Since I’ve only harvested a single frame of honey and we split that with Bud, we are still buying honey. I stopped in to meet a local beekeeper advertising “Local Honey” a couple of miles from my house. The guy running the show is Alan, a firefighter who also grows plants and keeps bees. He was kind enough to show me around his home apiary and tell me of his projects. In addition to the honey, he gave me spider flowers (which the bees love), plans for a top bar hive, and a lot of useful information including:
- where to get equipment without paying shipping
- what the most helpful and entertaining information sources he’s found on the web
- how he’s done “cut outs”, or harvesting bees and honey from hives that have established themselves in peoples homes or sheds
- how his bee vac works
- info about the Summit County Beekeepers Association
- how to use and even extract from foundationless fames
Thanks, Alan! Nice to meet you!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
7/31/10: Ninth Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 85F
Present: Just me
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:30pm. Inspected representative frames.
Observations:
New hive (pictured on the right): Plenty of brood, still a nice laying pattern. Observed young larvae. No new capped honey, still at approximately 5 frames. As there is no nectar flow so they are not building out more comb either. It’s a summer lull. Very calm bees.
Old hive (pictured on the left): I can’t get over how many bees are in this colony. All the boxes are full of bees. Observed young larvae in the lower deep, the lower medium, and the lower of the two honey supers. Just brood and bees everywhere. I put the honey super in which the queen had laid on top so there is now a honey-filled super between the lower medium and the honey super she was laying in (super reversal). Hopefully she was in the lower part of the hive during this process and if she goes up again to lay, will find capped honey in the lower honey super and will turn around and head back down. And hopefully the brood in the top honey super will hatch and the foragers will fill those newly opened cells with nectar. This hive is not out of open cells yet, so no need to super or swap full frames for empties. There are still several frames that were not built out. I estimate 11 frames of capped honey available to harvest, probably 40 pounds!
Present: Just me
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:30pm. Inspected representative frames.
Observations:
New hive (pictured on the right): Plenty of brood, still a nice laying pattern. Observed young larvae. No new capped honey, still at approximately 5 frames. As there is no nectar flow so they are not building out more comb either. It’s a summer lull. Very calm bees.Old hive (pictured on the left): I can’t get over how many bees are in this colony. All the boxes are full of bees. Observed young larvae in the lower deep, the lower medium, and the lower of the two honey supers. Just brood and bees everywhere. I put the honey super in which the queen had laid on top so there is now a honey-filled super between the lower medium and the honey super she was laying in (super reversal). Hopefully she was in the lower part of the hive during this process and if she goes up again to lay, will find capped honey in the lower honey super and will turn around and head back down. And hopefully the brood in the top honey super will hatch and the foragers will fill those newly opened cells with nectar. This hive is not out of open cells yet, so no need to super or swap full frames for empties. There are still several frames that were not built out. I estimate 11 frames of capped honey available to harvest, probably 40 pounds!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
7/10/10: Eighth Inspection and Honey Harvest
Conditions: Sunny, 79F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: No changes in the new hive. Went down to 9 frames in the newest honey super in the old hive.
Activities: Smoked hives about noon. Inspected various frames. Removed one frame of capped honey.
Observations:
Old hive:
Several frames of fully capped or nearly fully capped honey were observed in the top super. One was harvested for a sample of spring honey, our first harvest! The queen had made a short trip all the way up to the top super and laid a bit of brood (5-7 cells) along the bottom of three or four frames. She must have found no room to lay up there with all the nectar and honey and headed back down. Lots of capped brood and larvae were observed in the bottom deep and adjacent super. The lower honey super (added 6/29/10) had several frames with fully drawn comb. We removed a frame to get this down to a 9 frame super, though the wall frames were not fully drawn yet. Very good progress. The bees look very happy and healthy. No mites were observed on workers or drones when closely examining bees on 2 deep frames.
New hive:
Simliar to the Old hive inspection above with the following exceptions:- less comb drawn in lower honey supper (added 6/29/10), only 1-2 frames. For this reason we left this super at 10 frames for now.
- Queen spotted in the deep
- While doing well for a package, they can’t compete with the quantity of bees and rapid comb drawing and prolific nectar gathering of the overwintered hive
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: No changes in the new hive. Went down to 9 frames in the newest honey super in the old hive.
Activities: Smoked hives about noon. Inspected various frames. Removed one frame of capped honey.
Observations:
Old hive:
Several frames of fully capped or nearly fully capped honey were observed in the top super. One was harvested for a sample of spring honey, our first harvest! The queen had made a short trip all the way up to the top super and laid a bit of brood (5-7 cells) along the bottom of three or four frames. She must have found no room to lay up there with all the nectar and honey and headed back down. Lots of capped brood and larvae were observed in the bottom deep and adjacent super. The lower honey super (added 6/29/10) had several frames with fully drawn comb. We removed a frame to get this down to a 9 frame super, though the wall frames were not fully drawn yet. Very good progress. The bees look very happy and healthy. No mites were observed on workers or drones when closely examining bees on 2 deep frames.
New hive:
Simliar to the Old hive inspection above with the following exceptions:- less comb drawn in lower honey supper (added 6/29/10), only 1-2 frames. For this reason we left this super at 10 frames for now.
- Queen spotted in the deep
- While doing well for a package, they can’t compete with the quantity of bees and rapid comb drawing and prolific nectar gathering of the overwintered hive
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
6/29/10: Seventh Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 70F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Added a second honey super to each hive
Activities: Smoked hives about 6:15pm. Inspected honey supers in both hives. Inspected deep super for brood in the new hive.
Observations:
New Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. After the initial inspection we made up more frames and added a new honey super beneath the full one. Really want to stay ahead of them providing space to not have a late swarm. Finally spotted the queen, who is marked. She’s a fat one and laying happy. I’m thrilled she’s almost keeping up with the overwintered hive.
Old Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. This colony is working faster as they had a 5 frame setback during the last inspection and still caught up to the new hive. (The 5 frames were destroyed due to excessive drone comb)
We should be able to remove a frame of capped honey from each hive to go down to 9 frames in the new supers at the next inspection, 1.5 to 2 weeks from now.
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Added a second honey super to each hive
Activities: Smoked hives about 6:15pm. Inspected honey supers in both hives. Inspected deep super for brood in the new hive.
Observations:
New Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. After the initial inspection we made up more frames and added a new honey super beneath the full one. Really want to stay ahead of them providing space to not have a late swarm. Finally spotted the queen, who is marked. She’s a fat one and laying happy. I’m thrilled she’s almost keeping up with the overwintered hive.
Old Hive:
Lots of bees and the honey super was full, but not fully capped. Changed number of frames in super from 10 to 9 and used 9 frame spacer. This colony is working faster as they had a 5 frame setback during the last inspection and still caught up to the new hive. (The 5 frames were destroyed due to excessive drone comb)
We should be able to remove a frame of capped honey from each hive to go down to 9 frames in the new supers at the next inspection, 1.5 to 2 weeks from now.
Monday, June 21, 2010
6/17/2001: Sixth Inspection and Honey Super
Conditions: Sunny, 78F
Present: Just me
Equipment: Old hive: Removed pail top feeder, added honey super
New hive: No changes
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old Hive: New frames in the medium super were all built out since the last inspection, which is great progress. Lots of bees, removed the top feeder and added a honey super. Got a sting on the finger when turning around the lower deep to have the shortcut hole (upper entrance on deep) moved to the front side. Bud installed this backwards when reversing during the last inspection.
New Hive: Lots of bees, plenty calm. Not much progress building comb in the honey super added during the last inspection. Really looked for the queen this time but still did not spot her. She continues to lay well, so no concerns.
If there is still not much comb building progress in the honey supers at the time of the next inspection I'll consider moving up two or three frames of capped honey from the other super to get bees trafficking there. Since these are older frames and may contain sugar-syrup feed instead of nectar-made honey, I would return them to the bees and only extract from the new frames once everything is built out.
I'm interested in using 9 frames in the honey supers which enables deeper cells containing more honey, so I'll have to watch the comb building process closely. I have to remove the 10th frame only after 9 frames have fully-built comb. Not sure how this works if some of the cells are capped. Do they uncap it and build it out to add more honey and recap? Hmmmm...
Present: Just me
Equipment: Old hive: Removed pail top feeder, added honey super
New hive: No changes
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old Hive: New frames in the medium super were all built out since the last inspection, which is great progress. Lots of bees, removed the top feeder and added a honey super. Got a sting on the finger when turning around the lower deep to have the shortcut hole (upper entrance on deep) moved to the front side. Bud installed this backwards when reversing during the last inspection.
New Hive: Lots of bees, plenty calm. Not much progress building comb in the honey super added during the last inspection. Really looked for the queen this time but still did not spot her. She continues to lay well, so no concerns.
If there is still not much comb building progress in the honey supers at the time of the next inspection I'll consider moving up two or three frames of capped honey from the other super to get bees trafficking there. Since these are older frames and may contain sugar-syrup feed instead of nectar-made honey, I would return them to the bees and only extract from the new frames once everything is built out.
I'm interested in using 9 frames in the honey supers which enables deeper cells containing more honey, so I'll have to watch the comb building process closely. I have to remove the 10th frame only after 9 frames have fully-built comb. Not sure how this works if some of the cells are capped. Do they uncap it and build it out to add more honey and recap? Hmmmm...
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
6/10/2010: Fifth Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 76F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Removed 5 frames from shallow super on old hive and replaced with new frames of blank foundation due to excessive drone. Removed pail top feeder from new hive and added a honey super.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:00pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old hive:
Notice a bunch of drone cells and little food in the lower (shallow) chamber since reversal. The bees have not been storing food here, and all brood is drone. We removed 5 frames of comb with high numbers of drones or empty drone comb and left 5 frames in that had honey, brood, or nothing, but were of normal cell size (not drone comb). 5 frames of foundation were added to allow drawing of comb and storage of food. This is a minor setback which did not allow for supering this hive with a honey super. I mixed up one more batch of sugar syrup to continue feeding until the new frames are fully drawn out.
In the deep, which was on top, we saw tons of bees, brood, and quite a bit of capped honey. The queen was spotted on a frame with lots of open cells, moving to a part of the hive to keep the laying going. She’s doing great laying in her second year and I don’t know whether or not to requeen in the fall. Some people (certainly queen breeders) recommend re-queening every year. The population was larger here than the new hive, which is to be expected. We reversed the chambers again to have the shallow super on top and encourage the building of comb by having those frames close to the pail top feeder. Hopefully the queen will stay down in the deep chamber now that there is lots of food and brood on the deep frames. Perhaps in a week or two we can super?
With all the reversing and pulling and re-pulling frames to decide whether or not to keep them we had this hive open a long time, maybe 20 minutes. The bees were good, but you could tell they were growing impatient with us the longer we were in there. No stings, but I changed from bare-handing it to wearing gloves as we went. I was pretty sure I would have gotten a sting (or several) if I kept at it without gloves.
New hive:
The upper (shallow) super was full of bees and capped honey. The lower (deep) had plenty of brood in a good pattern. So we removed the feeder and added a honey super! We did not pull every frame just to see the queen, so she went unspotted. Based on the young larvae and capped brood, she’s laying just fine. I hope to see this queen soon, though. Funny that I keep spotting the unmarked queen but haven’t found the marked queen yet. No reversals for this hive this season as they started in just a deep and I added the shallow from the other hive after that. The pollen patty was nearly fully consumed.
I think it’s been a good spring with early warm temperatures, sufficient rain to keep nectar flowing, yet enough dry days to allow for long days of foraging.
Now if I could just keep up with planting the garden…
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Removed 5 frames from shallow super on old hive and replaced with new frames of blank foundation due to excessive drone. Removed pail top feeder from new hive and added a honey super.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:00pm. Inspected many frames.
Observations:
Old hive:
Notice a bunch of drone cells and little food in the lower (shallow) chamber since reversal. The bees have not been storing food here, and all brood is drone. We removed 5 frames of comb with high numbers of drones or empty drone comb and left 5 frames in that had honey, brood, or nothing, but were of normal cell size (not drone comb). 5 frames of foundation were added to allow drawing of comb and storage of food. This is a minor setback which did not allow for supering this hive with a honey super. I mixed up one more batch of sugar syrup to continue feeding until the new frames are fully drawn out.
In the deep, which was on top, we saw tons of bees, brood, and quite a bit of capped honey. The queen was spotted on a frame with lots of open cells, moving to a part of the hive to keep the laying going. She’s doing great laying in her second year and I don’t know whether or not to requeen in the fall. Some people (certainly queen breeders) recommend re-queening every year. The population was larger here than the new hive, which is to be expected. We reversed the chambers again to have the shallow super on top and encourage the building of comb by having those frames close to the pail top feeder. Hopefully the queen will stay down in the deep chamber now that there is lots of food and brood on the deep frames. Perhaps in a week or two we can super?
With all the reversing and pulling and re-pulling frames to decide whether or not to keep them we had this hive open a long time, maybe 20 minutes. The bees were good, but you could tell they were growing impatient with us the longer we were in there. No stings, but I changed from bare-handing it to wearing gloves as we went. I was pretty sure I would have gotten a sting (or several) if I kept at it without gloves.
New hive:
The upper (shallow) super was full of bees and capped honey. The lower (deep) had plenty of brood in a good pattern. So we removed the feeder and added a honey super! We did not pull every frame just to see the queen, so she went unspotted. Based on the young larvae and capped brood, she’s laying just fine. I hope to see this queen soon, though. Funny that I keep spotting the unmarked queen but haven’t found the marked queen yet. No reversals for this hive this season as they started in just a deep and I added the shallow from the other hive after that. The pollen patty was nearly fully consumed.
I think it’s been a good spring with early warm temperatures, sufficient rain to keep nectar flowing, yet enough dry days to allow for long days of foraging.
Now if I could just keep up with planting the garden…
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
5/29/2010: County Bee Inspector and Fourth Inspection
Conditions: Sunny, 76F
Present: Summit County Bee Inspector and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 12:30pm. Inspected numerous frames.
The summit county bee inspector dropped by on Saturday 5/29 and we checked out the hives together. I was particularly interested in talking about my decision to reverse the upper and lower chamers on the overwintered colony and if that was working outwell. He said the old queen is laying all over the frames in the deep now (which is now on top) and he said everything looks great, very normal. So I guess it was a good move. No diseases noted in either hive and very low levels of mites. Lots more bees in the old colony compared to the new, but the new has more food stored up (from the previous colony), so they have a bit less work to do. Not quite time to super either hive yet, so I continue to feed sugar syrup. I will go ahead and ready some additional frames to super, maybe as soon as next week in the old colony. They'll have to build out comb in those supers, but they should produce some surplus honey, at least from the overwintered colony. I'm excited to super!
Present: Summit County Bee Inspector and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 12:30pm. Inspected numerous frames.
The summit county bee inspector dropped by on Saturday 5/29 and we checked out the hives together. I was particularly interested in talking about my decision to reverse the upper and lower chamers on the overwintered colony and if that was working outwell. He said the old queen is laying all over the frames in the deep now (which is now on top) and he said everything looks great, very normal. So I guess it was a good move. No diseases noted in either hive and very low levels of mites. Lots more bees in the old colony compared to the new, but the new has more food stored up (from the previous colony), so they have a bit less work to do. Not quite time to super either hive yet, so I continue to feed sugar syrup. I will go ahead and ready some additional frames to super, maybe as soon as next week in the old colony. They'll have to build out comb in those supers, but they should produce some surplus honey, at least from the overwintered colony. I'm excited to super!
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