Moving a Bee Hive

A few days before hand, I'd transfered my 'super nuc' into it's own new hive (I'm trying a traditional 10 frame this time), and put Tanya's nuc into her own hive (that I'd borrowed to create my super nuc). We had successfully raised (or rather the bees had) a laying queen that looks great (nice and big, like a date!), and now it was time to transfer the hive to it's new home just a 7 minute drive away. Tanya looked online and said that the info on moving a hive was rather limited, so I'll at least tell you what we did!

My brother, Scott is very handy-dandy so I trusted completely what he came up with. 

First: He used packing tape to tape up the cracks between each box. 

Second: He used strapping to hold the entire hive together.

Third: Since our drive was only 7 minutes, we stuffed the entrance hole with playdough. Generally, you are supposed to use some type of screening that I guess you'd nail or staple in place. But playdough seemed so simple and easy. Scott taped the playdough in place for good measure.

Fourth: Scott and Victor carried the hive to the car. I'm the type of beekeeper that gets fully dressed to do anything related to my hives. I have no pride about not wanting beestings. So, to see them do all of this without anything makes my skin crawl. When the TRANSFER event approached, I decided that this was a man-job. Sorry ladies. Having never done this, I was happy to have the men take over.

They plunked the hive into the back. As you can see, Tanya put up a quilt for good measure ... but I don't think a bee could get out of that Fort Knox if they wanted to!

Proud new beekeeper!

Carrying the bees to their new home.

Setting her down.

Now ... to unlock Fort Knox.

Success!!

Honey Lemonade and the Apiary

Honey Lemonade

My bee-friend Sarah introduced me to honey lemonade. Yum. So of course I've been experimenting. Here are a few versions I love:

Honey Mint Lemonade: 1 Cup honey mixed with 1 cup HOT water from the faucet, Juice of 3-4 lemons, 4 Cups cold water, 2 large sprigs mint, ICE. (Crush the mint and strain for a mintier flavor)

Honey Lavender Lemonade: 1 Cup honey mixed with 1 Cup water -- heat over the stove until hot, then throw in a large handful of lavender flowers into the pot. Remove from heat, cover and steep for 15 minutes. Juice of 3 lemons mixed with 4 Cups water. Pour steeped lavender/honey mixture through a strainer into the lemon/water mixture. Add ICE. Enjoy!!

Meanwhile, speaking of HONEY, there has been a lot of activity in what I might officially call my apiary. As I'd mentioned previously, my sister-in-law Tanya was interested in becoming a beekeeper herself. My hives seemed strong enough to split, so we did. I took 3 frames from one of my hives, and 2 from the other and created for Tanya a "nuc". Through this process, the bees will notice they are living without a queen and go about raising their own from fresh eggs on the frames in the nuc. (See previous entry for a lengthy description.) 

A week later, my bee mentor Diane came over to inspect my hives with me to see how they were doing. I wanted some more experienced eyes to take a look. "WOW!" she said "There are a LOT of bees in here! These are two very strong hives. You need to split again or you will get a swarm." Alrighty. I didn't have supplies for THAT!! Diane really thought I needed to take more than just 5 total frames out of both hives to have any impact. I needed to create either two nucs, or one SUPER nuc. So that's what we did. 

The next day Tanya was good enough to loan me her hive-in-waiting (while the nuc we'd just made the week before was incubating) to use for the super nuc, AND to help me dig into my poor hives AGAIN to create another nuc. 

It was a bee-bonanza. The bees weren't thrilled with being bothered yet again, but a beekeeper's gotta do what a beekeeper's gotta do. We took both of those hives all apart looking for all of the essential ingredients that go into a nuc -- then of course, ya gotta put everything back together with bees flying everywhere. Just stay focused on the task at hand and ignore the beezillion bees zipping around you and bouncing off your veil. 

We did it.

(This photo was taken just under a month ago after successfully creating our two nucs.)

Splitting a Beehive

Today was a big day. My hives managed to make it through the winter and thrive this spring. My sister-in-law, Tanya has been interested in becoming a beekeeper herself after moving to 'the country' -- so I offered to give her a split from my two hives. And, today was THE DAY.

To 'split' a hive you are basically taking a total of five frames representing all stages of life of the brood, honey and pollen and creating a mini hive. Some people put these frames right into a regularly sized brood box, however other people (including one of the main teachers in my bee club) believes it's best to create a nuc, which is a mini hive of only five frames. It's easier for the young bees to manage -- to keep warm (as splits are typically done in the springtime) -- and defend. Here is a detailed explanation of what we did. Keep in mind, I am learning and have only been a bee keeper for one year. This was my first split. 

What you need:

One nuc -- the same height as the height of the brood box you will be splitting (aka: the parent hive).

A method of feeding your nuc, which may require a shim, or additional box on top of your nuc.

Sugar syrup ready to feed your nuc.

5 extra frames (and foundation) that fit the parent hive brood box.

An extra (empty) brood box. (I didn't have one of these so I used two honey supers stacked on top of each other, this seemed to work fine.)

A queen excluder

A bee brush

A place to put your nuc. If it is going to be the permanent location of the new hive, have the permanent stand set up to use for your nuc.

All of your regular bee equipment ... bee veil, smoker, tool, etc.

I ordered my nuc from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. It comes in pieces.

This type of 'crafty' is a bit of a push for me . . . but I did it.

I did it! Here it is glued and hammered together.

A coat of primer and white paint.

Okay, we are ready!! Tanya poses in front of the temporary home for her new bees!

I put WAY too many honey supers on my right hive in an effort to be sure the queen felt like she had plenty of room, and therefore wouldn't SWARM!

Here I am beginning the inspection of the left hive. Behind me is the year old raspberry patch.

The first thing we did was go through the two brood boxes in each hive to see if any queen cells (aka: SWARM cells) had been built. What I've heard, is that if queen cells have been created (or started) -- but not hatched -- the queen has already set her mind on swarming and its best to go ahead and put the queen from the parent hive into the nuc. This way, the queen thinks that she's swarmed, and the bees from the parent hive will go ahead and care for and birth the queen cells already in their hive. 

If all is well, and there are no queen cells in the hive this is what you need to do:

Choose from the parent hive (I took frames from both hives to lessen the impact on the hives):

1 Frame of honey/nectar

Be sure there is a significant amount of pollen in some of the other frames:

2 Frames of open brood

1 Frame of capped brood

1 Frame with fresh eggs

Once you've identified a frame for your nuc, make sure the queen isn't on it then, shake the bees off the frame in one big motion (or two) then brush off the remaining bees and put the frame into the extra (empty) brood box. Replace the frame from the parent hive with one of the extra (empty) frames -- these are best put on to the ends of your brood box. 

Repeat the above process until you have all five frames chosen, de-beed and put into the extra brood box. Then, put the queen excluder on top of the parent hive, put the extra brood box with the 5 selected frames in it, on top of the queen excluder. Put the inner and outer covers on and leave it for an hour or so.

What's happening? 

First, young nurse bees care for brood. By shaking off all of the other bees, isolating the frames, then putting the queen excluder under the nuc-to-be frames -- over the next hour, the nurse bees will naturally come up to care for the brood there, and importantly the queen from the parent hive doesn't travel up into the nuc to-be. These nurse bees, sensing that they have no queen, will create special queen cells around some of the fresh eggs and begin feeding them royal jelly to make a queen for their hive. QUITE amazing. 

After the hour has passed, remove each frame (which should now have nurse bees crawling all over them) and slide them into your nuc one by one. Put the frame with the fresh eggs in the middle, the frames with honey / nectar / pollen on the outside edges. Don't forget to put your feed on the nuc. Any foragers that made it into the nuc will naturally go back to their original hive. Nurse bees haven't ever left the hive before, so they will stay where they've been put. That said, there won't be any bees in the hive old enough to forage and feed the hive for a few weeks. Button up the nuc, and in 21 days you can open it up and hopefully see that you have a new queen! At this time you can put all of these frames / bees into a new permanent hive.

As I was inspecting the left hive (and searching for two frames to add to the nuc) the right hive already has the queen excluder and extra brood box with three 'chosen' frames (shaken & brushed) on top of the parent hive ... that's why it looks SO tall. I had put on an extra (two total) honey super to discourage swarming. Perhaps it DID help (as silly as it looks) because what I found when I went into the left hive is that it had already swarmed! It has been particularly nasty so I haven't been able to inspect it well -- and that explains it. A hive without their queen can be persnickety! They still weren't thrilled by my presence so I kept it brief -- pulled two frames and buttoned her up. Hopefully as the new queen (which I didn't see) gets established things will settle down. Otherwise, I may have to consider re-queening. Sometimes you just have a crabby one. Because they had already swarmed I only did the queen excluder routine on the right hive. 

What actually happened with my hives? Well, the one hive I'd put 

Bee Debacle

It has been unseasonably warm here for a few days. On Monday when I pulled in the driveway after dropping the boys off at school, what did I see? My bees were flying! It was in the low to mid fifties and my hibernating bees had decided to take a few investigative flights. I was such a proud mother! I leapt out of the car leaving the door wide open, ran inside and grabbed my camera. My bees were flying!!!

Can you see the one bee coming in for a landing in this picture? This shot doesn't show it, but there were about five to ten bees out and about around the hive. Exciting.

Now, fast forward six hours. That day, driving rain and strange gusty winds were going to be coming through. I'm not sure at what point this happened, and I don't know for how long they were exposed. But, because of the wind and rain, on my way home from an errand I stopped by the bus stop to pick up Benjamin (10). When I pulled in the driveway, I saw a horrifying mess!! The outer covers on both of my hives had blown off completely exposing the inner cover which has a 5x1 inch hole cut out of the top!! The worst part was, on my left hive, even the inner cover had blown off, leaving the frames where the bees live exposed!! Horrible! I raced over there with my bare hands and face and threw everything back together. There were a couple bees around the entrances (thinking to themselves HELP! We've been abandoned and forsaken by our keeper!!!) but they had enough problems to be worrying about me. Plus, it was blowing a gale! 

I put everything back together, and slid the bottom boards out so that any moisture could drip out and evaporate more quickly. What a mess. This certainly weakens the hive and who knows how many of my bees have died as a result. Poor things. After two days, I slid the bottom boards out, since the night time weather was going to be below freezing. I did see some flying two days ago when the temps were in the upper 40's. I hope they are okay. I am disappointed. 

Now I have TWO LARGE rocks on the tops of both hives . . . 

The Birds and The Bees

Awww .... aren't they cute? One of each of my three breeds of hens: Barred Rock, New Hampshire Red, Rhode Island Red. It's snowy around here, and my hens weren't venturing out of their hen house much, so I threw some straw out around their house and they love it. Since then, they get out most of the day and tromp around. Here, my three hens are sunning themselves in the 30 degree weather under the hen house.

In spite of the cold weather and shorter days, my girls are young and laying up a storm. The day before we didn't have any eggs, then yesterday we had seven! So, to catch up, I made a double batch of zucchini bread and quiche for dinner.

Here is a picture of the hen house with the small bit of snow that is still hanging on. (Here, being relatively close to the ocean and the gulf stream, our snow doesn't tend to stick around very long, sadly. For me, if it's going to be cold, I'd just assume have snow for sledding and ice for skating!)

My honey bees are all wrapped up for the winter. In November I finally got to putting up the mouse guard (narrow fencing stapled to the entryway). The thought of stapling a bee hive just didn't sit well with me. Even though it was below freezing (an old timer told me they can't fly below freezing, but I don't know if that's true?) on the day I stapled the fencing to the entrances, I still put on my veil. I couldn't help myself.

The mouse guard, well, prevents mice. Apparently it's very common for mice to find their way into the hive to keep warm. Ugh. Mainly they make a big mess, and sometimes the bees win out and propolis (bee glue) the poor mouse from head to toe, so it looks sort-of mummified.

Finally in December before the big cold snap, I wrapped my hives in roof felting to help them to keep warm. It's not necessary to do this, but a lot of people feel it helps them through the cold winter months. Perhaps then they use up less energy trying to stay warm, which by the way they do in a similar way to the Emperor Penguin where the Queen Bee is in the middle, then they cluster around her in a big ball. The bees take turns being on the warm inside, versus the chilly outside of the cluster. Cool eh?

Some bees do slowly die through the winter. So when they do, as is customary, worker bees push the dead bees out of the hive on a warm (relatively speaking) day. So far I've seen two batches of 10 from each hive over two months. The idea is that before winter you want to have a large strong hive that has plenty of honey stores to make it through to warmer months. I hope mine make it. It will be sad if they don't after all my work, but I have certainly learned a lot and will start over and purchase more bees if they don't.

Extracting Honey

Last Friday was my big moment . . . I had the opportunity to go to a friends house (and fellow bee keeper with 6 hives) to use her extractor just before she extracted honey from 8 honey supers (x10 frames each = 80 frames of honey!) As you would expect, I brought along my camera to document the momentous event . . .

Here is the inside of her very nice electric extractor. A lot of extractors are of the cranking variety - which is a lot better than no extractor. But the electric one sure was nice!

First, you have to remove the wax capping that the bees build on top of each cell filled with aged honey. This was a very small splash of honey on one particular frame, but it's a great picture of removing the cappings. You slide the angled metal comb just under the cappings, lift it off, and dump the gooey piece of wax into a bucket.

Here is my friend Diane helping me with my frames.

Using this comb like cappings remover is slow business, but it generally damages the comb that the bees build the least. There are heated knives and slicer things that you can use, but they cut into the comb more than this small hand-held number.

And, here I am!

Diane had everything set up nicely. As a bee keeper in her 5th year, she has gotten this project down to a science. The plastic sheeting was a great idea. She also put some pieces of cardboard down on the ground between the table and the extractor to catch drips. If you don't put some effort into creating a good system, I could see how this would be a HUGE mess! As is was, it was pretty dern sticky!

Here are all of my frames sitting in the extractor. The extractor spins at a high speed, pulling out the honey using centrifugal force. Then, the honey drips down the sides and out through a spigot.

Diane tipped the extractor when it was done spinning to get all of the honey to pour out of the spigot and into my bucket. I used a strainer this year, but next year I may try making the raw honey that is not strained -- and then is creamed in some way. At least I'll try to do some that way. That honey is supposed to be even better for you.

Look at all of that honey! When it was all said and done, I ended up with about 1/3 of a 5 gallon bucket worth of honey. This will have to last me through July of next year. With all of the baking I do with honey, my granola, yogurt and tea I will probably end up buying some in the end. But, my harvest wasn't bad considering I had two swarms this year!

Hens, Bees, Peaches and Apples

How are my little hens doing?

They are almost full grown. In two weeks or so, they should start laying tiny little eggs. How exciting! We have one Barred Rock who likes to exercise her wings. At first we were concerned that she was a he, but other than being slightly larger and able to fly a little bit, she doesn't display any other "he" characteristics. But we're still watching, just in case. She occasionally hops out of their chicken run and waddles around outside, but she wants to be with her friends, so shortly after doing a little exploring she pops back in.

Don't you just love the barred rock feathers?

So pretty.

Here is one of our New Hampshire Reds, Pearl.

Uncharacteristically, her legs are pearl color. Usually, when a chicken is older their legs slowly bleach out. Pearl's legs are literally pearl colored. Recently highlights of brown have shown up.

Here are six of them (out of eight) giving me the one-eye.

My bees. Oh, my bees. As you know if you've kept up with my bee saga since April, my left hive swarmed in spite of all of my efforts to make sure they had "room". I'm starting to think that eight frame hives tend to make bees swarm -- I have got to research it. Has anyone read anything about this? My left hive made their own natural queen who was able to return safely from her mating flight, and starting laying. The hive is calm, thriving, and I happened to see the darling lady two weeks ago, and she's HUGE. Wonderful!

My right hive has been thriving. There have been a TON of bees in there. I have carefully added on supers to give them room, but ultimately I think I had a case of "my queen only wants to travel UP" syndrome. I hadn't gotten down to the bottom box to check in 2 weeks because I was inspecting on my own, which would have been fine, except that I was getting a bit overwhelmed by HOW MANY BEES there were. It was set up just as you see it here and every frame was PACKED with bees. This is when the foragers are out, so at night and early morning there were even more in there. An extremely healthy hive. Anyway, I dutifully went to do a hive check and go down to the bottom box when I'd noticed eggs in the first honey super the week before. I should have done it THAT week, but the bees were crabby with me.

I let a week and a half pass and they had made swarm cells. There were about ten of them. I'd just talked to a life long beekeeper and he'd suggested that at this time of year it is possible to stop a swarm. As a new bee keeper, I was very proud of myself for removing all of these cells. For me, when crazy things happen in the hive, my brain short-circuits and goes to mush. All I can focus on is the crazy thing (whatever that might be). This is where my error was. I didn't look to see if there were fresh eggs in the hive, to know that the queen was still in there. There were still so many bees in there, frankly I couldn't tell that any of them had left. I know, it sounds crazy. What can I tell you, I'm new at this. So, without a queen in the hive, I removed all of the queen cells. What does that give you? A hive without a queen! Not a good thing.

The woman I was working the hive with that day thought that she'd seen some queen cells that were torn open, which would mean that at least one queen hatched. So there was the slight possibility that a virgin queen was in the hive. I checked two days ago for eggs and still saw nothing, so I made the call to get a new queen. Just in case. It's getting a little too close to fall and cold weather to play the waiting game for two long.

So, just yesterday, I put my new queen, in her cage, into the hive. The bees noticed her right away and cruised over. The big question now is, if the hive DOES have a virgin queen in the hive (that should start laying within days), they will kill the new queen. But, I was willing to take the $25 gamble to make sure I got a queen in that large hive pronto.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I wasn't able to use my organic sprays this year because of the lack of time spent at my house, so my fruit trees have had some issues -- but all in all, they are okay. The peaches were finally ready on our two dwarf peach trees.

These apples weren't quite done yet, so they are still doing time.

One apple tree, and Empire, had apples that were ready. It was a very small harvest and each apple had issues. But hey, it's only my second year. Right?

We gardeners live for the hope of the next growing season.

For Victor . . .

My bees, on Victor's flowers.

(Well, okay, there IS a bumble bee on this particular flower along with one of my honey bees.)

I'm hoping to train Victor to become a beekeeper.

He is patient, calm, observant and isn't fazed by buzzing honey bees in the least.

He would be fabulous at it.

Would you just LOOK at those pollen baskets?!

Really, click on the photo to enlarge it. Amazing.

I have a Queen!

Status of my left hive continued . . .

On Wednesday, my bee friend Sarah and I went into my left hive to see if we could determine if the bees were acting aggressively towards the new queen in her cage, and to look for any evidence of a natural queen from the queen cells made by the bees.

Although it seemed there were plenty of bees around the queen cage, they didn't seem to be angry in any way. So, we set that upper brood chamber aside and went to the lower one where I thought a new natural queen would be laying (if she existed) since the upper chamber is being largely used to store honey.

I went directly into the center three frames (where most of the "action" in the hive takes place first) and on the back of the third frame Sarah saw THE EGGS. Evidence of a new natural laying queen! How exciting. Even though I have been sad about the swarm, it made me overjoyed to learn that a queen had been birthed in the hive, survived her mating flight, returned to the hive and started to lay eggs. Wow. (My other bee friend Diane was happy to have my other now homeless queen for one of her hives.)

Once your hive swarms, any hopes of a honey harvest are dashed. Now, the goal is making sure they reproduce and strengthen enough to make it through the winter. Stay tuned . . .

Bee Update

Here is a picture of my hives: "The Right" and "The Left". The Left hive, it seems, has swarmed. Although oddly enough, my brother's family is staying at our house for the summer and no one saw them leave even though the hives are situated just to the right side of my garage. Is it possible I had a weak / failing queen and missed the signs? Small number of eggs, larvae and capped brood? I don't know. But, they did make queen cells, and my brother took pictures for you.

In the center of this picture -- slightly to the lower right -- is a queen cell. I found queen cells both on the bottom of one frame, build into the comb on another frame, and on the side of the comb on another frame. One of my "bee teachers" stressed to me recently that bees are just insects, so they don't always "follow the rules" making queen cells IN the comb which are generally "supercedure" cells when you have a failing, weak or dead queen -- even though they are technically being used for swarm cells. Which is when they feel crowded and decide to split off and 50% of the bees leave with the existing queen and create queen cells to produce a new queen for the remaining bees that stay behind.

The frustrating thing is, I may have missed the "signs" of a failing or weak queen, but the one thing I know I paid strict attention to is room in the hive. This hive was never short on room, but for some reason, it appears that they felt the need to leave. I don't know, it's a mystery.

This is a bad photo, but you can see a queen cell at the bottom of the frame.

Another view.

There were a few more queen cells the last time we went in two days before. The bees must have cleaned them off.

Here is a queen cell built into the comb on the side near the frame.

I do remember seeing some unusual comb being built in this hive, but I thought it was drone comb, which is shaped a bit like the puffy end of a piece of popcorn. Next time, I'll take any weird stuff off.

My brother and I looked through the entire brood chamber and didn't find a Virgin Queen. They are very difficult to spot because they haven't mated yet, so their abdomen (the most distinguishing feature on a queen) is relatively small. I looked with my friend Diane, then again two days later with my brother Scott. Nothing. We couldn't find her. So, I purchased a new Italian Queen from one of my bee teachers. He told me to put the queen cage into the hive -- leaving the cap on the opening -- for five days. When I open up the hive again I should look to see if the bees in the hive are trying to kill her with their stingers. Terrific. He said they should be acting very aggressively towards her. This means that there is ALREADY a queen in the hive. In which case, I'll take the queen in her cage and return her. If not, I'll start the releasing process. I have my bee friend Sarah coming over today to help me determine whether or not the bees are acting aggressively towards the queen in her cage. It seems like it would be difficult to determine because ordinarily bees will surround the queen cage because they want to get her out. But, my bee teacher insists it will be a very different sort of behavior. Good grief. Thank God for Bee Friends.