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.

Cool bee facts

Pollination
Agriculture depends greatly on the honeybee for pollination. Honeybees account for 80% of all insect pollination. Without such pollination, we would see a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables. 1/3 of everything we eat depends on bees.
Pollen
Bees collect 66 lbs of pollen per year, per hive. Pollen is the male germ cells produced by all flowering plants for fertilization and plant embryo formation. The Honeybee uses pollen as a food. Pollen is one of the richest and purest natural foods, consisting of up to 35% protein, 10% sugars, carbohydrates, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins A (carotenes), B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (nicotinic acid), B5 (panothenic acid), C (ascorbic acid), H (biotin), and R (rutine).
Honey
Honey is used by the bees for food all year round. There are many types, colors and flavors of honey, depending upon its nectar source. The bees make honey from the nectar they collect from flowering trees and plants. Honey is an easily digestible, pure food. Honey is hydroscopic and has antibacterial qualities. Eating local honey can fend off allergies.
Beeswax
Secreted from glands, beeswax is used by the honeybee to build honey comb. It is used by humans in drugs, cosmetics, artists' materials, furniture polish and candles.
Propolis
Collected by honeybees from trees, the sticky resin is mixed with wax to make a sticky glue. The bees use this to seal cracks and repair their hive. It is used by humans as a health aid, and as the basis for fine wood varnishes.
Royal Jelly
The powerful, milky substance that turns an ordinary bee into a Queen Bee. It is made of digested pollen and honey or nectar mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in a nursing bee's head. It commands premium prices rivaling imported caviar, and is used by some as a dietary supplement and fertility stimulant. It is loaded with all of the B vitamins.
Bee Venom
The "ouch" part of the honeybee. Although sharp pain and some swelling and itching are natural reactions to a honeybee sting, a small percentage of individuals are highly allergic to bee venom. "Bee venom therapy" is widely practiced overseas and by some in the USA to address health problems such as arthritis, neuralgia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and even MS.

HAPPY Bees, this past summer - Wait ALL the way until the end

Winter Hive Check

3+ feet of snow!

Must have book for you Beekeeping Library

Book One

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

Trouble in the Hive - NYT

By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: October 9, 2010

HUMAN beings and honeybees go way back, probably to some unrecorded, fateful day thousands of years ago when a forager stumbled upon some golden goo in the woods, stuck a finger in to taste, and realized that the bears were on to something good.

These days, the relationship is also big business. Agriculture, especially for crops like almonds, depends heavily on industrial-strength pollination services — itinerant bees and beekeepers for hire, roving from farm to farm, blossom to blossom.

So the stakes and the anxiety were enormous when bees started dying by the millions about four years ago, a phenomenon given the name “colony collapse.” Last week, a team of scientists from academia and the United States Army’s chemical and biological research group announced that they had identified a possible culprit: a combination fungus and virus.

But the naming of a suspect still leaves a swarm of questions about where bees, and people, go from here.

Are colonies still collapsing?

Unfortunately, yes. Dead colonies were reported in Florida in January and California in February, and some bee experts fear that the rate of decline could be as severe as in the initial days of the outbreak, in late 2006.

How badly has the bee population been damaged?

The numbers are rough estimates, but huge by any measure. About 20 percent to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States have been destroyed, which adds up to perhaps 50 billion individual bees. Colonies that survive can bounce back in as little as a month or two, but a dark cloud is hiding there too: researchers and beekeepers fear that surviving bees could be disease carriers, leading to further outbreaks.

READ ARTICLE HERE

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.

My brother made this movie!

WAIT for the way way ending. Wait for it! (:55)