Tag Archives: honeybees

Jul 10 2013

A cool bee escape for the Warre bee hive

I have a Warre hive that overwintered this year. As a result the bees came into this season strong and ready to collect honey. The top box in my Warre stack is heavy with honey so I hope to have my first honey harvest. The challenge at hand is how to get the bees to move out of the box that I want to harvest.

Warre Bee Escape

Warre Bee Escape

There are several ways to encourage the bees to move. One is the use of a fume board. This is a cloth covered board onto which you spray or pour a chemical that really smells bad to bee noses. This drives them down the stack into the box below. Another way that I’ve read about is using a power blower. Remove the box and send a stream of air through the box blowing the bees south. Neither of these really appealed to me.

Darren from House of Bees, the craftsman that built my Warre hives, made some cool bee escapes. These give the bees a way down but due to the little maze he has made they don’t know how to get back. I’m placing the bee escape under the top box and hoping the bees will go down and out of the hive and then not come back into the box I want to harvest. Right now it is packed with bees so it will be interesting to see what happens.

 

Sep 19 2012

The Annual Driving of the Drones

Driving of the drones, the movie

Each year the drone bees are driven from the beehive in preparation of winter. Since the males serve no purpose to the hive other than mating services, as winter approaches they are quickly identified as consumers and are driven away to preserve the food set aside for winter.

Some specifics of a drone bee:

The drones are male

They are larger than the female

The drone typically has a dark or black abdomen

Only about 2 to 4% of the total hive population is male

The drones have large eyes

The main function of a drone bee is to mate with a queen bee. Since mating happens “on the wing” the large eyes allow a better chance for the male to spot the queen in the air so that he might mate with her. This is his only function. The drone bee does nothing in the hive, no house keeping, rearing of the young or foraging. In fact the male does not even have a stinger. A honeybee hive is a female dominated society.

What you will see in the video:

Bees coming and going

Some of the bees will be carrying pollen in the pollen baskets on their rear legs.

The largest bees are the male or drone bees.

You will see the females chasing drones out of the hive or over the edge of the landing platform.

You will see females riding the drones, though they typically do not sting the drones they are known to damage the drones wings and inflict damage on them that will disable them.

It is not uncommon to see females drag undeveloped male larvae out of the nest as fall approaches.

The driven drone will usually only last a few days outside of the hive. The cooler temperatures, predatory birds and other insects will typically aid in the final chapter of a drones life. It is not until next spring that the queen will once again begin laying male eggs to begin the cycle anew.

Watch carefully as the large male bees are escorted, driven, herded and cajoled out of the hive by the females.

 

Varroa Mites infect beehives
Jul 25 2012

Checked Hive for Varroa Mites

Testing for verroa mites on honey bees

My version of a sticky board.

Today I checked Flower Hive for varroa destructor mites. There are several ways to do this, today I chose the least invasive way. My two warre hives have a slide board that I can slide in under the bottom screen. I taped a piece of wax paper onto the board and wiped some olive oil on it with a paper towel. I slid it into the bottom of the hive and left it there for 24 hours.

When I did this on my green roof hive a few weeks ago I didn’t find anything. This time I saw quite a few. I counted about 30 varroa

varroa mites infest beehives

varroa mites on sticky board

mites. Most hives will have some level of varroa mite infestation but when the drop count gets to 15 to 20 it is time to treat. There are quite a few ways to treat for varroa mites. I’ll not delve into those here except to say that they can become pretty chemically invasive.

We are trying to go as natural or as organic as possible. Now I’ll be the first to say that it is not natural to have powdered sugar fall from the sky onto an open hive but this is the method I chose. Dusting the hive

Varroa Mites infect beehives

Varroa Mite

with powdered sugar 1) clogs the suction cupped feet of the mites causing them to fall through the screened bottom board and 2) increases the grooming behavior of the bees so that they clean the sugar and the mites off of each other. If I had a solid bottom board hive the mites would be more likely to fall to the bottom, shake off the sugar and climb back up on the next passing bee. The screened bottom board adds ventilation to the hive and also creates a way for the mites to fall out of the hive.

I’ll check in a week or so with another olive oil slicked board to see how well this treatment worked.

Treating Varroa Mites with Powdered Sugar

Powdered Sugar Treatment for Varroa Destructor Mites

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

Mar 12 2012

Painting your new bee hives

Painting our hives

We spent the weekend getting our two warre hives ready. Bees will be here in 3 weeks or so. I’ve seen quite a bit written about painting your bee hives so to save you the time here is what I’ve reduced it down to:

Color: color does not really matter though keep in mind that light colors reflect the heat away from the hives and dark colors attract the heat. For me, where I live the darker the better as beeks in our area seem most concerned with keeping their bees alive throughout the winter. If you only have a couple of hives you can afford to get decretive. In our case my wife is painting one and I’m doing the other. She is planning a colorful design while mine will look like a log house, green roof and golden brown sides. If you had 20 hives to paint I’d recommend a spray gun or roller to cover as much territory as quickly as possible….maybe that is one of the benefits of being a backyard beekeeper, small scale.

Type of paint: Latex, water based exterior paint. Low VOC would probably be the best but if you used regular VOC paint and let them sit for a few weeks I’m sure there would be no problem. Stay away from oil based paints. In our beekeepers class they really pushed for you to use leftover paints that you or a neighbor might have left over from your last project.

What to paint: Just paint the outside. Do not paint anything the bees will be living on. Your goal is to protect the wood from the elements while realizing that over a few years your hives will age. All of the bars, frames, inside walls, ceiling and floor should be untreated wood.

My warres are 16” x 16” so I’m putting down a 16 x 16 inch square paver that I’ll level with sand underneath and then on top of the paver I’m placing two 16 x 8 in cinder blocks side by side with the holes on the side. This way if it is getting stormy I’ll be able to run a nylon strap around the stack and through the cinder blocks to add stability.

I’ll post pictures of the paint job as well as how I have them placed in the yard next week.

Time never goes so slow as when you are waiting for your first package of bees…..

Nov 12 2011

New Warre Beehives

Warre BeehiveToday I nailed down my hive system by buying two Warre hives from Darren at House of Bees. Though Darren does not want to get into the business of shipping hives, if you live in the Pacific Northwest and want to pick up your hive he would be happy to sell you one. He also has a booth at many of the NW bee conferences. As I mentioned in the last post I looked at several places to buy hives. Fortunately I met Darren at my first West Sound Beekeepers Association meeting. He sells a very high quality Warre hive system with many upgrades including; observation window, feeding solution built into the quilt box, screened bottom board, and beveled topbars with built in spacers….. all wrapped up in fine workmanship. I know this sounds like a commercial for House of Bees (ok so it is) I really believe in supporting local service providers and when you find one that is knowledgeable, provides a good product and is excited about what they do you should share it with the world.

Next step is to paint the hives and find where I’m going to keep them in the yard. I thought I had two good places picked out but with Darren’s coaching I’m looking elsewhere.

So….for now, since I’m long on hives and short on bees I’m not quite yet a “beekeeper” rather a “hivekeeper” 🙂Warre Beehive, top bars

Nov 4 2011

Basic Philosophy

Nature has its own course. If a thing is on its own natural course, trying to bend it to your will or change its path to suit your needs only increases the friction, frustration and tension for both you and the thing. To work as a partner with nature you are best to 1) help and encourage  it down its natural course, 2) keep your own ego out of it, 3) If you don’t agree with the course the thing is on, stop trying to change it and let it go….you can only change yourself, you cannot change the thing. 4) This applies to plants, animals, people…..and bees.