The third box.

Hi Everyone,



Well I put the third box on a while back and I was worried about the queen excluder. Mostly I was worried that the excluder was too small to let the worker bees through. I have been watching my hive over the last couple of weeks, specifically noticing that no bees were using the top box vent hole as an entrance or exit (they use the vent holes for the lower two boxes as entrances/exits constantly).


I was worried that maybe the bees weren't moving into the top box, so I decided that since I had a little more syrup that I had made earlier, that I would put the last of the syrup into the feeder as a way to draw the bees into the top box.


When I checked the feeder I discovered that there were quite a few worker bees walking around in there, so I think that the bees have actually moved into the third box just fine.

I wish I had left more time to actually check the top box, but I had to go, so I just refilled the feeder and closed the hive. This weekend I should have plenty of time and good weather to check the bees again. I am eager to see how the top box is coming along.

I might even check the top two boxes since I am curious to see how the second box is filling out.

So stay tuned, hopefully an update and pictures on Monday.

Research on honey extraction.

Hi Everyone,

Perhaps I'm being too optimisitc, but I've been researching honey extraction techniques in the hope that my hive will produce at least a little surplus honey.

It looks like there are essentially two ways for me to extract honey:

1) The crush and strain method. This is pretty much what it sounds like. You take the honeycomb, crush it up, and put it in a strainer. I found a great video of the process at:

http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2007/06/honey-harvest-crush-and-strain.html

Pros - Minimal equipment needed, easy to do.

Cons- You have to destroy the honeycomb (some people consider this a pro, since you can use the wax for candles, also some people think that it's more hygienic to use new honeycomb each year).

2) Mechanical extraction. For this you get your hands on a spinning extractor.

Pros - Preserves the honeycomb for next year, very easy and efficient.

Cons - You have to build, buy or borrow an extractor.

I don't want to buy an extractor, not sure I have time to build one, and I've decided to not bother to rent one from my beekeeping club (I think it'll be more fun to have a method where I can do my harvesting whenever).

So that leaves the crush and strain method. Not much in the way of equipment to gather, just a matter of getting the surplus honey. The weather has been great and the bees have been busy, so we'll see how things go.

-Paul

Three Boxes Strong

7/8/07

Hi Everyone,

Well a quick check of the hive yesterday showed my top box to be pretty full of drawn comb. Following the 70% rule I decided to put on a queen excluder and my third box.

I've stopped feeding the bees as the weather has been great so I think they're doing fine on their own. If I don't see much activity in the third box I may put some feed in the top feeder as a way to draw the bees up into the third box.

I also did a quick check of my brood box, and things there are looking pretty good. My frames have larvae again, and I saw no sign of queen cells. My wife was able to get a great shot of one of the brood frames where you can see the white larvae really clearly:

So far so good. Since the weather is getting warmer I have put out a couple of bee watering sources. One is a bucket filled with water and styrofoam peanuts (the idea being that the bees can land on the peanuts and drink the water), the other is a board that I have under a dripping outdoor spigot. So far I haven't seen bees drinking but I'm hoping to see that happening soon.

I'll probably check the hive again in a couple of weeks to see how the top box is doing. Maybe I'll actually get to harvest honey in the next month or so.

No Eggs, and Clumsy Hiving

6/10/07



I checked my hive again yesterday. I wasn't extremely thorough as the weather was looking a little spotty (didn't want to get caught with an open hive in the rain again), but I at least got the chance to check several frames for eggs and larvae. I saw capped brood, but no eggs or larvae. So I'm really starting to think that my hive is queenless.

I think I'll leave it alone for a couple of weeks....hopefully by then a new queen will have hatched, mated and be laying eggs. I think I'll feel better once I see eggs and larvae again.

Also, I've been having some trouble with my hive frames, specifically I'm trying to improve my hive handling technique.

Currently my biggest problem is that the frames have these spacers on them that I'm having trouble with. By spacers I mean these lengths of wood about the size of a pencil. There are two on either end of the frame running from the top of the frame to the bottom. They are just there to make sure you can't take two frames and press them flush against each other (which would of course squish the bees).

The problem I run into is that when I am closing up the hive I have to of course put all of the frames back in. I can only fit all 10 frames in there if the frames are snugly in there (where the spacer for one frame is resting right up against the spacer on the next frame, which is of course the point of a spacer), and I've noticed that sometimes I'll be pushing two frames together and I'll hear this unpleasant ---Crunch-- sound as a bee gets caught between the spacers.

I try to move the frames together slowly, but it seems like the bees don't get the hint and move. Instead they just sit there until they are trapped between the two spacers. According to the advice on bee source if you smoke the bees or blow on them as you slowly press the frames together the bees will scamper out of the way. I'm going to try very hard the next time I open the hive to not squish any bees in the hive.

Maybe this is how my hive ended up queenless in the first place.

Are these queen cells?

June 3, 2007

A very eventful day. I suited up and my wife was standing by with the camera.

The first photo I had taken was of one of my frames. I was concerned by the pattern. Seemed like no eggs or larvae:

On another frame, I blew on the bees a bit to move the bees. Again, not a very good pattern and I saw THIS:

That appears to be a queen cell, front and center on the frame. That really concerned me.

Another frame looked kind of disorganized:

This picture is one of my older frames, it looks more like what I was expecting with a nice patch of capped brood in the center:

Another odd frame, note what might be another queen cell down in the corner:

Yet another queen cell:

A good frame again:

In general I saw lots of capped brood, a little capped honey, and I even saw a bee hatching. However I saw several queen cells and didn't see any eggs or larvae. The eggs are hard to see sometimes, but I would think larvae is usually really easy to spot.

Here are close ups of the queen cells:

I wasn't sure what to make of all this so I went to the exchange on www.beesource.com and asked for help.

The folks on the bee source exchange were (as always) incredibly insightful and generous with their help.

From the many responses I got I generally learned that my situation was one of:

1) My queen was dead, sick, or gone. Possible that she died of natural causes, or maybe my newbie hive handling skills squished her. This theory was supported by the fact that I didn't notice any eggs or larvae and that my younger frames didn't have a very good pattern.

2) The queen is fine but the bees were reacting to the imbalance of age groups in the new hive by creating new queen cells. Essentially the bees think that the queen as failing. According to "Beekeeping for Dummies" this sometimes happens at the six week point and that was exactly the age of my hive.

3) The bees for whatever reason wanted to swarm.

Based on all of this information I decided that if it was option 1, I could either buy a new queen and go through requeening procedures (tricky since I'm still not too good at spotting the queen) or I could let the supersedure go and hope I get a healthy new queen.

If it was option 2 then I could either cut out all of the queen cells or let the queens hatch and supersedure.

If it was option 3 then I could either let the swarm happen or take steps to prevent it.

I decided to wait, and let the bees sort it out. Hopefully I will have a return to normal in a couple of weeks. I'll probably check the hive again in a week and see how things look.

Stay tuned.

Tiger by the tail

May 27, 2007

Hi Everyone,

Another check of the hive yesterday. Population seems to be good, and it's actually getting a little intimidating to see so many bees when I open the hive. When I checked the hive I noticed that the frames were about 75-80 percent filled with honeycomb so I put a second box on.

I also was a little worried to see a couple of what I thought might be queen cells. They were about one third of the way down on one of the outer frames. Two little peanut looking things sprouting out of the honeycomb. They were each about .75 inches long, and I'm really not sure if they were queen cells, and my wife wasn't around to take a picture but I cut them out because I was worried.

I plan on moving the hive out to my in-laws place in the winter (they live on 10 acres) but I wanted the bees close by the first season so that I could watch and learn better. I am hoping that I don't end up with a swarm. I think I'll wait a week and give the hive a thorough check and see if I see more of these cells, and make sure I have a camera handy so that I can take pictures.

Stay tuned.

My First Three Stings

May 20, 2007



Not my best day as a beekeeper. I made a couple of mistakes that ended up being quite memorable.

The first was to open the hive when it was cloudy and overcast. The hive was crowded, which was not a big deal, but the real mistake I made was leaving the hive open when it started raining.

I was almost done checking the hive so I decided to stick it out. The bees didn't enjoy the rain at all.

This wasn't too bad, but the real mistake I made was I didn't check my suit and I think somehow I didn't have my veil properly zipped. I'm checking the hive when I notice that someone is crawling across my cheek and I see a bee on my veil, but it's on the INSIDE of the mesh.

I am proud of the fact that I didn't panic. I closed up the hive, walked a little bit away, and took off my gloves so that I could unzip and remove my veil. Unfortunately there was a bee sitting right on the zipper so when I reached for the zip pull I got a handful of unhappy bee (sting 1). Then I was trying to unzip the zipper, but it's not easy to do as it's a zipper that goes all the way around your neck, so I managed to upset one of the bees that was walking across my neck (sting 2). I finally got the veil off and unzipped my suit and there were probably a half dozen or so bees in there with me. One got me on my ankle as I was removing the suit (sting 3).

I'm actually pretty pleased with the fact that I handled it pretty well, though I wish I knew for sure exactly how I incorrectly attached my veil. From now on I have my wife check me real quick before I go outside to make sure I'm properly done up.

The hive was progressing well, population seemed to be growing and as near as I could tell all looked good.