Happy Birthday George S. Demuth

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beekeeping, beekeeping history

Born on 2 Mar 1871 to Elias Demuth and Susannah Miller. Died 1934

Worked as a Apicultural Assistant with the USDA Bureau of Entomology. Wrote many pamphlets and books on honey bees.

Commercial comb-honey production / by Geo. S. Demuth.

Five hundred answers to bee questions pertaining to their behavior and relation to honey production.

The temperature of the honeybee cluster in winter / by E.F. Phillips and George S. Demuth

Wintering bees in cellars / E.F. Phillips and George S. Demuth

The preparation of bees for outdoor wintering / E.F. Phillips and George S. Demuth.

Comb Honey 1917

George S. Demuth is buried in  Spring Grove Cemetery, Medina. Medina County, Ohio, USA

Sustainable Beekeeping thru Nucleus Colonies “Beekeeping 357”

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beekeeping, education, nucleus hives, seasons, spring management

Early on in my addiction to all things beekeeping I listened to podcasts. Essentially a podcast is similar to a  radio interview recorded for listening anytime via the internet. Podcasts are great to listen to at times when reading a book or watching a video aren’t possible. So, while building frames, mowing the lawn, or driving the car you can still be immersed in learning more about beekeeping. The Kiwimana Buzz Beekeeping Podcast is one of several podcasts available to listeners (links below).

Some time ago I listened to a local beekeeper give a lecture about flexibility in beekeeping. One of the points of his lecture was going with the natural rhythm of the bees and nature. Experienced beekeepers, having kept bees over many seasons, know these things. Spring is the time of increase, a time of plenty, growth, and expansion. Summer follows here in the South Carolina Midlands with dearth and a time for the bees to tighten the belt on resources. Fall and Winter are times when the bees depend on stored resources. This is also when the stress on the hive is greatest due to the climate, pest pressures, viri, and lack of food stores all of which sometimes leads to colony failure.

Going with the flux described above means making increase when the bees want to  make increase. The beekeeper goes with the flow and capitalizes on the ease with which nature and the bees expand during times of plenty. The idea being to capitalize during times of plenty so you too, the beekeeper, have resources during the harder times of seasons ahead. Joe Lewis describes such a method in the podcast below titled Beekeeping 357.

Source: Kiwimana Buzz Beekeeping Podcast Episode 99

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This week we are talking to Joe Lewis from Maryland in the big Ol’ US of A. This is Episode Ninety Nine of our beekeeping podcast.

You can download the podcast directly HERE, or click here to play. Feel free to share the show with your friends.

Welcome To the kiwimana buzz…

Hi, it’s Gary and Margaret here, We are beekeepers from the hills of the Waitakere Ranges in West Auckland, New Zealand. Our podcast is about beekeeping, Gardening and bit of politics about environmental issues. We also have been known to go off on tangents about other issues.

This interview was recorded in October 2016.

Introduction

Joe is a Beekeeper and writer from Bel Air, Maryland which is between Baltimore and Philadelphia in North America. He has a passion for the Honey Bees and took up the hobby after retiring from the US Army. He was self diagnosed with the “Not enough bees disease” over eleven years ago and spends his days trying to locate a cure.

Sustainable Beekeeping thru Nucleus Colonies “Beekeeping 357”

Click one the video below to see a video lecture by Joe Lewis

Here is what you will discover

• How to cure “The Not enough Bees Disease”
• The secret to keeping lots of bees and working a full time job
• Why Five is the right number in Beekeeping
• What the Beekeeping 357 principle all about
• How Joe started writing for the American Beekeepers Journal

Resources mentioned in the show

• Joe Business is Harford Honey, the web site is HERE
• Book Following the Bloom by Douglas Whynott can be found HERE
• The Book Beekeeping in coastal California by Jeremy Rose can be purchased HERE
• Susquehanna Beekeepers Association has a website HERE
• Joe Lewis Queen rearing Calendar Wheel, download PDF HERE
• The fifty two most important people in your BeeClub, have a read HERE
• Our interview with Randy Oliver from Scientific Beekeeping can be found HERE
• Randy Oliver’s Article Queens for Pennies, read it HERE
• North West New Jersey YouTube Channel can be found HERE
• Landi Simone Nucleus Colonies Presentation can be found HERE
• Our interview with the Great Frank Lindsay can be listened to HERE
• J Smith – Better Queens Download from Michael Bush Website HERE

Source: Kiwimana Buzz Beekeeping Podcast Episode 99

Balance in the Hive

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, management, seasons

It’s spring colony splitting time and one thing we should keep in mind as we delve into the congested and complex  hive is having the correct balance of bees of various ages within the hive or split. An upset in the balance of bees’ ages upsets the proper functioning of the colony. Ex.: who’s going to clean the cells and feed the young larva if the colony goes queenless for an extended period and all of the bees have passed that stage in their adult development? Reversible? I wonder to what degree, and about the quality of work that can be expected from a bee that has passed it’s normal period for the work expected.

I’ve read below and elsewhere that there is some flexibility in the bees’ ability to move forward or backward in their age defined activities. However, the quality of the work suffers based on the bees’ physiologically ability to perform a particular task.

When making splits during the spring buildup there isn’t any difficulty finding brood of various ages so as to provide a split with a diverse population. Done well, a split hardly misses a beat and continues to grow and build effortlessly, while poorly configured splits struggle to get going and sometimes fail.

A simple diagram showing the life history of the honey bee worker.
The schedule of worker bee activities is both flexible and reversible, depending more upon physiological age than on chronological age, and is altered according to the needs of the colony. Diagram Source: Sipa Honey Bees

The Rule of 72 and Mite Control

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beekeeping, rule of 72, varroa, varroa destructor, varroa mites

The rule of 72 and mite control.

The rule of 72 is a financial rule of thumb that says that 72 divided by an interest rate will tell you how long it takes for any given amount of money to double.

There are a lot of factors involved but this is also true with many other things in life. For example, we could determine a similar calculation for mites in honey bee colonies.

How is this relevant? The relevance is in the doubling effect. A financial planner will tell you to start saving early for this reason. No matter how much, or little, it matters to start early. Why? To get more doublings.

Your first year’s savings may take 7 years to double. That may be doubling from $1000 to $2000. Not much in the big picture of retirement, huh? But remember there’s another $1000 for each year you saved after your first year. And so it goes. Compounding takes effect and the total grows.

In ten years lets say you have$15,000. That $15,000 doubles in another 7 years plus any additional you have added. By the second doubling you’ll start to see the effects of compound interest.

So, here’s the kicker. By the time you are ready to retire, let’s  say you have $500,000. That’s great but what if you had started 7 years earlier? Think about this. The answer is you’d have another doubling in the equation. That’s right, $1,000,000. The big One Million. Or an additional $500,000 in just seven years. Crazy huh?

And to the point of this post. A mite population has a rule of 72 which can be calculated by it reproductive rate. What does that mean when it comes to mites? It means, just like the rule of 72 and money, it isn’t the first doubling that kills the colony, it’s the last doubling. Now doesn’t this explain some things that sometimes seem unexplainable? Like sudden colony crashes and what appears to be abscondings? That last doubling is simply overwhelming. The viral load transmitted by the mites becomes unsurvivable by the bees. Of course, with bees, the rule of 72 with mites in beehives has a limiting factor – the survivability of the bees.

Shallow frames in medium hive body, oops!

Tags

beekeeping, cross comb, drawn comb, spring management

Bees fill voids greater than 3/8″ (1cm) with comb. When not given a guide to work with they build it according to their own liking. Hence the marvel of Hoffman frames and hive designs that encourage them to build within the design guidelines.

I made this mistake last year, discovered it, and left it until this year. Somehow I placed six shallow frames in a medium hive body located in the center brood box position. On inspection last year I realized my error when I tried to remove the frames. Oops! Since last summer I have spent many sleepless nights tossing and turning anxiously awaiting 2018 spring inspections when I hoped the box would be vacated and I could remove it. Yesterday was the day and last night I finally had a good night’s sleep. 🙂 BTW: These bees get an F for maintaining proper bee space.

Working With the Bees’ Natural Tendencies

Tags

beekeeping, honey bees, management

(All beekeeping is local. The dates given below are guidelines for the Midlands of South Carolina. Adjust to your local area as needed.)

This time of year both beekeepers and the honey bees are working towards the same short term goals but for different reasons.

Let’s start with some bee math. We can expect a bee born this time of year to have a life expectancy of approximately 5 or 6 weeks. Of those 6 weeks only approximately 3 weeks will be spent as a forager.

We also know, based on information provided to us by our seasoned mentors, that here in the Midlands we can expect our nectar flow to begin, in earnest, around late March / early April and to last approximately until the first week of June.

To gather the greatest amount of nectar (ultimately honey) and to get the most comb drawn during that 2 month window of strong nectar flow we must have all hands on deck on day one of the nectar flow. Meaning a colony at its peak of nectar gathering abilities, fully staffed to handle the challenge of millions of blooms occuring in a short period of time. (Think of it as having enough wait staff in a restaurant just prior to dinner hour. Too few staff and things just don’t get done.)

The bees want the same thing we do at the same time. They want a full staff on day one of the nectar flow. Missing the mark and showing up with a full staff at the end of the nectar flow is useless and, in fact, a burden on the colony’s ability to feed lots of bees after the nectar is gone.

So, it seems we have a mutual goal between beekeeper and honey bee – lots of bees on day one of what amounts to their work shift.

Let’s make a best guess as to when Day One occurs based on history as given to us by our mentors and say it’s April 1st here in the Midlands. Should I run an ad in Free Times advertising for Help Wanted to help with this year’s nectar flow?

“Seasonal Help Wanted: Honey Bees to help gather nectar during this year’s nectar flow. Must be willing to travel and be in foraging phase of life.”

No, probably won’t work. But using bee math and the bees own instincts for this time of year we can determine how to get those bees. I need a three week old bee available on April 1st. Given it takes 21 days from egg to birth and then allowing for the three week age requirement for the job, I can determine that a new foraging bee on April 1st was an egg exactly 6 weeks before the nectar flow began. Also, since the queen can only lay a set amount of eggs a day – perhaps 1,200 or maybe a bit more, I had better start even before that 6 weeks if I want a FULL staff on day one of the nectar flow.

Still with me? Great because the good, and bad, parts are coming soon.

What this means for you today (Feb. 20th), is that we are just now at that date when an egg layed today will get her work permit as a 3 week old forager on the first week of April. That’s good! Another thing that’s good is the bees have already been ramping up and your queen should be a laying machine right now. What you want to do is encourage that queen and that colony to continue this egg laying, brood rearing mania, tirelessly for the next 60 days. Important: Do you know how to do this?

Now for the bad news. Your reasons for the buildup are not the same as the bees. You both want a buildup and on that point you support each other’s efforts. However, because you have different end goals you have to understand each other’s motivations if you are going to be successful partners.

I’ll try to be gentle but, you see, they (the bees) want to move out. Not all of them; just about 60% and the queen. They’re preparing now for their move. You may have thought they were building up for the nectar flow and you’re right, they are, but they see the start of the nectar flow as providing the means for a successful move. We call it a swarm; they call it reproduction. By moving out at the start of the nectar flow it gives them the best chance of building a new home and surviving.

For the beekeeper this is like half of your employees leaving just as your grand opening day presents itself. And the amount of work to be done is so great that you’ll not get it done if you lose more than half those employees (well, you’ll probably get enough for them but not you).

So, the dilemma is to convince the bees they’d actually like to stay around in their current home for just a while longer. Very Important: Do you know how to do this?

Heck, convince them that if they stay, in June you’ll actually help them move (i.e. make split).

Early Spring? Or not…

Tags

beekeeping, chores, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, honey bees, management

Early Swarms 2016

I’m not at all convinced the warm climate we are seeing this winter is here to stay. But I’m not sure the bees agree with my weather predictions either. Watching the landing boards with foragers in full pollen collection mode and brief inspections tell me that some colonies are already in full tilt brood production.

What does this mean for the beekeeper?

Well, it means lots of excitment watching them grow at a rate that is phenomenal. By this time next month either you will have made roo…m for the extra bees and managed them for swarming or you may be looking up in the trees for half of your work force.

Or it could actually be more dire. Winter food stores up until this point may have been steadily declining at a gradual but predictable rate. So what happens when the queen starts her spring buildup, egg laying extravaganza? Well, between increased consumption of ever more house bees and foragers, plus trying to feed thousands of larvae, the food stores decline can no longer be graphed as a straight line. Now it is a sharp spike upward!

Beginning now is when the beekeeper needs to remember to lift the backs of their hives. And on those pretty days when you get into them to ooh-ahh at their numbers and beauty, look and assess for nectar stores. December and January saw a full pantry with slow, steady declines, but brood rearing brings on food demands that dwarf late fall and early winter.

And a final scare for you. It’s quite a curiosity that starved bees don’t slowly decline due to lack of food. No, for them it’s the Three Musketeers: “All for one and one for all,” meaning they’ll do down together if they run out of food. One day they are all fed, the next, well…not.

Midlands March Beekeeping Calendar

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beekeeping, chores, management

Swarm Trap in tree

March is full of action in the bee yard from growing populations in our hives to first swarms. Weather in the Midlands can still hold surprises – last year we unexpected weather  which disrupted swarming and also caused some early splits to fail.

1) Towards the end of February, and the first of March, if not already done, place swarm traps with pheromone attractant or lemongrass oil attractant to catch swarms. Traps ideally should be 10 – 12 feet above ground but can be lower for convenience and safety.
2) On growing overwintered hives, place first super at beginning of this month. Stop syrup feeding if they are making white wax indicating a flow is in progress. Plan on checks every 7 to 10 days to head off swarm preparations.

3) Inspect for laying queen, disease, etc.

4) Consider spring splits this month if weather is warm, drones are present, and you wish to increase your colonies. Inasmuch as it takes lots of bees to make excess honey, splits will impact a colonies ability to produce surplus honey. The frequently heard saying is, “You can make bees or honey, but rarely both.”

5) Swap (rotate) brood boxes if not previously done. This provides the queen with the typically empty comb from the, now empty, lower box. Also, disruption delays swarming. Video Here

6) Checkerboarding frames above brood nest with empty drawn comb alternating with full frames of honey also provides disruption as well as food availability in case of a period of unexpected colder weather.

7) ‘Open up’ brood chamber (temperature and weather permitting)with drawn comb while keeping in mind not to disrupt the integrity of the brood nest. (Note: ‘Opening up’ refers to adding empty drawn comb for the queen to use.)

8) Look for poor queen performance and mark colony for queen replacement for when queens become available. Wishful thinking and second chances don’t work when you have a poor queen.

9) Notice Flowering Tulip Magnolia, Bradford Pear, Pine pollen, Yellow Jasmine, Oak pollen, Azaleas starting. Note lots of pollen coming in as brood expands.

10) If you ordered package bees make final preparations for their arrival – equipment, site preparation. Mark your calendar for package delivery day and prepare for the excitement.

11) Nucleus hive orders will close this month. Place order if needed.

12) Start or renew your association membership.  Attend local meetings.

13) While you still have time, read a couple articles on swarm control here and here. Many more are available: Google search “Swarm Prevention and Control.”

Spring Management: March 1-15th (Temperature above 60 degrees):

• Rotate brood boxes if two exist or add 2nd if only one exists. If you add a brood box, place it above existing brood box. Use drawn comb if available.
• Check the brood comb and replace frames that have excessive drone cells, are old, or have other problems.
• Check for queen cells. Repeat every seven for about 6 weeks. If you find an capped queen cell (swarm cell), verify hive is queen-right and consider making increase by moving queen to new hive to simulate swarm. If you have multiple swarm cells consider making splits by moving frames with cells leaving at least one queen cell in the parent colony.

All month:

• Inspect queen/brood status, if weak, mark colony for re-queening when new queens are available.
• If running 2 brood boxes, rotate boxes to maintain space for queen to lay as well as for swarm prevention technique.
• Last week of month, place minimum 2 empty supers of drawn comb or 1 super if using frames of foundation on strong colonies (assuming no major beetle problems).
• Medium strength colonies should receive 1 empty super if using drawn comb to allow them room to both guard and grow.
• Replace 2-3 frames of old drawn comb in each hive body with frames of new foundation.
• Remember to remove all medications from colony according to product label directions prior to adding honey supers.

14) I would be negligent if I did not mention that between now and the nectar flow the chances of your colony starving are the greatest they have been all year. Why? Because your bees have ramped up brood rearing to a level that requires a great deal of nutrition. They are consuming their pantry at a rate that is unsustainable until the nectar flow begins. Ideally, they don’t run out before the nectar flow starts. But it is up to you to monitor their remaining stores to prevent them from starving. You’ve gotten them this far. Don’t let them starve just days before nature’s bounty presents itself.

15) Email your Association’s Secretary, asking what you can do to help. Volunteer to lend a hand in your organization. Many hands make light work. If you’d like to see your organization grow, offer  to help and maintain your current level of member services. Your help is needed.

The above are general guidelines for the average bee colony in the Midlands of South Carolina. We all have hives that may be outperforming the average. We also have colonies that underperform the average. Use your judgement in making changes suggested here. Beekeeping is an art as well as a science. Only you know the many, many particulars associated with your physical hives as well as the general health and population of your colonies.

Pushing for Colony Reproduction

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee biology, honey bees, management, spring buildup, spring management

Not long ago, someone asked when we should start feeding the bees. The answer given was another question – What are your goals?

We want to building strong colonies but for what purpose? To catch the nectar flow? To make splits?, nucs?, or early pollination purposes? Each goal has a different start date.

Much of what we do with our bees involves looking forward. Last year I wrote a piece on when we should start the push towards building them up for purposes of capturing the nectar flow. I’ll bump that article to the top at a later date when it’s more relevant. Today, though, I’d like to think through another planning exercise for the beekeeper wanting to make strong splits from overwintered colonies.

I like bee math!

An experienced mentor and bee buddy of mine called me recently to ask if I wanted to order some early season queens. He caught me off guard just a bit because I really had not done my math homework for the coming splits season. Well, I’d better get hopping and decide if I’m going to order queens or make queenless splits.

And if I’m going to make spilts, when do I need to get busy?

Framing the issue:

We know from prior swarm seasons and winners of the “Golden Hive Tool Award” (given to the first captured swarm of each season) that swarming in the Midlands starts as soon as late, late February but typically early, early March and will remain strong for a month to six weeks into April then taper with an occasional spurts and sputters along the way.

We know that nature provides natural pollen and nectar for buildup in the Midlands around early to mid February (give or take). Some people see some earlier and this is climate and location dependent. So in nature we see feed for the bees a ~ month or so before swarming.

We know that the climate is still a bit dicey March 1st with occasional surprise freezes which could impact the survival of splits. I’m not sure I want to tempt Midlands weather.

March 1st looks to be an intersection between climate and colony readiness.

So, with natures help,some colonies are ready to swarm as early as ~ March 1. What constitutes being “ready?” Well, colony swarm preparations are a topic in itself but one hardwired componet is drone production. So we deduce that swarming colonies will have made drones ready to mate. I presume nature and the bees assume other colonies have done the same so as to provide some genetic diversity. But back to the point. If a colony is ready to swarm with ready drones when did they start those drones? The answer might help me as to when to start pushing buildup.

Let’s try to nail down a date to promote drone production by reviewing our bee math for drones: 3 days as an egg; 6 1/2 days as a larvae, and capped by day 10. 14 days as a pupa – 24 days. Right? Oh, but we must not forget that that drone is but a wee tot when born and needs to get to his “adolescence” to be ready for mating. That occurs after another 14 days give or take. Okay, I need to start making drones 38 days prior to making queenless splits. Right?…Wrong. Remember that if I make a split the bees will have to begin queen cells and we don’t need ready drones at the start of queen cells. We need them to coincide with the time it takes to make a queen and allow her to “harden” ready for her mating flight. Oh my, that probably negates some of my original calculations.

Nature tells me it will start making the splits for me (i.e. swarm) around March 1st. Let’s use that a  date that nature chooses as the earliest date swarms are likely to survive and use subtraction to come to the date I need to start building up my hives in order to maximize my success with queenless splits. March 1st minus 38 days leaves me at January 16th. I know this date as the birthday of Johann Dzierzon, father of parthenogenesis. (In animals, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell. Ain’t that a coincidence?) But, as much as I would like to start pushing for drone production on Johann’s birthday, remember I need to deduct (or add back) the time for the colony to create a mating ready queen or approximately 20 to 24 days. My head is starting to hurt. Okay, January 16 plus 24 days = February 7th (or three days before Ormond Aebi’s birthday).

Isn’t it a curiosity that my efforts at calculations results in a bunch of needless time wasting when mother nature gave me the buildup date to begin with – the bloom of Red Maples! That is, when the maples bloom is the start date when nature itself provides the necessary ingredients to maximize successful colony reproduction on a date conducive to climate and impending nectar flow. You can’t fool mother nature. I’m exhausted but it serves me right. Beekeepers should probably reply to questions like this with bloom dates rather than calendar dates.

Catching Honey Bee Swarms

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee behavior, honey bees, seasons, swarms

Swarm in Five Points

Our swarm season has officially begun here in the Midlands of South Carolina. Beekeepers, old and new, enjoy the thrill of the chase which kicks in the excitement factor associated with gathering a swarm.

So what does it take to catch a swarm? I was doing a quick search this morning to determine the ideal swarm catchers equipment list and I was struck by a web page I stumbled upon which detailed the swarm catching of a young sixteen year old making a few bucks while providing a valuable community service during the spring swarm season. What impressed me the most was the young man’s minimalist approach to necessary gear. Basically he had a cardboard office supplies box reinforced with duct tape with a makeshift screen for ventilation on the lid. His second piece of equipment is a plant mister/sprayer with some sugar water. Otherwise he wings it.

I have been caught out without any equipment while driving around and responded to a phone call unprepared, yet the property owner and I have found a box, a ladder, and a pruning shear to successfully capture a swarm. Once home it’s easy enough to put them into a proper box.

But let’s say you really want to gather a swarm this year and would feel more comfortable having a few items in your car or truck ready to make short work of almost any situation. What items are in the swarm catcher’s essentials bag? Well, probably a standard Langstroth box with frames on a ventilated bottom board. If space in your car or truck is a concern a five frame nucleus box (wooden or cardboard) will suffice. You’ll want to be able to keep them enclosed for the drive back so use some screen or otherwise completely block the entrance. Next is a mister bottle of sugar water to wet the cluster down prior to shaking them or moving to your box. Sugar water isn’t essential but the bees will stay together nicely and it gives them something to occupy themselves with while you work with them. Other items which the homeowner may not have available: ladder, pruning shears or loppers, small handsaw, bee suit, gloves. That’s pretty much all that’s needed to handle most situations. An extra suit is nice if the homeowner wants to get involved. Often they are interested and it’s a good time to do some community education.

Here are a couple links if you’re interested in gathering swarms. And also, if you think you’d be interested join one of the online swarm call lists to have your name out there for people in your community to call. Warning: It’s addicting!

http://www.tillysnest.com/2015/06/how-to-catch-honeybee-swarm-html/

http://www.schneiderpeeps.com/catching-relocating-bees-swarm/

Lots to Do in the Beeyard

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee behavior, humor, management

There’s lots to do in the bee yard today since mother nature has stolen at least two weeks preparation time out from under us here in the Midlands of South Carolina.

I had a few, okay maybe a half dozen, hives that were just too burr combed up in the feeding shim to properly handle than I would have have ten or more days ago. Things weren’t better today.

The first venture into the hives after winter is probably one of the most difficult and dreaded for me each year. They have burr combed up all my violations of bee space and propolized everything together such that not much goes quite as planned. Then there’s always that space between boxes where the bottom bars of the frames above become connected to the top bars of the frames below. The bees, having not been allowed much in the way of drone comb find this a great spot to build drone comb and raise spring drones. That the hives in question today had been deferred spoke to the fact that I didn’t really want to deal with them ten days ago as I should have.

But things must be handled and there’s always the knowledge that afterwards the hives are easier to work for the remainder of the season.

My first adventure today was into a well populated two story nucleus hive I overwintered. They objected somewhat but adequate smoke kept them in check while I rotated a full box off the top and replaced it with drawn comb and returned some of their stores. I was happy to get out of there though as I was spending far too long performing my tasks being a little rusty and not having every widget available I normally like.

I did the same for several more nucleus hives and started in on the ten framers that still had feeding shims in place. That’s when the trouble started. Entire feeding shims filled with willy-nilly comb in all directions and filled with honey and drone brood. And black with bees covering everything and spilling out over the boxes. A little smoke helped move them but nothing short of a rap of the inner cover on the box dislodged them back into the uppermost hive body. Unhappy bees; unhappy beekeeper. Usually though they settled down shortly. Once I had to take a walk with them following me for 100 feet or so. I was probably not working them slow enough in the hive nor fast enough overall to get out of their domain. Get ‘er done, and I was almost there.

I had passengers in the truck with me as a drove away from the last hive. Windows down, suit on, and proud of myself having gotten the deed done without a sting through my glove or on top of my head as sometimes happens with the veil pulled down tight.

Oh, what’s that? A hive over by my main stretch of ten framers with it’s brick standing on end. Usually I use this brick position to indicate a queenless condition but I remembered from ten days ago why I stood it up then. The bees were too thick and they were too irritable to bother so I deferred and stood the brick up. Having completed all except this one hive I decided to stop and complete today’s task list. Only take a minute – probably.

The bees were still thick under that inner cover and they had the entire feeding shim filled with honey comb and drone brood. Most of it hung down off the inner cover. I smoked them down and waited. They kept coming back up in short order. As mentioned earlier, there tends to be an overall time limit for bees after which they just say, “You’re done here.” I was running out of time and knew it. I had a thought to go back to the barn and get a bottle of Bee Go to run them down out of that shim with its unpleasant odor. But my dilemma was time. Things weren’t going to get better in ten minutes. I was already taking a heavy bombardment of bees against my veil. I decided it would be best to bang the inner cover against the shim and smoke them some more. After a couple raps most of the bees dislodged and I was able to get the inner cover and the shim removed. I scrapped the honey and drone comb into a ready bucket and thought I’d better close up. Then, as one does when they are tired, a bad decision presented itself to me. While it’s good to know that I’m still capable of decisions at my age, bad ones just stink. I decided as I reached for the replacement inner cover that the bees were so thick I had better check for swarm cells between the boxes. Okay, that’s a quick hive tool between the boxes, a tilt upward, and I should be done – right? Well, there was drone brood between the boxes as I should have known, and maybe in my haste I forgot to smoke them down. Or maybe I did and they were so thick they had nowhere to go. I took my hive tool and scrapped the first top bar and my gloved had was covered. Second top bar and they have decided to cover my entire right arm. Third scraping and they are like Velcro on my jacket and veil. I can’t remember the final strokes as I was in get ‘er done mode. I did get the box down and in place when I started to feel the stings though my jeans and forearms. Oh my! Folks, when they decide they have no place left to light on you other than your jeans you’ve stayed far too long.

I started walking, stopping occasionally to brush some off. New beekeepers, remember I told you to buy a brush! I walked and walked and covered a hundred yards. Finally I headed back. I still had to replace the inner and telescoping covers. I did so and had to walk again with irritable bees. I had made every mistake I could have, overstayed my welcome by a stretch, rapid movements, and kept coming back when they said, “GO!”. One last trip and I eased into my waiting truck and drove off fully suited with about twenty bees that decided it best they give me an escort.

Done but not proud of my finesse on this one. Maybe I’ll go back for my smoker later, or tomorrow. Wonder where my hive tool is?

Happy Birthday William Z. Hutchinson

Tags

beekeeper birthdays, beekeeping, birthday, famous beekeepers

Birth: Feb. 17, 1851
Death: May 30, 1911

William Z. Hutchinson (1851-1911) was a 19th-century Michigan apiarist and author. He founded the Bee-keepers’ Review in 1888, and served as its editor over the remainder of his life. Hutchinson was an enthusiastic proponent of producing comb honey.

Bibliography

• The Production of Comb Honey: As Practiced And Advised pp. 45. Flint, MI: Globe Print. House (1887).
• Successful Bee Keeping pp. 16. Jamestown NY: W. T. Falconer Mfg. Co. (1897).
• Advanced Bee-Culture: Its Methods and Management pp. 90. Bee-Keepers’ Review: Flint MI (1902).

Source: http://beekeeping.wikia.com/wiki/William_Z._Hutchinson

Will your bees be Olympians this year?

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping chores, spring buildup, spring management

It takes preparation to get to the Olympics. Are your bees going to the Olympics this year?

Time is short. Will you be ready? Have you coached them up and prepared them for the adventure of the spring nectar flow? Are they building strength in population? Are they healthy? Is their mite count 1% or less? Is your equipment ready?

It takes approximately 6 weeks to prepare a bee population of sufficient size to fully capitalize on the nectar flow. The time to stimulate that increase is now. It is time to do everything you possibly can to get your bees healthy and increase their populations. The saying is, “build your bees before the flow, not on the flow.”

One either prepares before the nectar flow begins or one stays behind the entire spring. Nature does not wait for the procrastinator.

Happy Birthday Ormond Aebi

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping history

Born February 10, 1916

Died July 19, 2004

Source: Wikipedia – Ormond Aebi

Ormond Aebi (1916 – July 2004) was an American beekeeper who was reported to have set the world’s record for honey obtained from a single hive in one year, 1974, when 404 pounds of honey were harvested, breaking an unofficial 80-year-old record of 303 pounds held by A. I. Root. Together with his father Harry, the Aebi’s wrote two books on beekeeping: The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping (1975) and Mastering the Art of Beekeeping (1979) (both currently out-of-print).^[1][2]

He was known to have enjoyed beekeeping all his life. In 1981, Mr. Aebi told the Santa Cruz Sentinel^[6] he knew his bees so well that, when out driving, his father would say, ” “Ormond, isn’t that one of our bees?,” and I’ll say, “No, I don’t think so,” or “Yep, sure is.”

Ormond told me a curious story that day though, which I’ll retell just as he told it to me. Ormond was a character with very strong beliefs, beliefs that I don’t happen to share, but he was earnest and sincere and his beliefs do make for a good story. So here it is.

He said that Jesus came to him in a dream one night and told him that if he wanted to increase the productivity of his hives that he should attach a wire to the queen excluders of his hives. Jesus was very specific about the length of the wire and Ormond carefully complied with Jesus’ instructions.

For those who don’t know, the queen excluder is a series of parallel wires placed closely together in a bee hive. It sits between the lower brood boxes and the upper supers, the boxes where the honey is stored. It functions to keep the queen from laying eggs in the boxes that contain the honey in them. She’s too big to fit between the wires, but the worker bees can still come and go unimpeded.

So Ormond attaches the precisely measured wires to the queen excluders and waits. Sure enough, just as Jesus promised in the dream, the productivity of the hives increases significantly.

Ormond is a religious man, and so he doesn’t think it is too surprising that Jesus’ advice worked. He mentions his experience to his beekeeping friends, and word eventually reaches the biology department of Stanford University.

Stanford University finds it surprising, very surprising. They come to his home in Santa Cruz to investigate.

What the scientists eventually conclude is that somehow the wires that Ormond attached to his hives were acting as antennae, turning the hives into natural radios and piping in the local classical music radio station to the hives. The bees loved it. (KSCO AM 1080, if you’re curious, it is now a right-wing talk radio station. I wonder what effect Rush Limbaugh would have on honey production.)^[7]

In his later years he was diagnosed with Diabetes, which did not seem to affect his health, but did contribute to his decision not to continue beekeeping when his swarms were destroyed by varroa mites. He worked as a part-time handyman at a daycare next door to his home for the last several years of his life, and continued to write to friends he made worldwide due to his books.

Source: Wikipedia – Ormond Aebi

 

Red Maple, Harbinger of Nectar Flow

Tags

beekeeping, Red Maple, seasons

Red maple has started in various areas of the Midlands in South Carolina. Notice the difference in the male and female flowers.

Swarm Control by Bill’s Russian Bee Blog

Tags

beekeeping, checkerboarding, Dr. Jim Tew, spring management, Swarm control, swarm prevention, Walt Wright

Here are two articles on a topic we should brush up on now that swarm season is almost here. The first article is on Checkerboarding, a swarm prevention technique invented by Walt Wright. The second article is titled, Swarm Control and Management by Dr. James Tew. (The second article is a little misaligned but you should be able to find it elsewhere.)

Checkerboarding is a relatively new approach to swarm prevention. Although it has only been published for about 15 years, it defies the old adage that “swarming is inevitable.” This submittal is intended to substantiate or quantify the advertised reliability.

Implementation of the checkerboarding (CB) manipulation is disgustingly simple. The manipulation consists of removing alternate frames of honey from the top box and replacing those frames with empty comb suitable for rearing brood. Since there is no brood nest disturbance, it can be done in late winter before the brood nest expands into the top box of capped honey. After the initial manipulation, to sustain swarm prevention reliability, maintain empty comb at the top for the colony to grow into with brood nest expansion. If that sounds too simple to be effective, you are in good company. Almost nobody believes it would get the reliability that is inherent in the approach.

(cont.)

Read the full article here: Swarm Control — Bill’s Russian Bee Blog

Secrets of Beekeeping

Tags

beekeeping, education

“If beekeeping was easy I guess it wouldn’t be interesting.” Fleming Mattox

Reading the old timers’ beekeeping books from the 1800’s and early 1900’s I am struck with their struggles with wax moths and “disappearing disease.” It almost sounds like they are writing about today’s beekeeping struggles. We could say, “but we have mites” but then they also had the struggles of transporting their bees via horse and wagon so maybe beekeeping has always involved a bit of effort.

Books and articles written in the late 20th century talk about the additional problems encountered when tracheal mites arrived and later Varroa mites. These two pests caused many beekeepers to hang up their veil. But there have always been those that persevere through difficult times. And, ironically, some are drawn to the challenge.

I generally dislike articles written from the perspective of singling out a particular bad guy on the topic of current honey bee health problems. Instead I like those articles that state a problem and offer solutions that I can take to my own bee yard and implement. I know that commercial beekeepers take over two million hives to almonds every year which receive compensation depending on their grading. In Georgia, the package bee industry makes so many excess bees every year that it absolutely boggles the mind. My local association alone usually orders from four to five million honey bees each year – and we are only a single club. So, it can be done! I want to be like that guy with the extra bees and I’d like to see all beekeepers succeed with their bees.

Randy Oliver has said in “The Rules for Successful Beekeeping,” honey bees need four things: food, a dry cavity, help managing pests, and protection from toxins. That’s the proactive way of stating their needs and tells us what we can do to help them survive. (If your mind thinks differently he stated the same thing in a different article,  “The Four Horsemen of Bee Apocalypse,” but from the negative point of view,   what kills bees: famine, chill, pestilence, and poisons.) Randy runs about a thousand hives and sets up multiple experiment yards for his scientific studies. He knows bees.

It seems that thoroughly understanding the above four things that honey bees need might be the answer to keeping bees alive and healthy. The problem is each of these four items is accompanied by a lengthy list assessments, methods, timings, and manipulations. Instead of four things to remember I now have many. Not to mention I have to choose wisely among the many options to accomplish these four goals.

Soon after getting involved in beekeeping I got the thought that there might be some secrets involved to being a successful beekeeper. You know, like some sort of insider tricks which weren’t being generally offered in books and articles. I decided to start listening very closely when in conversation with successful beekeepers in the hope they’d let something slip. I checked my own thoughts and beliefs at the door and listened to them talk, hopeful of gaining a tip or trick here and there. Soon it started to pay off. Yes, there were tricks and tips that I hadn’t read about. For the most part these secrets weren’t really secrets though. They were methods and observations that really worked to satisfy, “The Rules for Successful Beekeeping.” Some were old school and some were new school. And the jewels came out when least expected, sometimes during a lecture, in casual conversation, before or after a meeting, during a get together over dinner, or in a bee yard while tending the bees. There was no telling when one of these jewels would just pop out and a light bulb would light up in my head. As for the speaker, I doubt they were even aware that the casual bit of beekeeping wisdom or artistry they had imparted was exactly what I needed to hear at that particular moment.

In closing I’m going to share with you how you too can get the inside scoop on improving your beekeeping. Beekeeping is both art and science. You can read a lot of the science but successful beginning beekeepers learn the methods of successful seasoned beekeepers. And I’ll add that this goes tenfold over for beginning beekeepers. Go to the knowledge base of your club. They are talking bees before, during, and after every monthly meeting and if you’re not there you are missing information on the art of beekeeping you need now or will need later.

I’m still a long ways from being the beekeeper I want to be. I’ve got more things to learn – some from the bees and some from others. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life Is a Journey, not a destination.” Pardon the poor paraphrase but for beekeepers, “Beekeeping is a journey, not a destination.” Enjoy the ride!

Notes and Beehives

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping records, hacks, hive notes, inspection notes

Sitting inside thinking about the recent rains beating down on the hives, it occurs to me that I’ve not written about my experience using markers for writing on and identifying hives.

This may appear as an advertisement of some sort but I assure you it’s simply a suggestion for those that are tired of marking and numbering hives only to realize weeks or months later that your notes or numbers have long since faded away. I tried everything to simply number my hives so I could match up my notes with the hives. I tried permanent markers, sign markers, and every marker I tried let me down. It seems the sun and the weather is a lot more brutal and persistent that I realized.

At first I tried to use permanent Sharpies for labeling hives. They make a clear and nice looking mark for stencils and labels but they faded in sunlight lasting only a couple months in daily direct sunlight, rain, etc. I moved on to their marker designed for Signs (also designated permanent) with disappointing, similar results. Then my friend showed me a really permanent marker he uses to label his hunting equipment and other outdoor property. The trick to finding a really permanent outdoor marking pen is in the name. If it says SOLID marker then you are getting real paint and not ink. I can’t remember the name of the one my friend originally showed me but since that first Solid Marker Pen I have started using Deco Color ID: Solid Stick. The ID Solid Stick is the perfect paint marker for most surfaces and is thermal resistant to extreme temperatures from -10°C to 200°C. This paint stick is opaque, water proof, fade resistant, dries in 5-7 minutes, and can be used indoors or outdoors. Use it outside on glass, tires, concrete, garbage cans, street address identifiers, PVC Pipes and plastic tubing/sheeting and much more! Indoor uses include sporting gear, toys, bicycles, boots, pots and pans, ect.  Available in 5 colors:  Red, Yellow, Blue, Black and White. They are available at Hobby Lobby for under $5 which is a little more expensive than I’ve found online but worth the price. They are truly permanent it seems. I started using them two years ago numbering hives. Last year I started using the hive tops as my notebook making notes, writing dates, hive status, etc. and so far the numbering and writing looks the same as the day I first wrote on the hive covers. In fact, the paint pen is so permanent the only way to remove the marking is to paint over older notes. Truly a product that works.

How to Catch A Swarm-N-A-Bucket!

Tags

beekeeping, catching swarms, honey bee swarms, swarm bucket, swarms

Source: Little Creek Bee Ranch

When you see a swarm of bees like this, over 12 feet in a tree, what to do? I’ve lost several very large swarms of Honey Bees, only because they where so high up in a tree (15 to 22 feet), that I had no chance of getting them back. It’s heart breaking to just stand there and look at them, knowing you aren’t going to be able to catch them. They might stay there for a day or two, but that’s about it. Therefore, I came up with a serious plan for being able to catch them back. If you’ll pay close attention to how we go about this, I’m certain you’ll benefit from these tips.

Get your gear together, and setup. The pole and bucket that you see, is PRICELESS! The pole is a paint pole, that extends. The bucket us called a Hipps Swarm Bucket. Yes, you can figure out how to make your own if you’d like.

You might need a helping hand in order to get this job done. Bees that have swarmed, are heavy with honey. Once the main swarm of bees hits the bottom of the bucket, you can’t just TIP the pole over and dump it into the hive….the aluminum pole will just snap. After the bees hit the bottom of the bucket, one person holds the pole upright, while the other person screws the black handle lose, and let the pole slide down into itself, and THEN you can dump them into a hive.

Get the bucket positioned under the swarm and give a solid push. Make certain that the swarm itself is even inside the bucket, before you thump them off the limb. You’ll feel the weight hit the bottom of the bucket, and then it’s up to you and your helper to get the pole upright, and keep it that way. Once the swarm hits the bottom of the bucket, pull the chord hard and close the lid on top of the bucket. Before I put the bucket up in the tree, I spritz inside with some sugar water.

Once the pole is under control, losen the handle and let the bucket come down to a managable level. Then you can walk over and dump them into a hive body. Be sure to take out several frames in order for the bees to have plenty of room to make it into the box.

You may even have to go back up with the bucket in order to get another shot at the remainder of the bees. You may do this several times, at least. The point here is; once the initial swarm has been in the bucket, that BEE SMELL from the Queen becomes your “bee lure”. Use it to your advantage. The bees will come down into the bucket in order to find the Queen. You should have gotten the Queen in the first grab.

You might even leave the pole and bucket up against the tree for a few minutes, in order to the bees to settle in the bucket. You might even put in a few old, black brood frames if you have some extra. Bees love these black frames!

Have your helper take off the hive lid, and dump in more bees. This is repeated about 4 times, or more.

Notice on the hive above, the porch entrance is blocked with a towel. I have placed sugar water on them. I left the hole in the box OPEN. Once the bees get oriented inside this box, they’ll start coming out for a look.

You can go back up for more bees.

Dump them in the box. Each time, you must COLLAPSE the pole.

Leave the pole against the tree for a few minutes. Bees that are flying around, will settle down, and find their way into the bucket to have a look around. You can close the lid again, and bring them down. They’re a bit confused and lost. Help them find their new home!

Letting them settle into their new home.

Let the bucket lure in more bees.

Be patient. Let the smell in the bucket do it’s magic. The bees will look for their Queen BY SMELL. They’ll smell her in the bucket and go down to investigate.

Collapse the pole, bring down more bees.

Dump into hive body. Put the lid back on top of the hive body, but upside down…which makes it easier to remove and put back on. We want this lid to stay on while we work the bucket. I want the bees to come back out of the hole, and begin to fan. They’ll “pooch and fan”, telling their sisters to “Come home! Come home! The food is here, and the Queen is here! Come home!” This is what you’re looking for, so watch the bees closely.

Once most all of the bees are in the box, put the lid back on properly.

Give the hole a squirt of sugar water. Let them get oriented to the front of this box.

When you bring your bucket back down, with more bees in it, just set the bucket facing the front of the hive, or tap the bucket off upside down in front of the hive. They’ll quickly figure out where their new home is located.

All of these bees got up and made their way into their new home. After about an hour, these bees where all settled down in their new home. We left the hive in this wagon over night, giving the Scout bees a chance to make it back into their new home also. Later that night, well after sundown, I came out and plugged the hole with Cotton. Early the next morning, I gently moved this wagon to where I wanted to place them on my property. Sadly, within a week, we had a bad cold snap, and temps got well below freezing and we lost all of these bees. I was heart broken, after having done all that work. We fed them properly, but to no avail. They don’t always grab food that is close by. On the flip side, this was our first big catch with our Pole & Bucket system. We learned a lot, and felt much more confident about our abilities to catch HIGH SWARMS. If there are swarms that are over 22 feet up in a tree, we’ll just let them go. By doing so, I populate the surrounding area with “wild bees”, in hopes of a KICK BACK swarm in the next few years.

Get you a pole at Atwoods and a make you up a bucket or buy one from Brushy Mountain. You’re sure to need one, if you’re going to keep bees!! Otherwise, you’ll be standing there just like I did for 2 years, wondering what to do.

Source: Little Creek Bee Ranch

Catching Honey Bee Swarms

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee swarms, swarm bucket, swarms

 

My bee buddy Dave.

One of the first things that will present itself to us in the spring (actually late, late winter) is swarms. And they are great fun too (unless they are your bees). There are many ways to capture swarms such as trapping and climbing ladders. But one device I have learned to appreciate more than any other for getting me up where I need to be is the extendable pole bucket swarm catcher. I made my bucket after seeing someone else’s. They aren’t difficult to build using an old bucket and a painter’s pole. Oh, the reason I’m posting this today is because this is a great winter project and one you don’t want to be wishing you had built when you see that swarm hanging in a tree.

Trapping Honey Bee Swarms

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, honey bee swarms, swarm traps, swarms

A proven site.

Swarm Trap in tree

Last spring, first swarms came very early to the South Carolina Midlands- around February 15th. That sounds like a long time from now but it will get here sooner than you think and swarms are unforgiving with beekeeper tardiness. Building and getting ready for swarm trapping is something that you should consider doing during these off months of winter. Remember, once swarm season starts you’ll probably be caught up in preparing your own hives for the primary nectar flow and have a limited amount of time to prepare traps. However, for those who are prepared there will be free bees. Here are a few sites I recommend:

http://letmbee.com/do-it-yo…/trapping-quick-reference-guide/

http://www.horizontalhive.com/h…/swarm-trap-free-plans.shtml

http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17189

And multiple videos by outofabluesky:
https://youtu.be/06zYkH7faeA

I promote swarm traps as another part of good beekeeping. Swarm management starts within your own hives and can go a long way to reducing the number of swarms that issue from your apiary. Intensive management can come close to eliminating swarms. However, life happens and you will experience the occasional swarm. Some thoughts on the matter:

1) The swarms you catch in a trap will typically perform better than the ones you knock out of a tree.

2) You’ll lose a portion of the swarms that issue for various reasons like too high in a tree, etc. It’s really nice when that swarm you had to leave in the tree shows up in your trap the next day.

3) Coupled with good swarm management in the hive, and capture of those swarms easy to gather, adding traps is good stewardship. Dr. Lawrence Connor in his book, Increase Essentials, says only 1 in 6 swarms survive their first winter. By capturing them you’re increasing their chances of survival.

4) Swarm captures makes better neighbors. Some neighbors will be as fascinated as you are at the miracle of swarming; others won’t. Capturing your own swarms may prevent you some heartache.

And finally, here’s an excellent, free, eight page article on the biology on swarming and nest selection with excellent advice on swarm trapping:

Bait Hives for Honey Bees by Thomas D. Seeley, Roger Morse, and Richard Nowogrodzki

 

Woodenware Assembly

Tags

beekeeping, beeswax, box nail, hive body, nails, woodenware

 

Before there were nail guns, powered screw drivers, exterior screws, star and hex bits, and more, there were specialized nails developed for a wide variety of applications.

Long ago, and remember when we talk about Langstroth hives we are talking mid 1800’s, there were multiple options in the ranks of the simple nail. Common nails and spikes, crate nails, cigar box nails, cooler nails, egg case nails, box nails, and more – all fine tuned for the job by shank and head size for a particular job.

Box nails, which we use for hive bodies, are slimmer than common nails of the same penny size and have a slightly blunted point which helps avoid splitting. Along the way, a 7d box nail was deemed ideal for the material and dimensions of bee boxes. It may even have been sold as a bee-box nail. It’s probably still the best nail for the job, but newer fasteners and power-nailers have lessened the demand, making it harder to find.

If you order your hive bodies from one of the major bee supply companies they typically will not come with nails. However, you may be able to order them as a separate item along with your boxes. What you’ll get is the traditional 7d box nail used for ages before the advent of modern fasteners found in big-box hardware stores.

However, what I most typically use is a substitute for tradition. Pictured are 6d, 2 inch, galvanized nails. The galvanization brings the shank size up a bit and provides a little protection from the elements. And they are easy to find in any hardware store. To pay homage to the 7d of yesterday, I usually take a few minutes to look for it on the shelves but I’m always disappointed.

Sometimes a board visually speaks to you and announces it is going to reject your attempts to apply a nail to it. I used to use soap on the nail to ease the boards objections, and the inevitable, but I now have a new helper – beeswax! Often we don’t know if our efforts help or not, but when a nail completes its task without incident we can assume credit with having eased the board’s objections to becoming a box.

I’ve noticed some prebuild boxes are now being assembled with staples. Perhaps in response to inquiries, we’re told the staples (or nails for that matter) are for holding things together until the glue dries. This may be true and I’ve started stapling the lighter, 5-frame nuc boxes but I’ll not risk my well being to a heavy, deep, 10-frame box joint coming undone sometime in the future while 30,000 bees are inside. So while I use a generous dab of waterproof Tightbond III on the hive body joints, I also appreciate the security and tradition of a nailed joint.

Ref: beesource.com

Waxing frame foundation – one of many winter tasks

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping chores, maintenance, waxing foundation, winter beekeeing

Every year I hope to have extra wax for candles and such. However I end up using all of it adding extra wax to the foundation for the benefit of the bees. The extra wax entices the bees to build their comb as well as encourages them to build it uniformly within the confines of the frame.

On the right are 15 sheets of unwaxed plastic foundation. In the middle, 15 sheets factory waxed. On the left , 15 home waxed using a minimal amount of wax but covering all cells. But regardless of the amount of wax, the aroma difference of the home waxed far exceeds the factory wax. So fragrant the bees were landing on me to investigate while I coated the foundation today.

Current Beekeeping Activities by sassafrasbefarm

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping chores, chores, equipment, fall management, winter management

Feeding the bees pollen substitute

Some things don’t change much year to year in beekeeping. At least not the chores. There is some comfort in the routine. This year is much like last. Building boxes, cleaning frames, painting and maintenance. And building bees for the spring. ~sassafrasbeefarm

This time of year can be as busy for the beekeeper as the spring nectar flow period. But now it’s all about preparation. My experience, since beginning this beekeeping journey, is that there is never enough time during the nectar flow. In fact, time becomes precious even before the nectar flow with the need to rotate hive bodies or employ other swarm reducing measures, placement of swarm traps, movement of hives to out yards, making splits, and lots of last minute surprises.

So, here are few pictures of what I occupy myself with during this so called off season:

Order queen pen and my favorite markers to write on the hives.

Making sugar cakes for the tops of the hives.

Adding extra wax to plastic frames.

Collecting and bagging pine straw for my smoker.

 

Building boxes, bottom boards, and tops.

Adding some color to the entrance reducers.

Painting entrances to the queen mating nucs

This is Advantech – a new material that resists weathering.

Painting everything. Three coats!

Joy! I found three 50 pound sacks of sugar I had forgotten!

 

A century old tale of ‘Beekeeping in the South’ by Mary Bammer

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping history, beekeeping in the south

In 1920 the American Bee Journal published a book called “Beekeeping In The South; A Handbook on Seasons, Methods and Honey Flora of the Fifteen Southern States”. Written by Kennith Hawkins, a Beekeeping Specialist and “Former Special Agent in Bee Culture”, this book paints a nostalgic picture of what it took to keep honey bees in the south a century ago. While major players of today’s industry like the infamous Varroa mite are missing from this text, it is surprising to see just how well the author’s advice holds up in today’s beekeeping industry. Below is an excerpt from this book, a chapter entitled “What a Beginner Must Learn”, shared here with permission from the American Bee Journal.

1,503 more words

Book is accessible online at: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/115789#page/1/mode/1up

Read the complete article here: A century old tale of ‘Beekeeping in the South’ — UF/IFAS Entomology and Nematology Department

The Number 6 Method of determining honey bee queenlessness

Tags

beekeeping, humor, opinion

Always eager to improve methods of hive assessment, I have now developed the non-invasive queenlessness test method, hereafter known as The Number 6 Method.

Step one: Suit up well. No, really well as in “rubber bands around your pant’s cuffs” well. An extra cap under your veil is also advised.

Step Two: Clear the yard of bystanders.

Step Three: Crank up your riding mower and proceed to cut a swath directly down the front of your hives at normal cutting speed. If the mower hits a stob or cuts off during this procedure be prepared to abandon ship.

Step Four: Do not stop but as you loop away from the hives take a brief glance at the front of the hives. If a hive appears to be swarming out the front entrance console yourself that they aren’t swarming.

Step Five: If this was the hive you suspected of being queenless, the final assessment should present itself almost instantly in the form of a cloud of 50 -100 bees now chasing you and your lawnmower.

Step Six: Feel good about not unduly disturbing the bees with invasive inspections to determine queenlessness. You deserve a pat on the back as you shift into Number 6 on the lawnmower’ s speed control. With any luck they won’t follow you more than 100 yards. Be amazed at how honey bees can stick to your veil like Velcro.

Step Seven: Properly performed, this test should be conducted at the end of your beekeeping day. Returning to the bee yard sooner that 12 hours is not advised.

Embarrassing as it is, the above is based on a true story.

Happy Birthday Johann Dzierzon

Tags

beekeeping

As many of my beekeeping friends might remember, I started December vowing to answer to, and identify myself as, “Lorenzo” to reservation takers, waitresses, and others. I am pleased to report that this has worked out well, with the exception of that overly serious State Trooper, so I am extending the practice another month. But Lorenzo Langstroth’s birthday month has come and gone and it is time to pick another beekeeper to honor. I encourage anyone so inclined to participate in this exercise of giving and responding to the name of a famous beekeeper for the month. Who knows when a question on the Certified Beekeepers test may become a simple remembrance due to your participation in this venture. So, with no further delay, during the month of January I will give and respond to the name, “Johann” in honor of Johann Dzierzon born January 16th, 1811. Apparently he also went by the name “Jan” so try each out from time to time to see how that flies. Try it out, it’s pronounced exactly as it’s spelled. Hey, I’m not sure it matters.

Below Source: Wikipedia Entry

Johann Dzierzon (16 January 1811 – 26 October 1906), was a pioneering apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees and designed the first successful movable-frame beehive.

Dzierzon came from a Polish family in Silesia. Trained in theology, he combined his theoretical and practical work in apiculture with his duties as a Roman Catholic priest, before being compulsorily retired by the Church and eventually excommunicated.

His discoveries and innovations made him world-famous in scientific and bee-keeping circles, and he has been described as the “father of modern apiculture”.

Scientific career

Stack of Dzierzon hives. Illustration from Nordisk familjebok.

In his apiary, Dzierzon studied the social life of honeybees and constructed several experimental beehives. In 1838 he devised the first practical movable-comb beehive, which allowed manipulation of individual honeycombs without destroying the structure of the hive. The correct distance between combs had been described as 1½ inches from the center of one top bar to the center of the next one. In 1848 Dzierzon introduced grooves into the hive’s side walls, replacing the strips of wood for moving top bars. The grooves were 8 × 8 mm—the exact average between ¼ and ⅜ inch, which is the range called the “bee space.” His design quickly gained popularity in Europe and North America. On the basis of the aforementioned measurements, August Adolph von Berlepsch (de) (May 1852) in Thuringia and L.L. Langstroth (October 1852) in the United States designed their frame-movable hives.

In 1835 Dzierzon discovered that drones are produced from unfertilized eggs. Dzierzon’s paper, published in 1845, proposed that while queen bees and female worker bees were products of fertilization, drones were not, and that the diets of immature bees contributed to their subsequent roles.^[15] His results caused a revolution in bee crossbreeding and may have influenced Gregor Mendel‘s pioneering genetic research.^[16] The theory remained controversial until 1906, the year of Dzierzon’s death, when it was finally accepted by scientists at a conference in Marburg.^[12] In 1853 he acquired a colony of Italian bees to use as genetic markers in his research, and sent their progeny “to all the countries of Europe, and even to America.”^[17] In 1854 he discovered the mechanism of secretion of royal jelly and its role in the development of queen bees.

Bust of Jan Dzierżoń, National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa

With his discoveries and innovations, Dzierzon became world-famous in his lifetime.^[14] He received some hundred honorary memberships and awards from societies and organizations.^[12] In 1872 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich.^[14] Other honors included the Austrian Order of Franz Joseph, the Bavarian Merit Order of St. Michael, the Hessian Ludwigsorden, the Russian Order of St. Anna, the Swedish Order of Vasa, the Prussian Order of the Crown, 4th Class, on his 90th birthday, and many more. He was an honorary member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He also received an honorary diploma at Graz, presented by Archduke Johann of Austria. In 1903 Dzierzon was presented to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.^[14] In 1904 he became an honorary member of the Schlesische Gesellschaft für vaterländische Kultur (“Silesian Society for Fatherland Culture”).

Dzierzon’s discoveries concerning asexual reproduction, as well as his questioning of papal infallibility, were rejected by the Church,^[12] which in 1869 retired him from the priesthood.^[18] This disagreement, along with his public engagement in local politics, led to his 1873 excommunication.^[19] In 1884 he moved back to Lowkowitz, settling in the hamlet An der Grenze,^[12] (Granice Łowkowskie).^[20] Of his new home, he wrote:

In every direction, one has a broad and pleasant view, and I am pretty happy here, despite the isolation, as I am always close to my beloved bees — which, if one’s soul be receptive to the works of the Almighty and the wonders of nature, can transform even a desert into a paradise.^[12]

From 1873 to 1902 Dzierzon was in contact with the Old Catholic Church,^[12] but in April 1905 he was reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church.^[12]

He died in Lowkowitz on 26 October 1906 and is buried in the local graveyard.^[12]

Legacy

Dzierzon

Johann Dzierzon is considered the father of modern apiology and apiculture.^[21] Most modern beehives derive from his design. Due to language barriers, Dzierzon was unaware of the achievements of his contemporary, L.L. Langstroth,^[21] the American “father of modern beekeeping”,^[22] though Langstroth had access to translations of Dzierzon’s works.^[23] Dzierzon’s manuscripts, letters, diplomas and original copies of his works were given to a Polish museum by his nephew, Franciszek Dzierżoń.^[9]

In 1936 the Germans renamed Dzierzon’s birthplace, Lowkowitz, Bienendorf (“Bee Village”) in recognition of his work with apiculture.^[24] At the time, the Nazi government was changing many Slavic-derived place names such as Lowkowitz. After the region came under Polish control following World War II, the village would be renamed Łowkowice.

Following the 1939 German invasion of Poland, many objects connected with Dzierzon were destroyed by German gendarmes on 1 December 1939 in an effort to conceal his Polish roots.^[10] The Nazis made strenuous efforts to enforce a view of Dzierżoń as a German.^[11]

After World War II, when the Polish government assigned Polish names to most places in former German territories which had become part of Poland, the Silesian town of Reichenbach im Eulengebirge (traditionally known in Polish as Rychbach) was renamed Dzierżoniów in the man’s honor.^[25]

In 1962 a Jan Dzierżon Museum of Apiculture was established at Kluczbork.^[12] Dzierzon’s house in Granice Łowkowskie(now part of Maciejów village was also turned into a museum chamber, and since 1974 his estates have been used for breeding Krain bees.^[12] The museum at Kluczbork houses 5 thousand volumes of works and publications regarding bee keeping, focusing on work by Dzierzon, and presents a permanent exhibition regarding his life presenting pieces from collections from National Ethnographic Museum in Wrocław, and Museum of Silesian Piasts in Brzeg^[26]

More at: Source: Wikipedia Entry

Swarm Traps

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee swarms, spring management, swarm traps, swarms

 

Time to build your swarm traps. Re use the worst of your used or recycled frames covered in the smell of a hive. Strips of foundation, wax or plastic painted with last years wax for increased odor. If you have a frame of partially drawn comb place it in the center of the trap. They will be attracted to the scent and availability of the drawn comb. A few drops of lemongrass oil on a Q-tip placed in… a partially closed baggie placed on top of the frames helps. Entrance should be 1.5 square inches and box size should be about the size of a deep Langstroth (38 – 40 liters). Don’t break a leg trying to position the swarm trap high in a tree. Be safe, place it as high as is comfortable – if it is a well built trap and meets their needs they will choose it.

Queen Rearing – Caught in the Middle

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beekeeping, management, queens

Caught in the middle with bees!

Starting out, the first two or three years, it seems easier, safer, and more financially prudent to simply buy queens from the local association prior to making spring splits. If you have 2 or 3 hives that need splitting it’s not too costly and ensures a greater degree of success to buy the queens and make splits installing the purchased queens. It almost always results in a good outcome.

Then, if your bee fever grows, you begin to have more colonies and the check for those queens adds up to serious cash – cash better saved for other beekeeping toys. Additionally, aren’t we suppose to be selecting breeding stock and rearing our own queens that survive our climate and the mites? Plus, raising my own allows me to drop that cool word, “sustainable.”

I’ve been resistant to rearing my own queens for the past couple years although I know I should have been doing so. I’m not quite sure if I’m just lazy, busy with other bee projects, afraid of failure, or just not interested in queen rearing. But, at last, it’s time.

I’m not sure if my eyes are good enough anymore for grafting. I thought about buying some of those jeweler’s or watchmaker’s glasses. But then I’d also be buying more dedicated queen rearing equipment as well. Cell punching helps and I’m waiting for  a class which may convince me to adopt a simple grafting method. Regardless, most all the grafting methods neccessitate multiple boxes, transfers, more bee stuff and can be a bit pricey. Simplier (non grafting) equipment like the Nicot or Jenter systems are also costly.

On the other extreme is the walkaway split, making sure the queenless split has larvae of appropriate age and allowing the bees to make an emergency queen. Additional methods of cell crushing can be added to improve the outcome but making multiple walkaway splits is a bit scary – what if half of them don’t make it? I’m a little OCD and looking for a little more control and perhaps even better outcome.

So, remembering the low tech methods of our forefathers, and with a mind to keeping costs at a minimum, I decided on using one of the throwbacks like the Miller or Hopkins methods. A mentor once suggested the Hopkins method to me and it sounds easy enough and promises to raise more queens than I’ll need. Basically it involves taking a frame of appropriately aged larvae and placing it horizontally over a densely populated queenless split. It’s low risk as well, if all goes poorly, such as a sudden change in the weather, the worst that can happen is I re-unite that split with their parent colony. So that’s what I’ve decided to attempt this year. Another adventure in beekeeping! Above are pictures of the 2″ shim I’ll be using to place the frame over the colony. Also a link below if you’re interested in reading more about the Hopkins method of queen rearing.

http://beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/the-hopkins-method-of-queen-rearing

Is a Warm Winter Good for the Bees?

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee biology, management, seasons

An article by the Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association

Bees overwinter best when they are held at a temperature that keeps the cluster quiet and eating very little honey. That’s why sometimes we say we are putting the bees to bed for the winter. Though bees do not hibernate like bears, they cluster, produce heat, eat and wait for warmer days. There is an ideal temperature between 30-40 degrees F that keeps the bees quiet and eating the least amount of food. The warmer the weather the more the bees eat. AND oddly enough, the colder the weather (below 30 degrees F) the more the bees eat to generate heat. Does an unseasonably warm winter mean trouble for bees? (Click here to continue article)

Lorenzo Langstroth’s Birthday

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beekeeping, beekeeping books, beekeeping history, birthday, famous beekeepers, Langstroth, Lorenzo Langstroth's birthday, The Hive and the Honey Bee

A Toast to Langstroth

This year, beekeepers are celebrating the 210th year anniversary of “the Father of American Beekeeping.” Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was born Christmas Day, December 25, 1810 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. L. L. Langstroth developed the modern hive after exploring existing hives including the pre-cursor to the top bar hive. Francis Huber invented the Leaf Hive in 1789 in Switzerland. The leaf hive had movable solid frames that touched making the box like top bar hives. The leaf hive was examined like pages in a book.

(photo: In 2010 the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild began a wonderful Christmas tradition. They gather each year at 106 South Front Street, Philadelphia; the birthplace of Lorenzo L. Langstroth on Christmas Day, which is also Langstroth’s birthday, for a Champagne / mead toast to Langstroth.) A Toast to Langstroth)

In the summer of 1851 Langstroth developed the hive that is still used today and the “bee space.” Langstroth patented the first movable frame hive on October 5, 1852. Henry Bourquin, a fellow beekeeper and Philadelphia cabinetmaker, made Langstroth’s first hives. Langstroth hives encourage rapid inspection without enraging the bees. Weak colonies can be strengthened. Strong colonies can increase space. Queens are quickly replaced. Diseases, pests and parasites can be quickly determined and remedied. Inspection by removable frames is now required in the United States. Langstroth also began using queen excluders to confine eggs to the lower boxes. Removable frames encouraged honey extraction without destroying the comb. Honey comb requires 7 to 14 pounds of honey for every pound of beeswax. Besides increased honey production, the beehive no longer had to be killed to remove the honey.

Langstroth published “The Hive and the Honey-Bee” in 1853 still in print today after 40 editions. Langstroth died October 6, 1895 while preaching a sermon on the love of God at the Wayne Avenue Presbyterian church in Dayton. L. L. Langstroth is buried at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio. Langstroth’s epitaph reads —

INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF REV. L.L. LANGSTROTH, “FATHER OF AMERICAN BEEKEEPING,” BY HIS AFFECTIONATE BENEFICIARIES WHO, IN THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE SERVICES RENDERED BY HIS PERSISTENT AND PAINSTAKING OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS WITH THE HONEY BEE, HIS IMPROVEMENTS IN THE HIVE, AND THE LITERARY ABILITY SHOWN IN THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR BOOK ON THE SUBJECT OF BEEKEEPING IN THE UNITED STATES, GRATEFULLY ERECT THIS MONUMENT.

Ebook:  The Hive and the Honey Bee

Audio recording: The Hive and the Honey Bee

Once a Year Opportunity to Save on Varroa Treatment by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

beekeeping, management, varroa mites

Once a year an opportunity comes along for the beekeeper to treat all of his or her hives for Varroa for less than ten dollars and about five minutes per hive. That’s ten bucks to treat all of your hives. But this opportunity only comes once a year and is only available for a short period of time. In South Carolina, that time is now, or soon, during the broodless period.

I’m reading more and more about hive losses or abscondings. It’s interesting that most posts relating these events place the blame on wax moths, yellow jackets, or robbing. I suggest these invaders are the second or even third string teams coming in after the true villain has struck a weakening or fatal blow. Did the bees abscond? Yes, most likely from the reports I read they did indeed. From reports, one week the bees are there, the next week gone. But I ask you, if your home was overridden with ticks, with the infestation getting worse each day, how long would you stay in your home?

Why now? Varroa levels increase in the fall and having no drone brood and minimal open worker brood means mite density in the brood area increases.

Last year I watched a group of nine untreated hives go into winter and come out as three. Ten dollars total and maybe 45 minutes might very well have saved them if they had been managed differently.

For more information on how to perform an oxalic acid dribble, Rusty lays it all out here on HoneyBeeSuite: https://honeybeesuite.com/how-to-apply-an-oxalic-acid-dribble/

And here’s a “how to” YouTube video:

I’ll close this post with some words from Randy Oliver of Scientific Beekeeping:

“Three strategies I’ve found that always fail when battling varroa are:

1. Denial—“I haven’t seen any mites, so my mite levels must be low.”

2. Wishful thinking—“I haven’t seen very many mites, so I’m hoping and praying that my bees will be OK.”

3. Blind faith—“I used the latest snake oil mite cure, and it’s gotta work!”

Every time I’ve been “blindsided” by the mite, I was in actuality simply being blind.”

Raw Honey FAQ

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beekeeping, raw honey

I know this but after an evening answering questions at a local famer’s market I decided I needed as refresher on Raw Honey myself – just in case I was omitting some points. I found the following on a blog called Honey Traveler.

Raw honey is honey that is unheated and minimally processed. It is pure honey where nothing has been added or removed. To be raw, honey should not be heated above temperatures one would normal find in a hive (approximately 95 degrees F). Additionally it should not be ultra-finely filtered to the point of removing pollen and organic materials that are an intrinsic constituent of honey.

Unheated, “raw” honey contains all the vital ingredients that give it its healthful properties and wonderful aroma. Most commercial honey you see in supermarkets is not raw honey. This mass produced honey is often heated to temperatures far above the normal temperatures of the bee hive. Heating past the maximum hive temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit changes honey’s essential composition and degrades its quality. It partially destroys honey’s beneficial enzymes and ‘boils off’ volatile compounds that account for the unique, delicate floral aroma of the honey. This is done to make it easier to extract from the honey comb, to filter it, to package it, to ‘pasteurize’ it to kill benign yeast and prevent fermentation and to delay crystallization.

Micro-filtering also degrades the healthful properties of honey by removing beneficial pollen residue. Much commercial honey is micro-filtered, often using a diatomaceous earth (DE) process to eliminate even micron-sized particles. Why go to these lengths when a relatively coarse strain would result in a clear, visually beautiful product and not remove healthful pollen? The reason is to slow down the naturally occurring crystallization of honey. Tiny particles act as ‘seeds’ for the crystallization process, by removing them with micro-filtering, crystallization is delayed.

But crystallization is not a problem to be solved. Almost all honeys crystallize after time. It is actually a good sign the honey is raw. To re-liquify, simply heat the honey jar in warm water (104 F, 40 C) until it returns to the liquid state, stir occasionally to transfer heat, and replace the hot water if needed. Note some honeys will not crystallize easily because of low glucose levels and in these cases, this is not a sign of heating or micro-filtering (ex. honeydews, black locust-acacia, tupelo, sourwood, sunflower, sage).

A good trick to ensure you are getting raw, unprocessed honey is to purchase it in the comb.

Health Benefits of Honey Negatively Affected by Heating

Many of the healthful organic compounds and substances in honey are destroyed or inhibited by heat.

Antibacterial, Antimicrobial Properties from Enzymes in Raw Honey:
The main enzymes in honey are invertase (saccharase) diastase (amylase) which break down sugars and help digestion. The enzyme glucose oxidase produces the antibacterial, antimicrobial hydrogen peroxide, a well-known disinfectant.

Antioxidant Properties in Raw Honey:
Dependent upon enzymes and a wide range of compounds in honey, antioxidants are substances that can retard or inhibit oxidation and/or neutralize the effects of damaging “free radicals”. Increasing the body’s antioxidant content may help protect against cellular damage and the development of chronic diseases.

From the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2002, Vol. 50, No. 21, pp.5870-5877:
“…Antioxidant analysis of the different honey fractions suggested that the water-soluble fraction contained most of the antioxidant components, including protein; gluconic acid; ascorbic acid; hydroxymethylfuraldehyde; and the combined activities of the enzymes glucose oxidase, catalase and peroxidase. Of these components, a significant correlation could be established only between protein content and oxygen radical absorbance capacity ORAC activity (R(2) = 0.674, p = 0.024). These results suggest that the antioxidant capacity of honey is a product of the combined activity of a wide range of compounds including phenolics, peptides, organic acids, enzymes, Maillard reaction products, and possibly other minor components…”

Other antioxidants include polyphenols, flanonoids and phenolic acid in Raw Honey. Polyphenols in foods are thought to play important roles in human health such as cancer preventative, and anti-inflammatory, radical scavenging and antioxidative activities. The most important classes of antioxidant polyphenols are the flavonoids and phenolic acids. It is these substances in honey, wine, fruits and vegetables that are most responsible for the antioxidant characteristics, and thus the healthy image of these foods.

Darker honeys like Buckwheat honey are stronger antioxidants compared to lighter honeys.

Source: http://www.honeytraveler.com/types-of-honey/raw-honey/

Tucked in, What Now?

Tags

beekeeping, honey bees, management, seasons

The cold weather is here, You’ve done what you can to tuck them in for the coming season. So, what are you going to do with all your time now?

1) Continue to lift the back of your hives to check for weight. Now is why you learned this method of assessing stores.

2) Perform maintainance on honey supers pulled off hives – painting or otherwise.

3) Assemble new equipment for next year – boxes, frames, stands, etc.

4) Order packages, nucs, or queens.

5) Plan for changes you’re going to impliment next season.

6) Call, visit, or write farmers or landowners where you’d like to place hives for out yards next spring.

7) Attend local and state beekeeper meetings.

8) Scout trees for placement and prepare swarms traps. Construct swarm capture bucket.

9) Build a nuc now to keep in your car or truck for community swarm captures next spring. Register with on-line swarm call lists.

10) Order or ask Santa for a copy of that beekeeping book you’ve been wanting to read. Read some every day.

Coming Soon, Spring Splits!

Tags

beekeeping, making increase, nucleus hives, splits, spring splits, sustainable beekeeping

Picture from Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping article.

I have raised 5 frame nucleus hives since 2016 from Spring splits and allowed them to grow out to double boxes (ten frames). Last year, and this coming, I’ll graft queens and be using the Coweta mindset and method (below) to make increase or to sustainably maintain a hive after the sale of a nucleus hive or queen.  I always retain 5 frames with at least one frame of young larvae and notch the cells to raise a new queen as detailed in the following article.

Source: Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping Method by Steven Page

Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping

Click here to download a pdf file of this article.

Most beekeepers are not sustainable; they purchase nucs or packages each spring to replace winter losses.  This is expensive and prevents the creation of local, sustainable honey bee genetics.  The true cost of a package or nuc can escalate when some die during the winter before producing any honey.  If only half of these young colonies survive until next spring the cost per a nuc or package doubles.

A beekeeper with only a few hives may experience the disheartening loss of all their colonies.  No honey will be harvested for a year and they must start over purchasing nucs or packages if they can find them.

The current or traditional methods that the beekeeping books teach do not account for the difficulties we experience.  A book may teach Varroa mite control but not how to thrive in spite of Varroa.  Most are teaching beekeeping from a time before the combined effects of:

·         Varroa Mites

·         Numerous diseases

·         Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)

·         Small hive beetle

·         Short lived queens

·         High pesticide use

There has to be a better way.

If you have bees you can make more bees or more accurately, colonies can be used to make more colonies.  All beekeepers have the resources in their colonies to become sustainable.

In the south, winter losses average one-third.  During the summer make enough splits to begin winter with one and a half times the number of colonies required for honey production in the spring.  If six colonies are required for spring honey production, begin winter with ten.  For example, begin the winter with six production hives and four nucs. After losing two production hives and two nucs during the winter, a 40 percent loss, the two remaining nucs are used to replace the dead colonies restoring production hives to six.  There is no need to buy colonies because of winter losses.  In May, splits can be started to replace the nucs bringing the total number of colonies up to ten again.

Overwinter Nucs

“Almost every emergency of management can be met by putting something into or taking something out of a nucleus, while nuclei themselves seldom present emergencies.” E. B. Wedmore, A Manual of Beekeeping

Continued…

To read  the complete article visit: Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping Method

Gifts for Beekeepers

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beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, equipment, gifts for beekeepers

http://carolinahoneybees.com/gifts-for-beekeepers/

Overwintering Nuclei Colonies by Larry Connor

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beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, Larry Connor, nucleus hives, overwintering

Some northern beekeepers have success overwintering nuclei-sized colonies. This may be based on a particular stock or genetic trait, and should be tested carefully. More beekeepers are able to overwinter a single, deep hive body by packing the hive out with honey or sugar syrup in the Fall. In addition to food reserves, make sure such colonies are protected from the harsh winds of Winter.

Read the complete article here: Overwintering Nuclei Colonies — BEEKeeping: Your First Three Years

Honey Egg Nog

Tags

beekeeping, egg nog, honey, honey recipe, recipe

My friends know I love Egg Nog. I look forward to seeing it being offered in the stores each year. Enjoy this recipe by epicurious.com on making homemade Honey Egg Nog.

Eggnog is a wonderful rich festive drink, something of a dessert in a cup and much more indulgent than mulled wine. It doesn’t have to be made with spirits, so you can make a non-alcoholic batch for the kids and the designated drivers. But it’s better with the rum and brandy! I recommend using one of the heather honeys as they work well with spice. 

INGREDIENTS

• • 1 cup honey
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 cup light rum
  • 1 cup brandy
  • 12 free range egg yolks
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 1/2 cups cream
  • Garnish: grated allspice, ginger or nutmeg

Note: 1 cup is 240ml

PREPARATION

In the bowl of an electric mixer, dissolve the honey in the water. Stir in the light rum and brandy thoroughly. Beat the mixture, gradually beating in the egg yolks, the milk, and the cream. Beat the eggnog until it is foamy and serve it in individual glasses with a dusting of grated allspice, nutmeg or ginger.

As the recipe contains raw egg it is unadvisable for those whose immune system is less strong. We don’t recommend giving it to small children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with a low immune system.

Recipe reproduced from Epicurious: Here

Current Beekeeping Activities by sassafrasbefarm

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping chores, chores, equipment, fall management

Feeding the bees pollen substitute

This time of year can be as busy for the beekeeper as the spring nectar flow period. But now it’s all about preparation. My experience, since beginning this beekeeping journey, is that there is never enough time during the nectar flow. In fact, time becomes precious even before the nectar flow with the need to rotate hive bodies or employ other swarm reducing measures, placement of swarm traps, movement of hives to out yards, making splits, and lots of last minute surprises.

So, here are few pictures of what I occupy myself with during this so called off season:

Order queen pen and my favorite markers to write on the hives.

Making sugar cakes for the tops of the hives.

Adding extra wax to plastic frames.

Collecting and bagging pine straw for my smoker.

 

Building boxes, bottom boards, and tops.

Adding some color to the entrance reducers.

Painting entrances to the queen mating nucs

This is Advantech – a new material that resists weathering.

Painting everything. Three coats!

Joy! I found three 50 pound sacks of sugar I had forgotten!

 

No Straight Lines in Beekeeping

Tags

beekeeping, opinion

No Straight Lines in Beekeeping

My first year I had one hive. The following spring, in March, it swarmed twice, two weeks apart, and left me with nothing for all my hard work getting them through the previous summer, fall, and winter.

But, having been hooked with the fascination of that first hive, I had already purchased 6 packages and had spent that first winter building boxes, frames, bottoms, and tops. I had lost that first hive earlier in the month but I now had 6 fresh starts. That spring, in the first weeks, I spent a couple tanks of gas driving around collecting swarms, some failed and some succeeded. By the end of summer I had 13 hives. In autumn I lost a couple to their being weak but I learned a few things and combined a few more to strengthen them and went into winter with 7 hives.

By the next spring I had lost 4 of those 7 colonies because I failed to adequately ventilate and reduce moisture during the winter. In fact, I had promoted moisture by wrapping the hives “for their protection.” The learning curve can be brutal in beekeeping. By this time I had spent some time over winter reading about splits so I split those 3 remaining hives (remember I’d had 13 the previous year) and had about 8 hives at the start of the flow, Again on the swarm trail, I added another half dozen colonies and did some more fall splits. I actually made honey and sold a bit and closed the season with 18 hives.

That winter took less of a bite out of my bee yard and as I recall I lost about 5 hives and came out with 13 in the spring. Hey, maybe I’d learned something! Up to 21 that season and made honey again. Always spending the money on more boxes, frames, wax, lumber. Learning the dangers associated with mites, moisture, weak colonies, hive beetles. Learning the seasons from my mentors and when to do this or that. Like a dedicated AA member, never missing a meeting because Frank, Danny, Wes, Staci, Dave, Todd, Patrick, William, a visiting speaker, or someone would be there to tell me what I needed to be seeing in the hive and what I needed to be doing over the coming month. I am an information addict and those folks repeatedly told me what I sometimes resisted.

By the next winter I had a couple notebooks worth of meetings’ notes. Also, I had attended the beginning beekeeper class not once but twice – only a bee nerd would do such a thing. I actually sat down and wrote January, February, March… on blank pages and copied three years of monthly meeting notes on each month’s respective page. Not surprising, year to year the information was very similar but I had some gaps in my notes and combining the notebooks helped me learn a few things. By then I had also attended a few conferences; I added to my notebook and beekeeping calendar.

The winter I signed up to be the local club Secretary I lost less than 10%. I learned a great deal from visiting the bee yards of many of our members. I continued attending conferences, meetings, hearing it over and over; sometimes it took multiple times before I relented and relinquished some of my bad ideas. In the spring I decided to save gas money and stop chasing swarms. It had become easier to make splits. I still caught one or two to get it out of my system but my problem became one of more colonies than I had boxes. And still my own bees swarmed. By this time I had kind of stabilized at 20 hives and fluxed up or down a few at any given time.

The next year, again less than 10% failure rate over the winter. I think primarily because I had become convinced the previous year that treating for Varroa actually produces positive results, as does feeding them when needed, and strengthening colonies with combines in the early fall. I had bought only queens for two years, no packages or nucs, and increases were made when the bees cooperated in the spring. I was starting to think like a bee.

Last year I lost 20% which I fully blame on my failure to combine weaker hives in the Fall as is standard. I failed to make the few combines I should have because I’m a hard head so I lost a few. Several of these were nucleus hives which, had they been combined, would have overwintered. Another lesson I had to learn twice.

And here we are again going into winter. But I grew to 50 this year and then decided to generously combine weaker hives after the nectar flow. I also chose to not make splits immediately after the nectar flow which is standard practice if one wishes to grow their apiary (also called making increase). I hope to come out with a good survival rate in the spring of 2018. For Spring 2018 I’m posed to start the queen rearing adventure and be closer to a true sustainable bee yard.

But to get to the point here. It’s all flux; ups and downs.

Sustainability is possible but straight lines aren’t. I wrote an article some time back for our local club’s newsletter speaking on flexibility in beekeeping. It was based on a lecture titled, “Flexibility in Beekeeping” given by one of our senior beekeepers, Danny Cannon, a couple years earlier. That lecture was a turning point for me, helping me see the big picture a little clearer. Roll with the punches, think like a bee, work with the bees, follow their lead, always learn, be ready for change, capitalize on times of increase, brush yourself off and accept times of decrease, follow the bees’ nature and ride that wave whenever you can. And, oh yeah, enjoy the ride.

Here are the Blues Brothers demonstrating these principles. Roll with the punches, work with them – not against, follow their lead, accept change…

Beekeeping and Political Elections by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

beekeeping, change, elections, opinion, political

Reposted:

It seems a parallel exists between bees, bee yards, and Political Elections. The ebb and flow, rhythm, and normal fluctuations all fall within the big picture.

Beekeepers accept the growth of the bee yard during the spring. Things expand on their own with little or no help from the beekeeper. Most beekeepers assign that expansion a positive value but, in fact it’s neither positive nor negative – it’s just a direction. In the autumn there is a corresponding reduction of colonies and things change, again neither good nor bad – just change. Beekeepers learn over the years that flux is the norm and without the connotations our beliefs wish to assign to individual events. It is what it is, we merge with the changes – or we don’t and become angst ridden. But how do we get to an acceptance of the flux? One way I have learned to adapt to the flux is by taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture.

Some colonies thrive for a season and then unexpectedly go out with a mighty thud. Other never build up. Still others chug along fully average in every way. But regardless, all can expect to come and go with time. Another example is the notes I write on the tops of my hives. After some time passes my notes become meaningless. Sometimes I look at those notes and try to remember the urgency that inspired my note written last season. In the bigger picture of the bee yard, after the bees swarm and the new queen comes in with her genetics it’s only a short time before the bees of the former queen are gone having been replaced by a new queen and her offspring. A new queen brings her genetics yet in the big picture things simply continue. And so it goes on every organizational level. Changes take place in the bee yard with hives being moved, replaced, swarms captured, queens failing. It’s all birth, change, flux, and impermanence. That’s okay, it works out, the bees offer us the opportunity to learn to enjoy the variations within the journey.

Reading the book, The Buzz about Bees – Biology of a Superorganism by Jürgen Tautz, I am reminded that the changes above are both disruptive as well as beneficial to the species. The biological makeup changes and the fate of the species is strengthened by these disruptive events. However to see this as beneficial we must back up and look at what’s happening from a long term point of view. Short term we only see disruption, possible loss of a honey crop, colony, or other inconvenient situation for the bees and beekeeper. Taking the long term view however, we see that flux is key to a balancing taking place in the colony, the bee yard, and even the species itself.

Beekeepers are slow people; I mean that in a good way. We patiently look to spring, then we make plans for summer dearth, then fall nectar flows, and then we prepare for winter. We are both methodical and boring. While mostly dull, we are also reassured that all is as it should be and we remain excited with each predictable change of the season. We learn that change and disruption is normal, even beneficial, and not to be feared. It’s only disruptive in the short term but not if we consider the long term. How could it be otherwise?

So, the colony has been disrupted. The big picture is it’s seeking balance again – be patient! It’s neither good nor bad – it’s just what is. As we often say, “we do our part and the bees will work it out if we let them.” Maybe not today, nor tomorrow; maybe not this week or this month. If we are patient, in time we’ll see change that pleases us the bee yard next year. For now though, maybe we can sit down and think things through and come up with a plan to help things along next season. Regardless, the big picture is so much larger than we are that we struggle to fully see how change is beneficial to seeking balance. As humans in an inpatient world we struggle with concepts of time, change, and balance. Don’t be alarmed; everything in this world is subject to disruptions and change yet always seeks balance.

Chocolate Bakalava by Let’s Taco Bout It Blog

Tags

Anna Karenina, baklava, beekeeping, chocolate, food, honey, recipe

Istoriya Odin

This recipe first published at: Let’s Taco Bout It Blog. Visit the link below to read entire article. get the recipe, and see some amazing pictures.

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

The Princess Oblonsky, also know as Anna Arkádyevna Karénina or even more familiarly Anna, looked curiously for and back the immense banquet table. Being nobility afforded many luxuries for her and her inquisitive and thoughtful mind enjoyed these luxuries to the fullest. She adored the ability to sit and enjoy a meal with her family and friends, however this grand hall full of people she barely knew was a bit much. The fakery, the frippery of it all insulted her sensibilities to their very core. The grandiose hall was modeled after the glorious summer palace in Versailles, the very height of couture and society. Twinkling tapers softly lit the entire guilted corridor with candelabras, tapestries and chandeliers glittering. All at once it was to much to behold, yet Anna drank it in like champagne.

Even more than the grand room was the grand foods! Each aristocrat had multiple gourmet courses served and each was whisked away by the Tatar attendants in coattails down to the backs of their knees once the dish had been finished. In between, Anna and the other guests had time to discourse on the favorite topics of the evening the food, the military, and their fellow aristocrats. While the nobles around her were distracted by the gossip, she wandered off to examine the sideboards full of stylish desserts. There were all of the nouveau delicacies from Paris, but as Anna continued until she found her absolute favorite, baklava. This decadent, delicate pastry was layered with honey and nuts and to add a bit of the french flair that the Russians adored so much, the whole sweet was studded with bits of melted chocolate.

As Anna finished browsing, she returned to her seat thinking only of how her son would have loved the baklava. Abruptly, she realized she had been staring down and across the table, with a young man smiling back at her. Anna shook her head to clear her thoughts and joined in the conversation with the man to her left but every time she looked up, there was the rakish grin. It’s was as hard to resist smiling back as it was to not have a piece of the baklava!

(cont.)

Read entire article, see some amazing photos and get the recipe at:  Chocolate Baklava – Anna Karenina — Let’s Taco Bout It Blog

Happy Birthday Karl von Frisch

Tags

beekeeping, birthday, famous beekeepers, honey bee behavior, Karl von Frisch, waggle dance

By (Figure design: J. Tautz and M. Kleinhenz, Beegroup Würzburg.) – Chittka L: Dances as Windows into Insect Perception. PLoS Biol 2/7/2004: e216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020216, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1374858

 

Karl Ritter von Frisch, (20 November 1886 – 12 June 1982) was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz.^[2][3]

His work centered on investigations of the sensory perceptions of the honey bee and he was one of the first to translate the meaning of the waggle dance. His theory, described in his 1927 book Aus dem Leben der Bienen (translated into English as The Dancing Bees), was disputed by other scientists and greeted with skepticism at the time. Only much later was it shown to be an accurate theoretical analysis.^[4]

The “waggle dance” is used to relay information about more distant food sources. In order to do this, the dancing bee moves forward a certain distance on the vertically hanging honeycomb in the hive, then traces a half circle to return to her starting point, whereupon the dance begins again. On the straight stretch, the bee “waggles” with her posterior. The direction of the straight stretch contains the information about the direction of the food source, the angle between the straight stretch and the vertical being precisely the angle which the direction of flight has to the position of the sun. The distance to the food source is relayed by the time taken to traverse the straight stretch, one second indicating a distance of approximately one kilometer (so the speed of the dance is inversely related to the actual distance). The other bees take in the information by keeping in close contact with the dancing bee and reconstructing its movements. They also receive information via their sense of smell about what is to be found at the food source (type of food, pollen, propolis, water) as well as its specific characteristics. The orientation functions so well that the bees can find a food source with the help of the waggle dance even if there are hindrances they must detour around like an intervening mountain.

As to a sense of hearing, Frisch could not identify this perceptive faculty, but it was assumed that vibrations could be sensed and used for communication during the waggle dance. Confirmation was later provided by Dr. Jürgen Tautz, a bee researcher at Würzburg University’s Biocenter.^[11]

Source: Wikipedia

Online Book: The Dancing Bees by Karl von Frisch

Beekeeping Vocabulary – “W” is for…

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping vocabulary, beeswax, honey bee vocabulary, honey bees

 

Processed Beeswax

Today’s beekeeping vocabulary word is, “wax.”

 

From Wikipedia (edited):

Beeswax (cera alba) is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus Apis. The wax is formed into “scales” by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, who discard it in or at the hive. The hive workers collect and use it to form cells for honey-storage and larval and pupal protection within the beehive. Chemically, beeswax consists mainly of esters of fatty acids and various long-chain alcohols.

Beeswax has long-standing applications in human food and flavoring. For example, it is used as a glazing agent, a sweetener, or as a light/heat source. It is edible, in the sense of having similar negligible toxicity to plant waxes, and is approved for food use in most countries and the European Union under the E number E901. However, the wax monoesters in beeswax are poorly hydrolysed in the guts of humans and other mammals, so they have insignificant nutritional value.^[1] Some birds, such as honeyguides, can digest beeswax. Beeswax is the main diet of Wax moth larvae.

Beeswax has a relatively low melting point range of 62 °C to 64 °C (144 °F to 147 °F). If beeswax is heated above 85 °C (185 °F) discoloration occurs. The flash point of beeswax is 204.4 °C (400 °F).^[9] Density at 15 °C is 958 kg/m³ to 970 kg/m³.

When natural beeswax is cold it is brittle, at room temperature it is tenacious, its fracture is dry and granular, it also softens at human body temperature.

Beeswax has many and varied uses. Primarily, it is used by the bees in making their honeycombs. Apart from this use by bees, the use of beeswax has become widespread and varied. Purified and bleached beeswax is used in the production of food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. The three main types of beeswax products are yellow, white, and beeswax absolute. Yellow beeswax is the crude product obtained from the honeycomb, white beeswax is bleached or filtered yellow beeswax,^[11] and beeswax absolute is yellow beeswax treated with alcohol.^[12] In food preparation, it is used as a coating for cheese; by sealing out the air, protection is given against spoilage (mold growth). Beeswax may also be used as a food additive E901, in small quantities acting as a glazing agent, which serves to prevent water loss, or used to provide surface protection for some fruits. Soft gelatin capsules and tablet coatings may also use E901. Beeswax is also a common ingredient of natural chewing gum.

Use of beeswax in skin care and cosmetics has been increasing. A German study found beeswax to be superior to similar barrier creams (usually mineral oil-based creams such as petroleum jelly), when used according to its protocol.^[13] Beeswax is used in lip balm, lip gloss, hand creams, salves, and moisturizers; and in cosmetics such as eye shadow, blush, and eye liner. Beeswax is also an important ingredient in moustache wax and hair pomades, which make hair look sleek and shiny.

Candle-making has long involved the use of beeswax, which is highly flammable, and this material traditionally was prescribed for the making of the Paschal candle or “Easter candle”. This may be because beeswax candles are often purported to be superior to other wax candles, because they are meant to burn brighter and longer, do not bend, and burn “cleaner”. ^[14]It is further recommended for the making of other candles used in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.^[15] Beeswax is also the candle constituent of choice in the Orthodox Church.^[16]

Top five beeswax producers (2012, in tonnes)
India	23 000
Ethiopia	5 000
Argentina	4 700
Turkey	4 235
Republic of Korea	3 063
World total

Beeswax is an ingredient in surgical bone wax, which is used during surgery to control bleeding from bone surfaces; shoe polish and furniture polish can both use beeswax as a component, dissolved in turpentine or sometimes blended with linseed oil or tung oil; modeling waxes can also use beeswax as a component; pure beeswax can also be used as an organic surfboard wax.^[19] Beeswax blended with pine rosin, can serve as an adhesive to attach reed plates to the structure inside a squeezebox. It can also be used to make Cutler’s resin, an adhesive used to glue handles onto cutlery knives. It is used in Eastern Europe in egg decoration; it is used for writing, via resist dyeing, on batik eggs (as in pysanky) and for making beaded eggs. Beeswax is used by percussionists to make a surface on tambourines for thumb rolls. It can also be used as a metal injection moulding binder component along with other polymeric binder materials.^[20] Beeswax was formerly used in the manufacture of phonograph cylinders. It may still be used to seal formal legal or Royal decree and academic parchments such as placing an awarding stamp imprimatur of the university upon completion of post-graduate degrees.

Source and to read more: Wikipedia

Happy Birthday Everett Franklin Phillips

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping books, beekeeping library, birthday, Everett Franklin Phillips

 

Born November 14th, 1878

Died August 21st, 1951

From The Hive and the Honey Bee Book Collection at Cornell:

In 1925, a Cornell professor of apiculture named Everett Franklin Phillips set out to create a major repository of literature on bees and beekeeping. He envisioned this library as an “accessible storehouse of our knowledge of bees and beekeeping.” By 1926, Phillips had persuaded over 223 people from twenty-nine states and twenty-six foreign countries to donate thousands of books and pamphlets, and the E.F. Phillips Beekeeping Collection at Cornell was born.

Perhaps Phillips’ biggest coup was his ingenious plan for raising the money necessary for creating the library’s endowment: he convinced hundreds of New York state beekeepers to set aside one of their hives for the library. When a hive had raised $50 from honey sales, the beekeeper’s obligation was completed.

Seventy-five years after beekeepers helped Phillips create one of the world’s finest collections of books and journals in beekeeping, a new generation of apiculturalists is leading efforts to digitize major parts of that collection. The idea for The Hive and the Honeybee emerged following the 2002 conference of the Eastern Apiculture Society, which was held on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca . In the years since then, individual beekeepers and beekeeping organizations from around the country have contributed funding to make some of the greatest works from American authors on beekeeping available via the Internet. With this generous support, collaborating staff from the University of Delaware, Mississippi State University, Mary Washington College, the Finger Lakes Beekeeping Association, and Mann Library at Cornell University launched The Hive and the Honeybee site in the spring of 2004, offering to the public the full text of ten rare books from the Phillips Collection, chosen by a team of scholars for their historical importance and usefulness to beekeepers today.

Ongoing giving by American beekeepers has continued to expand the collection, and we are proud to announce that the Hive and the Honeybee today consists of the full text of over thirty books from the Phillips library as well as the first forty volumes of a landmark American publication, the American Bee Journal, an influential English language beekeeping journal read by scholars and practicing beekeepers and still being published today.

We hope that eventually The Hive and the Honeybee will contain every major pre-1925 beekeeping work in the English language. The texts in this digital collection are fully searchable, and will also become part of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA).

How fitting E.F. Phillips would find that beekeepers are again playing a central role in realizing a major new development for the Phillips collection. And how thrilled he and his original beekeeping collaborators would be to see the internet make a storehouse of beekeeping knowledge accessible to the world today.

Mann Library would like to extend special thanks to the Eastern Apiculture Society and Mike Griggs for providing the initial inspiration and funding to create The Hive and the Honeybee online library. We are equally grateful to the many generous beekeeping associations, extension agencies, and individuals across the United States –from Florida to Maine and New York to Washington State –who have provided funding for the continued development of this digital collection.

A downloadable bookmark showing the website address for The Hive and the Honeybee collection is available for desktop printing. To make a gift toward The Hive and the Honeybee please make your check payable to Cornell University and mail to Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University , Ithaca , NY 14850 . To find out more about supporting this growing collection, please contact Eveline Ferretti, Albert R. Mann Library (tel.: (607) 254-4993; email: ef15@cornell.edu).

Digital Books Available at: http://bees.library.cornell.edu/b/bees/browse.html

E,. F. Phillips Obituary: https://academic.oup.com/jee/article-abstract/45/6/1124/2205462/Everett-Franklin-Phillips-1878-1951?redirectedFrom=PDF

Beekeeping in Central South Carolina: Mild Winters, Mites, Cotton and Soybeans by David MacFawn

Tags

beekeeping, seasons, South Carolina

The following is an article written for Bee Culture by my friend and bee buddy, Master Craftsman Beekeeper, David MacFawn. I think it gives a good analysis of the seasons and beekeeping chores we encounter throughout the year here in the Midlands of South Carolina. SassafrasBeeFarm

By David MacFawn

I had a chance to discuss beekeeping in central South Carolina with Danny Cannon, who runs about 400 colonies and is in the Lexington (Columbia – Midlands) area of South Carolina (beetrailfarm@gmail.com).

Our Winters are mild and short in central South Carolina.  Colonies typically raise brood year around, even in November and the first part of December. Last Winter (2016-2017) we really did not have any winter, except a cold spell in March. Drones typically start flying end of February to the first of March. It is the middle of August, as I am writing this article for the October magazine, cotton is toward the end of its bloom and has done well so far this year. We are monitoring the colonies for mites in August through the December time frame. If necessary, we will treat for mites as soon as the cotton honey supers are pulled in September. We have had well-spaced rain throughout the Summer. October is the month that we start our bee’s Autumn (first frost).

Winter stores (pollen mainly) need to take us through to the first of February when red maple blooms. We also typically have a pollen dearth and the resulting “dry” brood in the later part of August through the first part of September. This dearth impacts Winter brood production. The honey stores need to take us from the September/October time frame through about the first of April when the nectar flow starts. We need to watch our honey supply very closely in March (the month prior to the nectar flow) to ensure the colonies do not starve when building up for the April through June Spring nectar flow.

(cont.)

Read the full article at: Beekeeping in Central South Carolina: Mild Winters, Mites, Cotton and Soybeans | Bee Culture

Building Inexpensive Nucleus Hive Boxes and Queen Mating Nucs

Tags

beekeeping, DIY, equipment, frugal beekeeping

My plan for this coming year is to do some queen rearing. In preparation I will need mating nucs. I pondered using deep 5 frame nucs, which I have a quantity of already, but for various reasons I have decided to use medium height 5 frame nuc boxes. This plan accommodates nuc hive sales as well as queen rearing. Additionally, the medium boxes are significantly cheaper to build as described below.

Nuc boxes External dimensions:

Deep Boxes: 19 7/8″ Length X 9 5/8″ Width X 9 5/8″ Height (Comment: Different bee supply companies makes these different widths. Some as small as 9″ width. Mann Lake makes them a generous 9 5/8″ which I assume is in order to handle their frame feeder. I use this dimension as I have found that whether with or without the frame feeder it avoids crowding of the frames yet doesn’t seem to cause burr comb against the sides. This may not be true if one used frames from a different manufacturer.

Medium Boxes: 19 7/8″ Length X 9 5/8″ Width X 6 5/8″ Height

The above dimensions, both deep and medium, are different than the actual cutting of the box components due to the corner joints. I use a rabbet joint cut 3/8″ deep on the front and back pieces. Because the front and back then contribute to the side length the board on the side is cut 3/4″” smaller than the external 19 7/8″ (side length is cut is 19 1/8″).

Making Medium Boxes: My initial estimate is that I can make 11 of these boxes from a single sheet of 23/32″ sheathing plywood. at about $23-$24 per sheet of 23/32″ sheathing that comes to about $2.25 per box. Tops and bottoms will add to this cost. Total waste is approximately 9%.

Making Deep Boxes: My estimate is that I can make 6 boxes from a single sheet of 23/32″ sheathing plywood. This results in a price per box of $4. Tops and bottoms will add to this cost. The large reduction in the number of boxes that can be made vs medium boxes is a result of waste which results due to the larger dimensions. Total waste per 4′ x 8′ sheet when deep boxes are constructed from plywood is approximately 28%.

I’m using a computer program called CutList Plus which maximizes layout on the plywood. It’s a fun program and I’d encourage you to give it a spin. http://cutlistplus.com/

Before someone lectures me on use of plywood and it’s longevity, warping, and delamination characteristics please don’t. I have used this particular sheathing and found that with three proper coats of protection it holds up without delamination or warping quite well.

Drawn Comb – Taking Care of your assets

Tags

beekeeping, beeswax

This time of year we often have unexpected colony failures. Too often in reacting to the lost of the bees (and the beekeeper’s hard work) beekeepers walk away from the hive in despair thinking they’ll just have to start over next year. That’s okay, but don’t walk away too fast.

Bees can readily be replaced but comb can’t. Even if a colony fails, a spring package of bees (or a split from another hive) can be placed on last year’s comb and it’s as if the hive hardly skips a beat. If new beekeepers take care of the comb year to year they can grow the number of hives or make honey easily on that asset we call drawn comb.

So if it happens to you don’t despair. Take care of their legacy of comb and the bees will be miles ahead of the game next spring.

A Metaphysical Life by Bad Beekeeping Blog

Tags

beekeeping, birthday, Dr. Richard Taylor, famous beekeepers

Happy Birthday Richard Taylor.

Richard Taylor (November 5, 1919 – October 30, 2003), born in Charlotte, Michigan, was an American philosopher renowned for his dry wit and his contributions to metaphysics. He was also an internationally known beekeeper.

Today is the  anniversary of the birth of one of my beekeeper-heroes, Professor Richard Taylor. He was an early champion of the round comb honey system, a commercial beekeeper with just 300 hives, and he was a philosopher who wrote the book on metaphysics. Really, he wrote the book on metaphysics – for decades, his college text Metaphysics introduced first-year philosophy students to the most fundamental aspect of reality – the nature of cosmology and the existence of all things.

Although his sport of philosophy was speculative, unprovable, and abstract to the highest degree, Richard Taylor was as common and down-to-earth as it’s possible to become. I will write about his philosophy and how it shaped his politics, but first, let’s celebrate his beekeeping.

Read the complete article at: A Metaphysical Life — Bad Beekeeping Blog

Telling the Bees

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping customs, beekeeping history, beekeeping lore, customs, death, funeral, Halloween, John Greenleaf Whittier, poetry, telling the bees

Charles Napier Hemy (1841-1917) – Telling the Bees

Telling the Bees

The telling of the bees is a traditional English custom, in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper’s lives, such as births, marriages, or departures and returns in the household. The bees were most commonly told of deaths in their master’s family.

To inform the bees of a death their hive might be hung with a black cloth, while a “doleful tune” is sung. Another method of “telling the bees” would be for their master to approach the hive and knock gently upon it. The house key might also be used to knock on the hive. When the master of the house had the attention of the bees they would tell the bees the name of the person that had died.

Food and drink from a beekeeper’s funeral would also be left by the hive for the bees, including the funeral biscuits and wine. The hive would also be lifted a few inches and put down again at the same time as the coffin. The hive might also be rotated to face the funeral procession, and draped with mourning cloth.

A section from John Greenleaf Whittier‘s poem “Home Ballads” describes the practice:

Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back
Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened; the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!

“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

Source and to read more: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telling_the_bees

Video animation of John Greenleaf Whittier via YouTube posted by poetryreincarnations

Video of Holland beekeeper telling the bees via Youtube posted by Historical Honeybee Articles