Tag Archives: beehives

May 23 2013

The language of bees

For the past 9 or 10 years we have been sponsoring a girl by the name of Kadiatou, who lives in Mali Africa. We make a small monthly donation through World Vision which helps to improve her quality of life and the overall program supports schools in her village. We receive updates and pictures a couple of times a year and we are encouraged to send her items that will fit in a small envelope as well as to write letters to her.

World Vision, Mali Africa, Beehives, Beekeeping, African Bees

World Vision helped me get hives to a family in Mali.

We often find these letters a bit difficult to write. We have very little in common and     are careful to not include a lot of detail about material items. Lets face it….the average American can not relate to the daily struggles that the average African villager has to face, nor could an average 14 year old girl from Nonsombougou, Mali have any concept of what it is like to live in our world. We are not only separated by half a world but by language (she speaks French), religion, polotics, currency, life style, terrain, weather, education and basic daily concerns. As a result our letters are pretty generic. She writes to update us on her education, what her interests are and usually draws a picture….our letters include topics about the weather, animals, and encouragement. Each letter from us has to be translated from English into French…..and each letter from her needs to be translated from French into English. We did learn, however, that her Dad is a farmer. They plant sourgum and have a goat and a cow……which leads me to why this story is on my bee blog.

A couple of months ago I sent over an inquiry through World Vision asking if Mr. Traore, Kadiatou’s Dad, would be interested in adding bees to his farm. To my delight his answer was yes. A phone call and a couple of months of waiting we just learned that their bee equipment has arrived. I immediately sent out a letter to Mr. Traore congratulating him on his new arrivals. As I wrote the letter it occurred to me that now we have something in common, something we can both relate to on every level. We will have the same concerns, want to know the same things and will try to solve the same mysteries. We now share a common language……the language of bees.

If you are interested in sharing the investment in a hive click here….or you can click the beekeeper below to donate/invest in the whole set up for a new beekeeper. Your investment will change lives.

As I get updates from Mali I’ll post them here. In this way you can get a glimpse into beekeeping in the Pacific Northwest from me….and beekeeping in Mali Africa from Mr. Traore…..the newest beekeeper in our family.

World Vision Beehives

World Vision Beehives to Donate Click Here

 

 

 

Boardman feeder that feeds sugar water to beehive
Jul 28 2012

Drama in the bee yard because of rookie mistakes

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the Italian queen in one of our hives, that we call flowers hive, was not very agressive in producing brood or encouraging her troops to build out comb. So we made the decision to replace her. I contacted Pendall Apiary and ordered a new queen.

Italian Queen Bee in the mail

Queen Bee in the mail.

When she arrived I took the queen from flowers hive and moved her into a nuc box that I ordered from Brushy Mountain. I like this model because it has 1) screen bottom board 2) telescoping cover 3) inner cover with notch to provide a top entrance 4) western size.

I took two frames from the flowers hive and brushed another frame of bees into the nuc. I then took the new queen and placed her into the flowers hive with a marshmellow in the queen cage. I popped a boardman feeder on the nuc and hey…..we are off to the races. I’m feeling all warm inside that I’ve just overcome my first apiary challange….I’m the king of the world….wouldn’t you think????

The Aftermath:

I noticed a lot of activity around the nuc hive. Wow, I thought, these bees are doing great! As time went by and I actually spent some time

Boardman feeder that feeds sugar water to beehive

Boardman Feeder..dinner bell to the masses

watching the entrance to the nuc, I saw far more activity than I would expect from this little colony…soon a different story began to emerge. I noticed what I would call “guarding” agressive behavior at the entrance. Each bee was frisked down by a sentry bee and in many cases I saw the guardian chase off another bee. I saw more bees coming and going than was appropriate for this small nest. I really got the picture when I saw two bees fight to the death. I knew that I had to open this box up and see what was happening.

The next weekend I pulled the nuc appart and what I saw was very telling of my mistakes. I saw fewer bees than I put in, I saw zero comb fill. Nothing in two hanging frames of comb…no honey, no brood, no pollen. I also saw lots of dead bees on the bottom screen. These poor bees were literally being robbed to death.

My immediate actions:

1) Remove the boardman feeder

2) Set up a winter type feeder, mason jar full of 2 to 1 sugar water feeding through the inner cover hole with another box around that with the telescoping cover on top

3) Blocked down the main entrance to zero, opened a top entrance on the back of the hive. Small and easy to defend. (I love this feature on Brushy Mountain inner covers, a notch that can be opened or closed to form an upper entrance.)

4) Brought over more frames of brood and honey and brushed in another two frames of bees.

My mistakes were killing my bees and I felt bad about it. My mistakes:

A – I did not give my nuc enough resources to make it. I learned later in an advanced beekeeping class that our club, West Sound Beekeepers Association puts on that when making up a split or nuc you should provide; 3 frames of brood and 2 frames of honey and pollen plus brush in 2 to 3 more frames of bees.

B – Never use a boardman feeder. Other bees see it as an easy source of nectar and quickly move from that into the hives resources, before you know it you have a cavern instead of a beehive.

C – Block down the entrance of a nuc or new hive. They need to be able to easily defend themselves as they get built back up otherwise stronger hives around them might take advantage of the situation.

D- Even though I may have gotten away with it this time, I need to make a hive go queen less for 24 to 48 hours before introducing a new queen.

Last weekend I made an inspection of the nuc. I’m happy to report things have turned around.

Honey comb, Warre beehive, Langstroth bee hives

Bees have filled in the space around the warre topbar

I see new comb being built, honey being stored, brood in all stages and a calm group of bees. Will this be enough to make it over the winter???? Who is to say, but they are sure better off now that I’ve fixed my original mistakes.

They say bess die because of; weather, pests, poison, starvation and bad beekeepers. Hopefully it is early enough in the season for these bees to recover from my rookie mistakes.

May 7 2012

Half of a kilo a day habit…..these bees

After one week I opened up the hives to see how the bees were doing. The hive with flowers, the one with Italians were building comb but not at the same rate as the other hive with the Carniolan queen.

Smoking a beehive in Seabeck WA

A little smoke to keep them calm

I’d guesstimate that the Italian hive had some comb on maybe 4 of the bars with the Carniolan colony having comb on probably 6 of the bars. Easily twice as much comb produced in the Carni hive. You can see that the carniolan hive built the queen cage right into the comb. I was afraid of removing it for fear of weakening the structure. Once this bar is fully drawn out I’ll see if I can carefully extricate the queen cage.

I don’t know if this is just the difference between two hives or a specific difference between an Italian queen and a Carniolan queen. This is something I’ll have to watch in the future.

I’m finding that they are going through almost a full bottle of sugar water in 24 hours, which is about half of a kilo of sugar. I’m mixing my sugar on a one to one ration. 1 liter of warm water with 1 kilo of white sugar.

It also appears that in both cases only about 15% of the bees are in and out of the hive, the balance are all focused on comb building. I’m wondering if this will shift as the comb gets built out and perhaps I’ll see more bees foraging.

beehive honey comb

Honey comb built out on one bar in first week

Apr 29 2012

Second bee package installation

This second installation went much smoother than my first. Some points that made it smoother:

1) I put the feeding bottles in the attic and closed it all up before starting the installation. This kept bees from getting into a no bee zone. When done I just picked the whole thing up and put it in place.
2) I put a cloth over the package when I removed the feeding can. This kept a cloud of bees from forming…making it a little less hectic for me.
3) I put the cloth on the top of the hive before putting on the attic. This encouraged the bees to move below the top of the top bars to reduce squishage. (technical term :))
4) This was my second time so I felt a little more confident.

I was at first concerned that I was not able to shake all of the the bees out of the package and into the hive. I found that by just placing the open package by the entrance of their new home that they migrated nicely into the new hive. I came by a few hours later and just picked up the empty box that the bees arrived in. Of course I’ll want to return this to Steadman’s so they can recycle the bee package for next year.

Since it will probably be a while before I do another package installation I’ll want to review this video and notes to get back up to speed before doing the next one.

Mar 25 2012

Setting up the hives for our new arrivals…in a couple of loooong weeks.

With the weather beeeing so nice I’m hoping that this will mean we will indeed get our bees as scheduled, the first Saturday in April. My guess is that it has to do more with what is happening in California which is where the bee packages are coming from.

As promised in my last post here are some pictures showing how I placed the hives and how they turned out. If you ask 10 different beekeepers how to build a base you will come up with 10 different answers. Right or wrong here is how I did it for my first time.

These hives have the entrances facing south and are in full sun most of the day.

I have screened baseboards….if I didn’t I might want to have the hive lean a little toward the hive entrance so that condensation would have an easy way out of the hive.

 

 

Nov 9 2011

Thinking about going with Warre hives

The amount of information available about; bees, hive systems, honey, pest and disease control is amazing. Thanks to technology, discussions can be had with beeks all over the world. I’ve read several books, started reading an array of magazines, reviewed many blogs and bee websites and read posts on a couple of forums. The fun thing about a new hobby like this is you learn about stuff that you did not even know existed…..like, did you know there is a huge black market in honey? Honey laundering…..wow, but that is another complete topic.

The two forums that I’ve joined are both in Yahoo Groups; warrebeekeeping and westsoundbees

The warrebeekeeping group is comprised of beekeepers from all over the world. It is a great learning advantage just to read the various posts. Many of the topics are over my head but a lot of it deals with everyday hive management.

Based the the reading that I’ve done and my basic philosophy of letting nature take its own course has me leaning toward starting out with two Warre hives. I’ve looked at two websites seriously; http://www.beethinking.com and http://www.thewarrestore.com. Both seem to have quality built warre hives. I was leaning toward beethinking as they are located in Portland until I came across a local who is building warre hives. I hope to visit with him in the next week or so and I’ll post the particulars.

My reasons for a Warre:

1) Seems to be more natural for the bees, better resembles the inside of a tree

2) Requires less handeling by the beekeeper

3) Lower start up cost

4) Seems that there is a lower incidence of mites

5) Less complicated (simpler can be better)