The Little Bee Blog

Making Increase

In pursuit of my goal to get to ten hives, I’ve added some friends to my apiary! Since I last wrote I’ve caught another swarm, created a split from a hive, and purchased one additional colony. So, if anyone is keeping track, that puts me up to six hives! Woohoo!

To make my split I took three frames of eggs, a frame of pollen, and a frame of honey and placed them in a small nucleus box, which is just a small hive. To the box I also added a mated queen which I purchased from a local queen rearer. (PS: Did you know a queen bee costs 30 dollars?? For one little bee!)

My second swarm catch was smaller than the first, but still a decent sized colony. It was also a much easier. They were hanging from a branch about three feet off the ground. I snipped the branch, set it on top of my box which was filled with 4 frames of foundation and 1 frame of honey, and let them bee. I came back that night, after all the adventuring bees had returned home for the evening and sealed the box up to take to my apiary.

So, as you can see, my apiary is starting to get pretty full! I’ve already decided that next year I’ll start a second location. Things in my backyard are starting to get a little crazy! Ha ha.

Honey Harvest

One of my hives, the hive on the far right in the picture above, is really starting to bring in honey! So much honey, in fact, that thery’ve begun to fill the egg laying area with it. This isn’t really a good thing, because it reduces the amount of egg laying the queen can do, which generally leads to swarming. In order to alleviate the pressure, I harvested a super (that’s one of the smaller boxes on the top of the hive) of honey off the top! This way, they can start filling the empty super back up, instead of putting it in the egg laying area.

To be more precise, I harvested 8 super frames and one deep frame. Sadly, I was so excited I failed to take hardly any pictures. Here’s the only one I took.

From these frames I got 22 pints of honey! 

Which is good, because at the moment I have more bees than I have equipment! So I really need to purchase more wooden boxes. As some of you know, though, I’m getting married in 58 days (yay!) and I’m also paying for engineering school. So money is tight. This 22 pints of honey will give me a little extra income to buy more homes for my girls!

One thing I’ve learned from bees is that you do things on their schedule, not yours. Let’s just say that this week the bees had a very busy schedule. 

May 7th

First, I did normal inspections. Looks like one of my colonies who I previously wasn’t impressed with, has begun to take off. Last inspection, about a week ago, the queen was sitting on 2 frames of brood. This week, she’s expanded to about five. Great news! I’m still considering requeening the colony, since it failed to expand and produce last year.

My other colony that upon last inspection was on eight frames of brood was just as vigorous. I went ahead and split 1 nucleus colony off of this hive. That means I took 3 frames of brood, a frame of honey, and a frame of pollen, and created a mini-hive. To this nucleus, I also added a mated queen from a local supplier for $30. (Can you believe one tiny bee costs thirty dollars?!) Here’s hoping it takes off! Here’s what a nucleus colony looks like:

May 9th, 10th

I got a call from a friend of mine who said her neighbor’s tree had a giant ball of bees in it! Man, I was excited! Sadly, I was a half hour from my house and had none of my beekeeping equipment with me! While swarms a great resource, they can be difficult to catch. This is because they often move around in search of a new home. So if you find one, you have to be prepared to catch it.

So I called up a beekeeper friend of mine to see if I could borrow some equipment, since he was nearby. Turns out, I was catching his bees! One of his colonies just recently swarmed. Thankfully, he said I could keep them if I could catch them.

Here’s the swarm I arrived to:

After two tries, I was able to catch them. Boy are they big! I think if all goes well they should produce a nice honey crop.

So, if anyone is counting, I’m up to four colonies - halfway to my goal of ten!

One of my goals this season is to keep better records. And by better records I really mean any records at all. Because I haven’t. 

In an effort to do this, I created my own inspection sheet that I’ll take to the apiary every inspection! You can find it here.

Hey everyone! Life has been a tad busy lately, so I apologize for the delay in posting. Much has happened in my little bee world, so let’s get started!

Swarm traps

Over the winter I worked to build some swarm traps to hang in the spring. This was the biggest carpentry project I’ve taken on and they turned out.... Decent. I’m probably the worst carpenter you’ve ever met, so none of these boxes are square and some have some nasty sharp edges. They’re meant to hold five deep frames, but because they’re not square some only fit four! Here’s a picture of the traps before I put on the metal roof.

And no, the chicken was not particularly helpful.

I’ve made seven total and I’m hoping for a fifty percent success rate. Which means during the spring I should increase my hive count by about four. I’m hanging these traps around my area, focusing on large wooded areas.

I also hung one trap on a tree near my own apiary, in hopes that it would catch any of my bees, if they choose to swarm.

If anyone is curious, I found the plans for the traps at Horizontal Hives.

School speaking

As many of my friends and family know, I really really love talking about bees. If you get me started, it’s hard for me to stop. One thing I love to do is speak to groups and schools interested in the topic. 

Recently I spoke to two different elementary schools and got a great response. The kids, and especially the teachers, were mesmerized by the biology of the honeybee colony. There is a reason the European Honeybee is known as a super organism.

If any of anyone who knows me is ever interested in having me speak, please reach out!

Hive report

Me being the anal beekeeper that I am, I’ve already checked my colonies three times since coming out of winter.

There’s not much new to report on the colonies. Both are doing well. Both are currently receiving pollen patties to stimulate brood development. My plan is to get the colonies as big as possible as soon as possible so I can split them before the main Spring honey flow.

One colony, however, is definitely growing at a much slower rate than the other. Because of this, I plan to requeen it as soon as local queens become available. Much of the colony’s behavior is determined by the queen, and simply replacing her with a new one can render very drastic results. I’ll keep you guys posted on how this develops.

Finally my schedule and the weather aligned and I was able to do an inspection! Better yet, my wonderful fiancee was there to help! So, thanks to her, this post comes with some great pictures.

We started our inspection by removing the emergency sugar supply that I put on top of the hives at the beginning of winter. I use the mountain camp method, whereby you pile dry, granulated sugar on top of the hive using newspaper as support. This gives the bees an emergency food supply if there honey runs out and acts as a moisture control by drying out the condensation inside the hive. Typically, moisture kills bees, not cold.

After removing all the sugar I finally got to see how my queens are doing. And I’m proud to say they’re laying like crazy! Which means the pollen supplements I’ve been adding to the hives are working. Here’s a picture of the brood nest, in the middle left of the photo you can see her royal highness.

As you can see, she’s started a pretty good laying pattern, meaning there’s not many empty cells. I hope to see these frames fill out even more as the weather gets warmer.

After checking for eggs and ensuring our hives were queenright, we moved on to a sugar shake test for mites. This is part of my New Years Resolutions - Developing a mite treatment plan. I wanted to see how high my mite levels were, to see if I needed to do a spring treatment of Oxalic Acid Vapor.

Instead of explaining the process of a sugar shake, I’ll let you watch this great video that my bride-to-be made.

Pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, the threshold for treatment on the sugar shake test is four mites, I only counted two, so I’m going to forgo a Spring treatment, but I plan to do another check sometime in the summer.

The last order of business was to clean up my two winter deadouts, and the bottom boards of the two live hives. Over the winter, a lot of bees will perish. This is completely natural, but if you don’t clean up the mess come Spring, you can invite all kinds of pests and it makes for a smelly hive. The bottom boards are the worst part as they collect all kinds of dead bees, sugar, newspaper bits, and who knows what else. Here’s a picture:

Anyway, I think that’s enough of my rambling for today. I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll leave you with this joke:

What do you call bees that dress up as ghosts for Halloween?

----- Boo-bees.

I imagine they look something like this:

Winter Review

Now that the weather has begun to warm up we’ve reached the most anticipated moment for any beekeeper - The first spring check. Our winter here in Southern IL was particularly harsh, so most beekeepers have checked their hives holding their breath, and with low expectations. Harsh winters generally mean only the strongest of the hives survive.

I went into with 4 hives and after my check I have ...... * drum roll please* ..... 2 hives! I’m actually surprised by this number, and am happy to see plenty of bees and plenty more stores on the two survivors.

The two that perished were hit with a large varroa mite load in the late fall, which caused their population to drop and I don’t think they had enough bees to maintain warmth during the winter. 

So two out of four colonies. I’ll take it.

Now, on to my beekeeping new year’s resolutions:

1. Maintain this blog better

I really want to get better about writing these little updates. It benefits me by helping look back at the progress my colonies and myself are making. Plus I always get great feedback from friends and family who are interested.

2. Bees bees and more bees!

My goal is to enter into next winter with 10 colonies. First, I plan to split my 2 winter survivors, giving me 4. I’ve also created seven swarm traps ( more on those in a later blog) which I hope to catch an additional three or four colonies. Finally, I’ll invest my honey sales back into the bees and purchase a colony or two. Thus, ten colonies going into winter.

3. Varroa management

I have got to find a system for dealing with varroa. Clearly they’re going to be an ongoing issue. Currently, they’re the worst pest that beekeepers deal with, and they’re the hardest to find treatment for. Last year I experimented with Oxalic Acid Vapor. This year I’d like to continue that and come up with a treatment plan. More on this to come.

So there you have it. The conclusion to my second year of beekeeping, and the anticipation of my third. Every year I learn more and more and every year these bees fascinate me.

Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?

Hopefully it’s good, because I don’t have time to write the same post two different ways. Ha ha.

The good news is that my queen is doing great! She’s been laying like crazy and I even spotted her during the inspection. (I promise I’ll soon come up with a way to take pictures as I do my inspection). She seemed very healthy and was consistently laying eggs. 

The hive has also started to draw out a lot of new comb. This is good news because with new comb comes more space for more bees and, hopefully, lots of honey! 

The hive continues to be fairly docile and, as long as I take slow, deliberate movements, they tolerate my presence intrusion in their home. Think about it- Would you appreciate it if every two weeks a giant ripped your house apart and accidentally squashed your sisters occasionally? I wouldn’t either. I appreciate that they tolerate me.

Here’s the bad news: Varroa Mites.

It appears that they’re becoming worse. I’ve noticed them on more of my bees and the drone eggs( that’s the male bees) are becoming infected as well. Varroa live in drone eggs particularly because drone eggs are bigger and take a little longer to grow, giving the varroa more time to eat the poor bee egg while it’s still trying to grow.

There is no proven cure for varroa mites. There’s various chemicals which some beekeepers swear by, but others swear against. I do my best to avoid chemicals, but in this situation, I have no idea how to respond. I’ll be talking with my beekeeping mentor about this one.

In addition to the good and bad, there’s also an oddity...

This was my second full inspection of the hive since winter and things seem to be going well!

The honey stores in the super (that’s the smaller box on the top of the hive) are pretty much gone, and honey in the deeps is on about 3 frames. This is all normal as the bees are coming out of winter and most of their honey has been consumed during the cold season.

The unseasonably warm weather has given my bees a bad case of Spring fever, which I can totally relate to. Since last inspection, the queen has doubled her egg count, having approximately five frames total of eggs. This is great news as the more bees we get the more honey that can be made!

Generally, the rule of thumb for beekeeping is that a first year hive rarely produces enough honey that the beekeeper can have some- All that they produce during the first year should be left for the bees to survive winter. After the first year, however, the colony is more established, has greater number of bees, and has more comb in which to store nectar, thus, the second year is when the beekeeper should get honey!

I’m pretty sure I’ve already “sold” more honey than I’m going to make. You’d be surprised how many people spring at the chance to get raw, local honey! I’m not into beekeeping to make money, but I am looking forward to recouping some of my initial investment costs this season. Beekeeping can be expensive! Those seriously considering beekeeping should think about building some of their own equipment, as it considerably cuts costs.

In other news, the bees are bringing great numbers of pollen! The beautiful colors of pollen in the hive is probably one of my favorite sights. Here’s a picture of a typical Spring pollen collection in a hive:

Photo Credit: http://www.thebartlettbeewhisperer.com

Isn’t that beautiful! All of those different colors come from the various flora that the bees encounter. My hive was filled with a beautiful purple-red pollen as well.

The bees use the pollen to make a substance we call “bee bread”. Bee bread is a mixture of pollen, a drop of honey, and some digestive juices. They feed this food to all of their newborn babies. So having lots of bee bread on hand is a good thing when our colony wants to make lots of babies!

I’m very excited to see how this colony continues to advance in Spring! As long as the weather stays favorable we should see a great Spring honey harvest. 

The following is just some data I’m going to use to track my colony, you can ignore it if you want.

Beetle Count: 2

Varroa: 3

Eggs: Approx. 5 frames

My first full inspection for the new year! If you missed my recap of the previous year, you can read it here:

 https://thelittlebeeblog.tumblr.com/post/157994711009/catching-you-up-the-first-post

I’d say this inspection could not have gone any better!

The honey super (that’s the top box where the bees store most of their honey), was almost completely empty. This is normal as they probably ate most of that honey during the winter in order to survive. I went ahead and left the super on, and added a queen excluder to it. A queen excluder is a special mesh placed between two boxes that allows only worker bees and not the queen to pass through. This is used to prevent the queen from getting into the honey super and laying eggs. No one likes baby bees mixed into their honey, am I right?

The bottom two deep boxes, also called brood boxes, is where the queen lays her eggs, and where most of the colony resides. These boxes were in perfect condition! The queen has already started to lay eggs, and I even witnessed some hatching! Yay new baby bees!

During the inspection I only found one small hive beetle. This is great because during the fall of last year I counted about thirty at their peak. Small hive beetles are a common pest in the hive. They lay their eggs in the beeswax. Once the beetle eggs hatch the larvae poop all over the honey, which, if the beetles are in big enough quantities, will cause the honey to ferment. Fermented honey is completely useless to bees or humans. In a good and strong colony of bees, the bees will corral the beetles into a corner and kill them, and clean up any poop they may leave behind.

In addition, I spotted a couple signs of varroa mites. I saw one hitching a ride on one of the bees, and I saw a couple of what appeared to be dead bee larvae. I’ll spare you the details of how varroa function, because I’m not sure I completely understand it, but I know it’s complicated. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for more signs of the mite.

All in all, the first inspection went terrific. The colony is healthy and strong. The queen is already laying, and I’ve seen bees carrying pollen into the hive to feed the new babies. I’m excited to see what the rest of the spring brings for me and my bees!

Here’s a great little graph that may help you familiarize yourself with a bee hive:

The following is just some data I’m going to use to track my colony, you can ignore it if you want.

Beetle Count: 1

Varroa: None-Low

Eggs: Approx. 1.5 frames

Welcome to the first post of the blog!

Let me catch you up on what’s happened so far…

I’ve officially finished my first year of beekeeping and boy have I learned a lot! I apprenticed under a good  friend of mine who’s been beekeeping for quite a long time. He showed me the ropes, and helped me acquire two colonies! (Colony is just a fancy term for a big family of bees) One colony was purchased as a nucleus from an apiary in Georgia, the other hive was removed from a local church’s attic and given a great new home in my backyard. Here’s a picture of my colonies. The left one is the one from the church and the right one is the one from Georgia:

During the spring sumner, and fall of 2016 I nurtured and nervously took care of these two colonies. I felt like a father with his first baby boy! I dealt with small hive beetles, robber bees, and nectar dearths. Going into the winter of 2016 I was nervous. My native colony was strong and large, with a small hive beetle problem. The colony from Georgia however, was still pretty small and didn't have much in the way of stored honey. (Bees need a good honey supply to eat during the winter, or else they’ll starve). Like every good beekeeper, I prepared both the colonies by placing about a pound of raw granulated sugar inside the hive as emergency food.

After the worst of the winter had passed, I opened up my hives to discover some sad news. The colony from Georgia did not survive the winter. I did an autopsy of the colony and discovered it wasn’t from lack of food, as they still had plenty in the hive. So I believe they died because they weren’t big enough to produce enough heat during the cold winter.

The good news, however, is that the local colony is doing great! 

Usually most first-year beekeepers lose their colonies due to inexperience and poor management. So the fact that one of my colonies survived is great news. (Especially since a colony of bees sells for ~$100)