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Getting Ready For Winter

Hi Everyone,

I know I haven't posted for a while, but to be honest it has been pretty quiet recently.

The weather is getting colder and the leaves are changing color and the bees are mostly staying in the hive.

There have been a couple of sun breaks and the bees do seem to come out then, but most days the hive is pretty quiet.

I have been feeding periodically to make sure they get enough to eat in preparation for winter.

The yellow jackets have also dwindled considerable, though I still see a few every time I go to look at the hive.

I put on the entrance reducer to keep the drafts out and I also got a couple of corks that I plan to use to plug the vent holes into the hive once it starts to really get cold.

So far it has been a great first season as a beekeeper. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I'm eager to moving the hive to my in-laws place in the winter (they have some land with lots of blackberries and fruit trees).

I'll post again if anything exciting happens.

Hi Everyone,

Well I checked my hive yesterday and sure enough the third box remained empty so I removed it. Specifically I took it off the hive and set it a few feet away, it only took an hour or so for all of the bees in the top box to move back to the main hive.

Here is a photo of a center frame of my second box. I'm worried that there isn't much honey. Wondering if I should feed more.

Yellow Jackets Okay.

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to post an update and let everyone know that my yellow jacket traps are still catching a lot of YJ's, but the number of YJ's bothering the have has dropped considerably.

Here is a photo of the hive currently:

You can see one of the YJ traps that I put near it as well as the strip of red duct tape that I used to close the seam made by the frameholder. The YJ's seemed to be trying to sneak into the hive through that seam.

Yellowjacket Update

Hi Everyone,



I checked the YJ traps last Sunday and the three traps had caught approximately 120 YJ's total.



I emptied them and rebaited them and put them back.



Watching this week it looks like the YJ's are still there but they are generally just cleaning up the dead bees and not coming as close to the hive.

I think now that I have weathered the YJ attack, I can focus on wintering the bees.

My plan is to check them this weekend and then get ready to medicate for the winter.

Yellow Jacket Attack, Part 2 with Photos!

8/22/07



Hi Everyone,



Last night I went out to the hive and the yellow jackets were being pretty aggressive. For the first time I saw the YJ's landing on the side of the hive box and trying to sneak into the gap between boxes made by the frame holder. I managed to get a somewhat blurry shot of that:










Though you can't see it in the photo, I could also see bee heads on the other side pushing back to keep the YJ's out. This concerned me so I put duct tape across the seam.






The actual entrance to the hive looked pretty good still. The bees were guarding the entrance and the vent hole and I didn't see any YJ's even come close to entering the hive:







Here is a shot of the YJ's coming in to check out the hive, I just thought it was a cool shot:







This last shot is a shot of a bee being attacked and eaten by a pack of YJ's. I think those two little dots are the bees eyes:





I put out some more yellow jacket traps, and as I mentioned I duct-taped the seam made by the frame holder. So far I haven't seen a YJ even coming close to entering the hive so hopefully the hive is okay.

Yellow Jacket attack!

8/19/07

Hi Everyone,



Wow, what an interesting weekend. On the advice from several people I made home made yellow jacket traps and put those out on Saturday. Not a single yellow jacket had been caught so far, perhaps my home made trap is not very appealing to the yellow jackets for some reason.



On Sunday the weather was nice so I came out to watch my hive for a while and was amazed. I got to watch the yellow jackets and bees fighting in front of me. I would see things like yellow jackets coming kind of near the hive, then a bee would come out and attack it and they would fall on the ground rolling around as they fought. Sometimes I would see a second and even a third yellow jacket join the fight. I also saw the bees forming a semi-circle in front of the entrance to the hive as a way to protect it better. It was really kind of amazing, but also alarming to see the yellow jackets so aggressively attacking the bees.



I went out and bought one of those commercial yellow jacket traps and in an hour it had already caught 8 yellow jackets. I think I'll pick up a couple more and put them in place as well.

We'll see how that goes.