Tag Archives: beekeeping

Building a foundation for your beehives
Jun 17 2012

Bees, you can’t eat just one….

I think I might have the Lays Potato chip syndrome when it comes to bees. I started out with two hives, after all, that is what all the books say to do. This way you can compare one to the other and get a better understanding of bees and how they live. That was in class #1. It is only in class #6 do you learn about swarming.

Swarming is a colonies natural instinct to ensure survival of the colony and despite man’s best efforts you will usually have a swarm in at least some of your hives. So, this means I should probably have a couple of hive bodies and some frames set aside just in case I come home from work one day to a buzzing mass of beemanity in my yard (read more likely my neighbors yard) and have some plan in place to deal. It is a natural extension that if I have to add a hive I’m going to need someplace to keep it….so here is a list of what I did and how I set up two more foundations. This is very similar to setting up my original two but these are a little bigger. You can read that post by clicking here.

The reason these foundations are bigger is because I’ve decided to go with 8 frame westerns as I expand my apiary. I purchased a nuc from brushy mountain and 5 unassembled western 8 frame boxes from Mann Lake. I think this will allow maximum flexibility with dealing with a swarm and swapping frames from hive to hive if I need to. To accomodate the larger hives here is my parts list for two foundations:

4 16x16x2 cement pavers

8 8X16X6 concret blocks

Left over bag of sand from my first two foundations

I like to use the 16×16 pavers because they are easier to level, then put the concret blocks on top to give me a little height and to allow me to run a web strap over the hive and through the concret blocks. This will add some stability in the winter time when the winds pick up.

So this year I may end up with 3 or 4 hives….what happens next year if say 2 or 3 of the hives swarm….there you go….you can’t eat just one 🙂

 

Honey bees seem to love scotch broom. Beekeepers see this annually in the pacific northwest.
Jun 15 2012

Cheeto Bees

Scotch Broom a plant that flowers in May and covers honey bees to look like Cheetos

Cheeto bees are a common site this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. You do not have to look far to see a field of scotch broom in bloom. Once thought of as a good idea to   plant along our freeways now many people see this as an invasive plant that is not native to our area.

I’ve read several articles that indicate that honey bees do not like scotch broom, yet the ones I see in our neighborhood usually have bees around them and they sure come back to the hive covered in yellow, almost like they had been playing in a bag of Cheetos.

A bee from the beekeepers digest apiary

Cheeto bee

May 11 2012

Honeybees with mad cow disease?

No, these honeybees do not have mad cow disease….they are doing what is known as a waggle dance.

Bees use the waggle dance to communicate the location of food or lodging to her colony mates. As they circle you will see them waggle in a specific direction. The top of the circle, or 12 o’clock, is the location of the sun. So if they are waggling to the left of 12 o’clock the direction they are communicating is to the left of the sun. If they are waggling say at 2 o’clock then she is telling her nest mates that there is food at about a 45 degree angle to the right of the current position of the sun.  The length and veracity of the dance communicate the quality of the food source as well as the distance to the food.

Waggle dances are also used to communicate the new location of a nesting site when a colony swarms. If you took the time, and had the inclination to snuggle up to a swarm you would be able to watch as several bees fly back to the swarm and begin doing different waggle dances as they try to win over their sisters as to which location is best suited for the swarm. They have already made a recon flight, found what seems to be a good location based on factors like, entrance size and size of the cavity, made their way back to the swarm and begun telegraphing this information to the others in the swarm through the dance. You would also be able to watch other bees take note of the dance and fly out to look at the proposed location for themselves. As time goes by more and more of the bees become convinced that one of the locations is better than the rest, at which point the swarm moves as a whole, protecting the queen as they move to their new digs.

Honeybee Democracy by Dr. Thomas D. Seeley makes for a great read on this whole fascinating topic.

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.

Apr 25 2012

Spring Bee Packages Arrived, Installation of bees into a new hive


 

FINALLY…..it seemed a long wait for the bees to arrive. I started reading, studying and researching everything about bees since October or so and now I’m finally a “beekeeper”. I can tell you first hand, despite all the research and discussion, nothing prepares you for the first time you unleash 10,000 bees into an open hive. Even with the bee suite on I kept thinking…..what if they turn on me????

Well, of course they didn’t. They are every bit as gentle as you treat them. I did get stung twice but both were my fault. One girl stung me because she got trapped under the wrist band of my watch (lesson..don’t wear that again) and the second bit me because I was not looking at what I was grabbing. I turned to pick up the top of the hive, grabbed it without looking and got stung for my carlessness.

This video is the installation of the first package into a new Warre hive. These are Italians. I also purchased a package of Carniolans which I installed the next day. I’ll post that video in the next week or so.

They have both settled nicely into their new homes and are drinking lots of sugar water as it is still pretty rainy.

Please feel free to comment below and link back if you have a website about bees that you have found interesting.

Apr 7 2012

Video showing break down of the Warre beehives that we are starting out with.

Several people have asked me about the details of the hives that we are using here in Seabeck. Here is a video that Darren from House of Bees put together that shows all of the aspects of this hive.

Darren does an excellent job with the craftsmanship of these hives.

You can also purchase plans from him if you want to do it yourself…click here for that link.

Apr 1 2012

Bees need a balanced diet too.

CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder seems to be a title that man has put on a multifaceted problem. Of course this fits nicely with our overall need to seek “the one thing”. The one pill that will make us thin, the one idea that will make us rich, the one secret to living a fulfilled life, the one exercise that will melt away love handles.

The more reading I do and the more people I talk with leads me to believe that CCD is not one ailment but rather a series of deficiencies that lead up to the demise of what was thought to be a healthy bee colony.

Though I’m not a scientist, nor do I have a laboratory in my basement…that would be cool though, I can sift through lots of data that others have collected and make sense of it. See the logic (at least my logic) and draw some conclusions.

Painted Backyard Beehive

Backyard Beehive

While reading this last issue of American Bee Journal I came across an article that made sense to me. The article by Peter Loring Borst speaks to a bees diet and covers a lot of great information about pollen and its food value. But one part jumped out at me specifically.

Two groups of bees were analyzed. One that was on a monofloral  diet (one crop of plants, one primary source of pollen like huge fields of soy, or large groves of almonds) and bees who were eating a polyfloral diet (variety of plants around the hive, no one predominant pollen source).  Both diets produced what the bees needed to be healthy and active in this life cycle….however bees that were on the monofloyral or restricted diet produced a smaller amount of an enzyme called glucose oxidase (GOX).

Glucose oxidase is an enzyme that converts sucrose into an antiseptic that we are all familiar with called hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide is used by the bees in honey and larval food production to help reduce the growth of bacteria and pathogens.  So, while the bees on a monofloral diet that are currently flying might be healthy, the next generation of bees may well have a weakened immune system due to being fed food with higher levels of bacteria.

The bees on the polyfloral, or balanced diet, on the other hand, produced greater levels of GOX, which would provide for food with lower levels of bacteria or pathogens thus producing new offspring with normal immune systems.

While there are many other factors out there that lead to the loss of a colony; weather, pesticides, pests, starvation and the beekeeper, providing a balanced source of pollen and nectar for your bees will give them the strength to deal with all the other threats against them.

Those of us that are into back yard beehives may well have the best chance of providing for a balanced diet for our bees. Just look around your neighborhood and I’m sure you will see lots of variety.

Feb 24 2012

Sex and Honey Bees

When talking with children about sex, why do we often refer to it as “The Birds and the Bees”? I can tell you that from what I’ve been learning about how bees reproduce …… it has nothing to do with human sexuality.

Most of the bees in a hive are female. What makes one female a queen when the rest are worker bees is what they are fed (another fascinating story).  Once the pupae emerges from its comb as a queen it first goes in search of other queens in the hive. If there are several queens being reared by the colony the one that emerges first and is the strongest will kill off the others and after spending 5 to 10 days getting her bearings she goes in search of mates.

Honey Bee LoveThe virgin queen fly’s from the hive some distance and into a zone, often refereed to as a mating yard, where males hang out hoping to meet up with a female. Nature has already figured out the correct distance from the hive she must fly so that she has a higher chance of mating with drones that are not from her hive or surrounding hives, thus diversifying her hives genetics.

Over the course of several flights she will mate with, on average, 12 males, or drone bees. The queen collects and stores sperm in her spermatheca. Once her spermatheca is full she will return to the hive never to mate again. The now mated queen begins laying eggs. From here on out she will lay between 1500 and 3000 eggs per day.

Though that my sound like a lot of eggs please keep in mind that a strong colony, in the summer when necter is flowing, will contain between 60,000 and 80,000 bees. The average worker bee during the busy season will only live for 6 to 8 weeks before working herself to death.

When the queen lays an egg she chooses, depending on the needs of her colony, to either fertilize the egg, which produces a female or to not fertilize the egg which will result in a male. A typical hive will have between 10% and 15%  drones in its population.

A hives health, cleanliness and attitude all come from the queen bee. She emits pheromones that drive the needs and personality of the colony. Queens can live up to 5 years but typically beekeepers will replace the queen after a season or two to ensure the health and vibrancy of the colony.

So, next time you hear someone say, we need to have the talk…you know, the one about the birds and the bees…..well, at least you will know better.

Sources for this information:

The Beekeepers Handbook

WA State Beekeepers Association Apprentice Beekeepers Handbook

 

Feb 4 2012

Getting started in beekeeping, the season is upon us.

From a new beekeepers prospective spring is fast approaching and I can’t get my bees fast enough. I know that those who have bees are still trying to get them through the balance of this winter. Feb, March and April can be like miles 23, 24 & 25 of a 26 mile marathon….almost there but it can all crash with the slightest oversite.

Beekeeping classes start in a couple of weeks through Westsound Beekeepers Association.

Here is what I’ve done so far to prepare for my new hobby:

1) Read The Beekeepers Handbook by Diana Sammataro & Alphonse Avitablile

2) Read Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

3) Joined my local beekeeping organization, West Sound Beekeepers Association (WSBA)

3) Subscribed to and read cover to cover American Bee Journal magazine

4) Subscribed to and read cover to cover Bee Culture magazine

5) Belong to and follow yahoo groups; Organicbeekeeping, warrebeekeeping and westsoundbees

6) Read endless resources online….not just US but a lot of good stuff out of Canada and the UK

7) Purchased 2 warre beehives, 3 boxes deep plus one extra box

8)Christmas was good to me for tools; bee smoker, beehive tool, beekeeping suit, bee friendly flower seeds.

9) Placed my order for two bee packages, one Italian and one Carniolan, should arrive first two weeks of April.

Whats left:

Paint hives

Place hives in yard

Attend Classes

Be prepared to feed new bees

Install Packages when they arrive

So, all in all I’m the new guy who thinks I’m ready to start keeping bees, I’ve gone through my check list, checked it twice….class starts in two weeks and I don’t know what I don’t know…….all part of the adventure.

Starter Kit that you might find helpful