Father's Day is not a big deal for bees

Showers kept sweeping through the area so I did not open the hives up for an inspection since the hives would be packed with would be foragers and they would no doubt be in a grumpy mood. Instead I restricted my activities to counting returning foragers (13/min for Juno, 9/min for Artemis) and taking a few pictures.

The hives are located inside an old cellar hole. While the East and South walls have fallen away, the North and West are still present and they will hopefully provide shelter during the winter. The following picture shows Juno with the North wall behind it and the top of my parent's barn visible beyond.


The following is a picture of a visitor that I noticed in the fields all morning:


In other news. While up at my parent's, I did stop and talk with a local farmer who is very interested in having some hives located at his property. While I will very likely be unable to start any new hives until next spring, this is a very exciting possibility.

June 13th Inspection

I went to my parent's today to check on the bees and take my mother to a birthday tea. I went over to see what the bees were up to and was impressed at the activity in front of each hive. I then felt a sharp pain on the top of my head and thought that I might of been stung by a rouge bee. Afterwords though I decided that it was probably not a bee as there was no stinger, and instead it was probably a deer fly since they were out in force all day long.

I used a weed wacker to improve on the path to get across to the hives, though I didn't actually wack the grass near the hives themselves. Next time I will do a more thorough job, perhaps with a scythe.

In the afternoon I opened up the hives with my sister getting her first look at the gals. In both hives, there were some bees in the top box, however, in Juno a comb was being built in between frames (since there was extra space since I did not put in the drone frame last time). Artemis had a few smaller combs being built up in the in between frame space. I felt I had to remove the combs otherwise they would bind up the frames forever. Unfortunately, this killed a dozen or so larvae. But better now then when the entire comb has larvae. Added the drone frames (off to one side) to take up space to each hive until I can assemble the two deep frames that they need. Or, if I do a mite check later and find some I might leave them in there. Speaking of which, next time I work with the bees I should do a sugar dusting. The top of the bottom boxes had many bees. Cleaned off comb from the top of the frames. I peeked at the frames in the far side away from the nuc frames and they did not seem to be touched yet. I may have to continue sliding frames over. I seem to remember Russ mentioning something about that.

The pupae were a good sign that the queen is laying well.

I need to arrange the space around the hives better. There are a lot of flat rocks that I step on to get around back of the hives that wobble precariously. Also, a table of some sort, be it cinder blocks or stacked rocks, would be very useful for placing items on while working. I am constantly putting something down only to have to scramble to find it again, all the while the smoker is burning through its fuel.

I am starting to think that if things go well this year *crosses fingers* and I think that I will have the time, I may expand the apiary. Possibly by adding a third hive at my parents. But also perhaps finding alternative locations. My friend MB has expressed the desire for me to keep bees at his place in Fairfax. Also, I might try to work something out with farmers that are near either my parent's or MB. If I could have a loop to hit each hive in turn it might be too difficult. I am also strongly considering giving top bar hives a whirl. Especially if I can find a way to sell comb honey.


This is Juno hive:



This is Artemis hive:



This is the rouge comb in Juno hive.

Bees of the 21st and half century!

I have been playing around with the beetight online hive recording system recently. It was recommended by the VBA... well, by recommended I mean that it was a solitary bullet point in their last email. So far I am very impressed. It was very easy to set up the account and hives. I back filled inspection reports for the hives and already it can present very useful information at a glance. So I decided to take the plunge and upgrade to the pro version ($15/month) since there are some promised pro-only features that I would like, such as 'offline mobile apps' which I assume means something that I can put on my PDA so I can fill out the inspection reports and then synch to have it all go into the system. Also, I feel that it is important to support software developers when you use their software, especially when its so cheep.

If I had a smart phone I could in theory use their online app to enter my inspection information in the field.... but even if I did feel like spending that kind of cash, my parents life in a cellular challenged area so I probably wouldn't be able to use those features.

Now I am eagerly awaiting my account to be upgraded so I can play with whatever new features they have available.

Raspberry Activity

Taking a break from piling soil around my potatoes, I watched the bumble and honey bees working my raspberry patch. Everywhere I looked I could see a half dozen or so bees busily visiting the rather non-descript flowers. Evidently, they made up for in nectar what they lacked in show. At one moment I did see one bee (slimmer than a honey bee... possibly a mason?) carefully grooming itself on a flower. It had the same self contemplative air of a woman brushing her hair while lost in thought.

While these were certainly not my family's bees as I live a distance from where my family's hives are, I did enjoy seeing their enthusiasm, especially on a gloomy overcast day. Also, it got me thinking more of how a raspberry patch near the hives might be a good thing.

Yesterday I noticed the bees working the asparagus. They seemed to have gotten a great deal of orange pollen from those profuse but diminutive flowers.

I plan on assembling frames tonight and visiting the hives tomorrow.

Introduction

While most of the activity on this blog will be routine journal posts and record keeping of my family's hobby apiary, I thought it would be a good to give some background to anyone else who stumbles across this blog.

For many years, my mother, my sister, and myself have been interested in raising bees. We had read books, gotten some equipment, and my sister had even attended a class. But, we never managed to bite the bullet and actually order some bees in all that time.

Last Fall, the State of Vermont made a grant program to encourage first time bee keepers. The news reached me via a Twitter post on the State's Twitter feed. After a quick phone call to my family, we had decided to try to take advantage of it and take the plunge. So, a few moments later I had sent off our application and, some time later, we found out that we were selected to participate in the program.

I then took a introduction to bee keeping class, it was required by the grant and no doubt a good idea anyways, with Bill Mares and Russ Aceto. It was informative, but I felt that the information would not sink in until I was actually working with the bees.

In early February, we placed our order for two 'nucs' with Carniolan queens. While waiting we had to prepare to receive our royal guests in May.

The site of the hives had already been decided as a old cellar hole next to my parent's house. It had the advantage of being protected on the North and West sides by the former walls of the cellar, but open on the East and South. The reason to site it at my parent's house rather than at either my sister's or my own was that my sister's is surrounded by forest and would likely have trouble with bears and I lived in the middle of of a city and it seemed wise not to experiment with bees near so many people.

We had to make a decision whether to buy all new equipment or make use of the used equipment (several hive bodies and shallow supers) that my mother and sister had stumbled across. In the end, we decided to use the used equipment to keep our costs down. Hopefully that decision wont sting us later *crosses fingers*. My mother and I also made trip to a supplier in Roxbury, Vermont to pick up the frames, foundation, suit, and other equipment we would need immediately when the nucs arrived. Additional frames, foundation, and supers would be picked up when I got the bees from Better Bee.

In late April, I noticed on the Better Bee website that they had posted a warning that due to adverse weather in the South, bee orders might be delayed. So, I told my family that the bees would likely not be coming early May as expected. However, in the evening of Friday, May 14th I got a call that there were two nucs with my name on them if I wanted to pick them up the next morning between 6:30 and 7:30 at Better Bee in Greenwich, NY. I hesitated for a moment since the timing was awkward, but since I had no guarantee that the next time would not be in the middle of the week I decided to go for it. So, I made the 2.5 hour trip down, got the bees and also managed to forget to actually pick up the remaining equipment that we needed, and drove the 3 hours back to my parent's place. Aftersome scrambling, the bees were made welcome to their new homes.

The next weekend I checked up on them and gave them a confectionary sugar dusting. More to test out the process than anything else. I then made contact with a beekeeper near my parent's who was willing to be a mentor. He also sugested that I plan on adding the second hive body to each hive as soon as possible. So, the weekend after that I added the additional hive bodies. One was a patched body, the other was a home made one that will likely be replaced when I can get more bodies, they were on back order. The bees had not expanded much beyond half of the combs in the first hive bodies, but since the season seemed to be getting off to a fast start (it had been a very warm May) and my wife and I would be out of state the next weekend, I decided it was best not to risk the bees swarming by not adding the new hive bodies.

The out of state trip that my wife and I took allowed us to stop at Better Bee, where I picked up most of the remaining items that we needed.

As I write this I am planning on visiting the bees this weekend as I visit my mother for her Birth Day. I suspect that the bees might be sullen as it is supposed to be a showery weekend.

In the future I will post my hive maintenance notes as work with the bees, as well as back post my notes from my earlier visits that I mentioned above.

I also hope that my co-apiarists will post as well in order to facilitate and document our communications regarding the hives.