2011-04-26: Lessons Learned

Last Sunday being Easter I was at my parents so I quickly checked on the bees. They were flying even though it was cool... not sure what they were gathering.

Yesterday a friend picked up my BetterBee order for me and my foundation and pollen patties for this year are now in my car's trunk. Unfortunately, BB was not able to supply me with deep boxes and frames. I am planning on getting those from Northwoods Apiary instead in a few weeks when I am going there to pick up a nuc.

As part of the grant that encouraged me to try beekeeping, I was asked to submit the "5 Things that I have learned" in my first year as a beekeeper. I have included them here:

1) Always have spares. Several times I had to juggle things since I didn't have a few extra items. Case in point was when I ordered only enough frames and foundations to start my hives and ending up being short since I decided not to use the drone frame right off.

2) Organization saves time. I can easily spend more time running around getting my stuff together than actually with the hive.

3) Patience. Its easy to convince myself that I have a new emergency at each inspection. Most of the time the bees work it out on their own with little or no manipulation.

4) Don't over commit. I have many things I would like to try with my bees, top bar hives for instance, but not enough time to do them all. I have had to put off some projects to the future so that I can focus on the things that must happen this year (keep the first hive healthy so we can get surplus honey in the fall and to replace the 2nd hive) and a few manageable extras (start a third hive, try my hand at overwintering a double queen nuc, and possibly keep a few bees at a second site to make a neighboring farmer happy).

5) Have fun. Its a hobby. If I get too stressed by it its no longer fun and there are many other ways to not make money that don't involve tens of thousands of stinging insects.

2011-04-09: Swapping Boxes

With a window in the weather just warm enough to manipulate the hive, I decided that I would remove the bottom box (out of three) and swap the middle and top boxes in the traditional manner to convince the bees that they have plenty of room and thus don't need to swarm. So I suited up (been a while since I had to do that!) and got to it. Well, before I could do that I actually had to play the old game of finding fuel. I though that there would be coffee bean bags at my parents since I left some there... but they were AWOL. I thought I had a bag in my car.. nope... So I used straw to fuel the smoker. After that diversion I got to work on the hive. I took off the feeder that I had put on top... about one third drained... not as much as I would have hoped for, but oh well. Then I started shifting the boxes around. The bottom box was almost completely empty of bees, though I did fince a few square inches of capped honey that they had missed. I placed it next to the hive on a stand in hopes that the bees could rob it out. The top two boxes had been put to one side and I tried to put them back together. The bees were getting anxious and the boxes were surprisingly heavy, at this time I decided to puff some smoke which I had been avoiding since I didn't want to disturb the hive too much in the cold weather. And, you guessed it, the smoker was out.

I hate straw.

But I managed to get the boxes back together and vacate the yard with only a moderate amount of headbutting bees.

 

 

 

Afterwards I walked around and took pictures of the crocuses that were in bloom. Several of them had busy bees in them, this might explain the orange pollen I saw some of the bees returning with. I had also spotted dark brown material being brought back and I think I found the answer for that after spotting several bees busy on the coffee grounds on my parent's compost pile. *Insert Bees Getting a Buzz joke here*

 

2011-03-28: Big Feed

After having so much trouble with the feeder spilling syrup, I decided to try to make my own out of a pickle jar and some wood. I simply drilled some holes in the lid, and made a stand to hold it upside down with some bee space underneath. I filled it with syrup (with a little HbH) and brought it to the hive. When I opened the hive I could actually make out where the bees had been eating away at the fondant directly above the inner cover hole.. it looked a little like the effect of a squirt of spray paint on Styrofoam. I placed in the feeder and shuffled the various supers to make enough room to put the cover back on. I then tied it all down while hoping that it was not too top heavy.