inspection

had my annual inspection last week. another friend, chris, who is interested in keeping bees, came over to observe. all is well. healthy bees, found a few mites, and agnes had beetles, too, but over all, everyone is healthy. the inspector went ahead and dusted with powdered sugar while he was in the hives. (this makes the bees groom themselves and knocks the mites off.) agnes is the only one without a screen bottom board and beetle trap. we'll work on improving her living quarters soon.

they all 3 had full supers ready to rob, but i think i will leave them on for now. if we have a super heavy fall flow and they manage to fill up another, then i may rob. otherwise i want to leave them with enough honey to make it through the winter without having to feed them.

much to my surprise, i found that agnes has been replaced, so now we have Queen Agnes II, Queen Polyxena Christina I, and NO QUEEN ESTHER! based on the number of bees he saw in the hive, the inspector said that esther had swarmed, but left about 40% of the colony behind. there were no new eggs, no larvae, no capped brood, but there were 2 "ripe" queen cells, ready to hatch.

so, from the date of inspection it should be about 3 weeks before i start seeing any new workers i think. i'll have to watch her and make sure she hatches and gets to work laying eggs. hopefully she will, and her colony will be strong enough to make it through the winter. if not, if the colony doesnt' re-build itself, i'll have to combine her girls with one of the other queens.

now agnes is a different matter. no swarm involved there, just the old moving over to make room for the young i think. a very healthy hive. that's the one i have always wondered about. it has always seemed to have fewer bees than the other 2.

and old polyxena christina is still alive and kicking! - something that i found very interesting...and i would not have understood this last year, but the bees really do get to know their keeper. i could tell a difference in the attitude of the bees when the inspector was working with them.

they were agitated, not aggressive, but definitely agitated. the inspector said it was him, that the bees knew me and how i handle them, and they were not pleased with the way he was handling them. i have to agree. after working with these colonies for the last six months i guess we have gotten to know each other. that can also work to my detriment! for example, it took agnes' girls a few weeks to get over being upset with me for botching the "robbing job" i did back in the early part of the summer. every time i got into the hives they would fuss at me and buzz around with attitudes - no kidding. lucky for me, bees don't have a real long life expectancy, and "collective memory" only goes so far.

swarm!

had another first - caught a swarm!

i heard through a series of emails that a friend of mine, rhonda, had a swarm of bees bearding in a tree in her back yard. i had never caught one before but was very excited at the opportunity! i wanted the experience of catching a swarm, and i liked the idea of adding some new bees to agnes' hive, the weaker of my 3.

rhonda had been out of town for a few days, so she didn't have any idea of how long the bees had been there. now, there's a lot about beekeeping that i don't know yet, but there's even more that i don't know about catching swarms. however, i do know that they can be a bit unpredictable. it might be that you gather equipment and support troops, then make the trek to the area where they were spotted -only to find that their scouts have already done their job well and the whole colony has taken off to live happily ever after in the wild blue yonder. add to that, these bees had just weathered a pretty severe storm the night before i arrived, so i thought that perhaps the bad weather might make them more likely to jump at the chance to leave...

lucky for me, this was not the case. catching this swarm took place over a couple of days. unfortunately, cliff and laney - the dynamic duo - couldn't join me, so i was afraid i was going to have to fly solo. turns out i was anxious over nothing. ( i can hear the "i told you so('s)" now) rhonda is such a bee enthusiast, she was right there with me through the whole thing and it was fun! and of course i didn't go into this without an extensive email exchange with laney asking for advice and how-to's.

i had no idea what the temperament of the bees would be, so we chose to err on the side of caution. the bees were only about 4 feet off the ground, bearding on an oak branch. we VERY CAREFULLY cut the branch off, then VERY SLOWLY trimmed it down and VERY GENTLY placed it in the brood box with 5 wet frames and put the lid on. (wet frames = frames that still had a little honey on them after extraction)

here's where i made a mistake...i didn't screen off the entrance. i left it open thinking that the bees that were out foraging would find their way into the hive by evening and i would come back after dark to bring them all home.

well, by the time i had my gear packed up and had chatted a few minutes with rhonda, we looked out at the trees and saw a suspiciously large, agitated cloud of bees flying around under the tree again.

that ungrateful queen had left her new luxury condo to rough - it in the tree again! (this time 8 feet up) this abandonment did let me get a good look at the branch we had cut off... found that they had already started building comb on it, so apparently they were pretty content to stay put.

day 2, bring in the reinforcements, namely - andy and a ladder.

this time we misted them with water so they would be less likely to fly away. it all went smoothly. same thing as day 1, just screened the entrance, loaded them into the back of the truck and took them home.

kept them locked in the brood box with their wet frames and in the shade all day. at times throughout the day i walked out on the deck to check the activity. my bees seemed to go through cycles of agitation and peace. one moment there would be hundreds of bees zipping through the air and trying to crawl through the entrance screen. the next moment they would all be gone!

the next day, i opened up the swarm box. (rhonda came over for this part, too!) this was the sad part. i had to find the queen and kill her. andy took care of it for me and did it in a humane way. he euthanized her in a mason jar with a rag soaked in gasoline. so now the boys have a beautiful queen bee on the nature table to look at anytime!

so after we found the queen i opened agnes' hive and spritzed her girls down with sugar water. i then spritzed the swarm and simply shook as many bees into their new home as i could. what few remained in the swarm box were also spritzed, and i set the box over in the sun with the other wet supers that the bees were cleaning up.

no scuffles at all. everybody seems to be getting along just fine, so... mission accomplished.

bee happy, bee robbed

cliff and laney came over about a week after the bee bunch extraction day and helped me get in the hives and just figure things out. i had a few supers ready to rob, so we took them off and stored them for extraction a couple of days later. here are a few pics of that day. they boys get to help more when andy is on hand to take care of stings and wounded egos. without him there, they just have to kind of stay out of the way and watch. they both really like puffing the bellows on the smoker!

"bee bunch" extraction day

it was an amazing day. exhausting for all, but very rewarding. i did not get to extract with the "bunch" because i felt like my supers were not quite capped off enough and i did not want to risk having that liquid gold go to waste and ferment on me! my bees needed about another week to 10 days to be ready for robbing.

*****

laney had his garage set up as a temporary "honey house". everyone brought over their full supers that morning or the night before and tried to "cleverly" hide them from laney's bees under a tarp on the driveway, but we were only fooling ourselves! those bees could smell that honey and were determined not to let anyone with less than 6 legs get at it before they did!

*****

inside the garage were several de-capping stations. these were basically portable utility sinks. each one had been retrofitted with a rack across the top to hold de-capped frames waiting for extraction.

*****

a note about "cappings"... the bees store nectar in the comb, and fan it with their wings to help evaporate the moisture. they know when the nectar reaches that magical conversion point...a moisture content of less than 18%. that's when nectar is no longer nectar, but honey! the next step for the bees is to "cap off" the cells with wax to store the honey for future use, kind of like we can green beans in the summer.

so, "de-capping" is the process of opening the cells by slicing off the wax caps so that the honey can then be extracted.

the cappings drop down into the utility sink and drain through a filter into a bucket waiting underneath the sink.

*****

the cappings are saved and used in a variety of ways... they can be rendered (that's a story for another day) and used to build up foundation on frames for use in the spring, made into soaps and lotions, they can even be melted and eaten on toast (Gary's favorite)!

lots of uses for beeswax, but i chose to borrow an idea from laney and gary... selling unfiltered honey w/ the cappings in the jar. lots of people ask for comb, and just as many are looking for local honey to help with allergies, so i borrowed their idea and combined my unfiltered honey (full of pollen and whatever else the bees brought into the hive) with the cappings and offered it for sale. great response. it's also a good way for me to easily distinguish between the spring flow honey and the summer flow.

they really had this whole day down to a system. everyone worked together, but on only one beekeeper's supers at a time. so after de-capping, the frames were loaded into one of two extractors. one was a three-frame extractor, manually operated, and secured to the stairway banister.

the other was a nine frame motorized rig mounted on a sturdy table and somehow chained to the floor. andy and cliff were both enamored with the motorized contraption...

each extractor worked by spinning the frames and slinging the honey out of the comb, which then drained out the bottom through a screen and into a 3 or 5 gallon bucket.

then came clean up! had to gather and store all the cappings in separate buckets, wash everything down, stack the supers and buckets, make room for the next beekeepers' bounty, and start all over again!

i think the final count was around 100 gallons at the end of the day. like i said, exhausting, but rewarding.

busy bees...

well life has been hectic lately, and i've been praying that God would look out for my girls until i could be a more responsible beekeeper.  it seems that every time i had a small window of opportunity to work them, some crisis would arise and all spare time instantly evaporated.

however, it seems God took pity on me, and with good advice, healthy bees and good weather, everything worked out just fine, in spite of my hectic schedule and my many mistakes.

*****

i've noticed the bees "bearding" a lot lately.  wasn't sure if it was due to hot weather or overcrowding.  

*****

i had some work to do before i actually got in the hives and worked the bees.  each hive would need a new super, and each super would need new foundation in each of the 10 frames it would hold.  wax tends to get dark, even black, after the bees have used it for a while.  

this is definitely not my favorite part of beekeeping.  i'm not real good with a hammer and a nail.  but, after a few mistakes i finally got it down to a system.

*****

i was completely caught by surprise when i did finally get in the hives.  i expected to check them all and add a super to each.  but each hive was completely "honey-bound" - no room for the bees to do anything because each frame was full of honey and capped off as well.  i had to rob immediately to avoid swarming.

unfortunately, i hadn't discussed this with laney ahead of time because i certainly hadn't expected to find what i did.  so i went with what i had been told to do last year and i made some big mistakes! 

i started with polyxena christina's hive.   the bees had run out of room and were building comb in between the supers. ( i later found out that this is called "bridge comb".) they were stuck together and heavy.  i made a big mess trying to break them apart.  then i totally stressed the bees out by taking the whole super off and working it from there.  apparently, the smell of the honey from the comb i ripped open to remove the super added to the alarm.  kevin and andy both got stung even though they were standing a ways off in the driveway (i didn't miss this opportunity to point out to andy that perhaps they liked me better than him).  i emptied 2 supers and put the new super with the fresh foundation on then left them alone.

*****

got into agnes' hive next.  this time i tried removing one frame at a time while leaving the super on.  this worked much better.  not near as much stress for the bees. emptied 3 supers except for a few frames and added the new super with the fresh foundation.

same with esther's hive.  i left a few frames of honey in both agnes' and eshter's hive.  left a whole super in polyxena christina's.  set the empty supers back on top of the hives, put the lids on and left them alone for the evening.

*****

next morning at 7am, kevin, michaelann and kate showed up to help with extraction.  now this is only the third time we have done this, and we definitely have not refined the process to an art yet, but we're getting better.  this was the first time to try out a new-to-me 2 frame extractor.  i bought it already rigged to a milk crate, but one crate wasn't high enough to let the honey drain into a 5 gallon bucket, so we quickly improvised and were pretty successful with our attempt. 

it's a fairly simple, but labor-intensive process.  as the hives are robbed, i put the full frames in totes with lids to keep the bees away.  extracting HAS to be done inside.  the frames are de-capped, either with an electric de-capping knife (which i believe i will invest in sometime in the future!) or with a capping scratcher, which is what i have.  then the frames are put - 2 at a time - into the extractor.  a manual crank on top spins the honey out of the frames.  then we let it spin  to a stop, reverse the frames so that the spun side is now facing the center of the extractor, and spin again to extract the outer side.  the honey drains out the bottom into a filtering screen set on top of a 5 gallon bucket.

*****

three and a half hours and about 18 gallons of honey later, we were kind of wrapping it up so i headed back out to the hives with all those wet frames.  i wanted to get them back on asap.  i knew the bees would be foraging again as soon as the sun came up and would need the frames back quickly.

sure enough, in just 18 hours they had already started to build comb on the side walls of the empty supers.  they had also pulled out a fair amount of comb on the new foundation and didn't seem to want to be bothered.  i could tell it was going to take some convincing to get them off of that new comb.  decided it might not be a wise battle to fight.  my original plan was to get in the hives, REMOVE the new foundation (after emailing laney i realized that with brand new foundation in there, the bees would have to spent their time and energy pulling out foundation and building cells and i'd rather have them making honey) REPLACE it with a super full of wet comb and leave them be(e).  

well, there were SO many bees that i just didnt think one shallow super would give them enough room.  they were bearding all over the outside and inside of each hive.  so, even though i like the idea of only adding one super at a time and having them fill it to half full before adding another, i decided the best thing to do would be to add the wet super on top of the super with the new foundation, giving them 2 to work in.

i filled the rest of the empty supers with the wet frames and set them out on tables near the hives for the bees to clean up.  apparently they will not store in them if they are off the hive.

i'll let the bees clean them up for a couple of days, then smoke them off and store the supers with moth crystals until i am ready to use them again.  

polyxena christina's hive remembered me and by all signs had not forgiven me yet.  they were irritated as soon as i got in there, and that is unusual for them.  they are basically VEY mild mannered most of the time.  i had better luck with agnes and esther...

next step is to gather more information at the next "bee bunch" meeting...