Hive stands built

The boxes for the hive stands have been sitting in the driveway for a few months.  I figured it was time to finish them today since it was in the 60s and the gnats are GONE!!!!.

Clamp the leg in place.

Give Logan a impact wrench and away he goes.

Finished stand, now we just have to level them in the apiary and get some more bees.

"Black Jar" Honey competition

We had a "Black Jar" honey competition today at the SOWEGA Beekeepers Club meeting.  It's interesting to see all the different colors of honey that the bees in the local area produce

A black jar competition is basically a taste test.  Normal honey competitions include a lot of other factors.  We did decide that tasting 28 types of honey was a bit much.  We may have to stretch it out over a few meetings next month.

Wax melting

I lost 2 hives this year and am finally melting down the wax.  I had an old crock pot that was in the attic that I thought would work well

I ended up with 2 crockpots full of wax that made nice blocks of wax.  Now we'll have to make something out of all this wax.

First hive inspection with the kids.

Logan and Paige in their new bee suits

Danielle says they look like little space men.

It's a little hard to see because our photographer doesn't have a bee suit.....yet.

The kids and I did an inspection and our weak hive is now our strong hive.  The strong hive swarmed before the rains we had and it appears that they are queenless.  Looks like we'll be buying a new queen.  There's no brood at all in the hive.

All in all it was a good experience.  AKA, no-one got stumg and the kids had a good time.  Now we just have to fix the queen issue.

Kids Bee suits

We got a package today from the Pigeon Mountain Trading Company.  We ordered two bee suits for the kids last week and have been eagerly awaiting their arrival.  Unfortunately the box only contained one suit.  We'll sort that out tomorrow.  Logan and Paige were really excited to try on the suit.  They were cute.  Danielle said they looked like space men.  The extra-small gloves go all the way up to their shoulders.  The suits fit pretty well though and they're bee tight!  Some gum boots and duct tape and we'll be working the hives together.  Danielle even said she needs a suit now.

Hive Check 3/30/2014

Brian's hive has swarmed 4 times this spring.  I have been trying to get into mine for a few weeks to look for swarm cells.  I checked the weaker hive first and everything looked good.  It's growing nicely this spring.  There was only a couple of queen cups on the frames that looked like they have been there for a while.  When I opened the strong hive I found quite a few swarm cells. 

We'll just have to keep an eye out for swarms and try to catch them. 

Honey in January

With my bee gloves repaired, a day off of work, the nectar flow right around the corner, and temperatures in the high sixties it was time to inspect the hives today.  I watched Thom Carey's "My Hive Tool" videos and really wish that I had bought it when I first started keeping bees.  It follows him through an entire year of bee keeping, from package installation through the harvest.  It was highly informative on just about everything that a beginner bee keeper would need.  Available from amazon at the link at the bottom.  Anywho, enough of the review.

While I know that one normally wouldn't rob their hives in January, and I'll probably get an ear full about how it shouldn't be done; I have a few reasons that I took honey in January.  1) The strong hive still had 11 full frames of honey.  Last fall I left them everything because it was my first year and I wasn't sure how much they needed.  After robbing they still have a full super of honey, which I may rob again if the nectar flow starts soon. 2) The nectar flow is starting soon and I'm already feeding the weak hive.  If the strong hive gets weak before the flow I'll feed them also.  3) Danielle wanted honey!

I did learn that if you are planning on doing the crush and strain method you should't wire them in.  It was a real pain getting the comb out of the frames with all the wires.  I had used crimp wire foundation and wired it in horizontally.  Letting them build it themselves would have been a simple zip with a knife around the frame and pop out of the comb.  I also don't have a honey strainer yet so we used cheese cloth.  It was adequate for us, but I wouldn't try and sell any.  People get all bent out of shape when they see bee legs in their honey.

I went to Fred's (a local dollar store) and bought two Rubbermaid containers that stacked together nicely.  Holes were drilled in the bottom of the top box and it was lined with cheese cloth.  After fighting the comb off of all the wires it was put in the top box and my assistant crushed it up with a potato masher.

It was then left to drip for 24 hours.  I checked it in the morning after about 12 hours and noticed some chunks of comb that were missed.  I crushed those, stirred up the wax and let it sit another 12 hours to drip.

This is what the wax looks like after 24 hours.  Kinda like instant potatoes.

The frames were about 80% full so we got 2 1/2 quarts.  It looks like one medium frame will equal one quart if the frame is full.  It's kind of tangy, most of it is from cotton and goldenrod that bloomed last fall.  Over all though we're excited about our first honey harvest.  The 1/2 jar is all the impurities that a proper strainer will clean out.  I may strain it again once I get a screen (if it lasts that long).

Glove repair

The temperature tomorrow is to be in the high sixties.  That means it is time to do a hive inspection.  For Christmas I got a real bee suit and gloves.  It's a great suit and the gloves go all the way past my elbows.  However, after I was in the hive a few weeks ago I noticed a slight but crucial problem.

The sewing machine dropped it's thread or something and I had a nice gaping hole.  

 A quick turn inside-out and I could see that the holes from the machine were there but no thread.

Luckily, Danielle had some thread in her sewing box.  

The holes were already there and I didn't know if our sewing machine could sew through leather.  I decided to just line the holes up and push the needle through the holes their machine made.  About fifteen minutes with the needle and.........

Good as new!

Hive Check 7/9/13

It's been about a month so I decided to check on the hives again.  The green hive is just barely surviving while the gray hive is growing well.


These first pictures are from the green hive.  They have not touched the second super yet.

 They are still SLOWLY building out the frames in their brood chamber

 This frame is bulging honey.  I would cut it out but they don't have much brood comb as it is.

 This is the frame that is next to the bulging one, notice the giant hole.

 

 

 

These pics are from the gray hive.

 They have build out the comb of every frame in the second super and are filling them with HONEY!

 The next two pictures are of their brood frames.  I only got 3 frames into the hive before they started to get really aggravated and I retreated.  There's a reason I call this my "mean hive".  They like to sting me.

With the second super filled in with comb it was time to add a third.  This is exciting for us because the first two supers belong to the bees.  One brood box and one honey super is what they will need to survive the winter.  The second honey super is what we get to rob.

 

I have heard two methods of equalizing the colony strengths.  The first is to switch the position of the hives during the day.  This will result in the foraging workers returning to the other hive and increasing the number of workers that the weak hive has.  The second method is to take a frame of brood from the strong hive that is covered with bees and swap it with one of the frames in the weak colony that is still being built out with comb.  This will result in not only the brood but also the nurse bees that were on the hive when you moved it adding to the weaker colony.  What to do.... What to do....

Hive Check 6/14/2013

I opened up the weaker hive today to see how it was progressing.  They're building comb on the last few frames so I added another super on top.

Installing the Nucs

Smoke, lots of smoke.

Fat man, little shirt......

3 new empty frames in the clean hive.

After the 5 nuc frames are installed.  They have to go in the same order that they came out of the nuc.  The 2 outside frames from the nuc become the outside frames of the hive.  These 2 frames are honey frames used as insulation.  Also, if you put a honey frame in the brood chamber the queen won't normally cross it and lay on the other side.  If she does she won't come back across.  Some beekeepers use this to have 2 queens in a hive, but that's a bit beyond me right now.

A frame of bees.

In the Nuc 1

In the Nuc 2

The second hive is populated!

The first completed hive.

The second completed hive.

Now we just hope that the bees like their new home and they are still there tomorrow.

Bees are finally here

We had quite an experience getting the bees from Dixie Bee Supply.  First the weather, then someone poisoning his bees.  Finally, last week he said that some of his nucs were ready.  Unfortunately they weren't the medium nucs we wanted.  All he had ready was the deep nucs.  We drove 4 hours to his house in Lula Georgia on Saturday to pick up the bees.  When we arrived he was in the yard.  One of his first questions was "where are your boxes".  Turns out that he now charges for the box that nucs come in.  It's right on the web page he told us.  Of course we had no internet access to check.  So we each had to pay an additional $25 for the decrepit nuc boxes that were in his bee yard or $25 for a shipping box.  Either way he was getting another $100 out of us.  When I got home I checked the page and it did say BYOB Bring your own box.

However, that's not the web page I remember when we ordered the nucs months ago.  One of my favorite sites, archive.org keeps copies of old web pages.  As seen herehttp://web.archive.org/web/20121002041214/http://www.dixiebeesupply.com/Dixiebeesupply/Sales__Bees_and_Honey.html

the previous site says "Your choice of medium or deep box"  Seems that you should get the box if the page stated it was included when you ordered the nuc.  Enough complaining though.  I just won't be going back.

Some pics of the $25 nucs sitting on the hives.  When we got home we put the nucs on the hives for a couple days to get the bees used to their new home before moving them into their new hive.