. I may lose some hives because of this, but it just doesn't make sense in my mind to put medication into the hive...doesn't it then get into the honey? I'll risk it.

I am also thinking of building a bee "lean to" to keep the heavy snows off the hives.

Here are some good winter tips from BeeWorks.com

Cool facts about honey bees

The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second. That's the buzzz you hear.

A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.

The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 2 pounds of honey.

The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.

A colony of bees consists of about 60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.

The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day.

Checking the frames

My friend William Huber took this cool picture.

Bee Mentors.

I broke the frame as I was pulling it out to inspect. I was so disappointed in myself, luckily the bees were really happy about it.














These are my bee mentors. They are awesome. Jane Wild and her husband. What is really helpful is they watch me do it, they don't do it for me. I learn more that way.















Thank you for helping me out.
I have decided not to take any honey this season. I want to leave it for the bees, to help them through the winter. All three hives seem to be thriving now. I don't want to disturb them.

Fall Feeding. 2:1 Sugar to water.

Google has beehives!

From the Google Blog

Show me the honey
9/20/2010 03:15:00 PM

Since we installed four beehives on campus this spring, the area around the hives has been, well, a hive of activity. Many Googlers took the beekeeping plunge, donning bee suits and diving into regular beekeeping activities such as regular checks for diseases and parasites. Today, we have more than 80 employees signed up to care for the bees. We’re happy to report that the bees have prospered at Google (must be all the free food) and the hives have grown from their original one-story “campus,” the Hiveplex, to five stories.

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a ton of anticipation on campus as the hives filled with honey and harvest time drew closer. Each beekeeping team is assigned to one of the four colored hives, and some teams were spotted peeking into other hives to see which was ahead in terms of honey production.

READ MORE HERE

Tending my bees, with a broken arm..

Checking the hives, this weekend

3 Hives = tons of honey

Today I went out to check on the three hives. We have had a dry summer and it seems to have had an impact on the hives. My "Celtics" hive which had been slow to get started was wildly busy today. In fact they were completely aggressive as we swapped out the old sugar water (now 2:1). They didn't want us there. So we quickly swapped the feeder and closed up the hive. The other two hives which were very productive early on have been doing well but seem kind of chill.

Right now 2 hives have 2 full supers, one honey super and a third empty super on top to protect the syrup. They are almost too tall for me to work.

Last weekend we went out to strap the hives together. Hurricane Earl was supposed to come to our town so we thought it would be best to strap them down. As it turned out Earl went someplace else.

I have decided not to harvest any honey this year but instead leave it for the bees to winter over. It is a little disappointing, but I think it would be more disappointing to come back in the spring and find empty hives.

Yes, I still tend my bees, barefoot.