We have honey!

Well, we didn't do it last year but this year it was clear there was a lot of honey mountain up in hive #1 so we took the plunge and decided to harvest. First step was getting the honey off, this didn't seem like too much of a challenge after all I already had a bee escape - easy right? Well it seems not, I added the bee escape (a board that sits below the honey supers and acts as a one-way door so bees can go down below but not back up) but they seemed the just come and go as before so both boxes still had plenty of girls in. I got the top box off by brushing the bees off the frames one by one and putting them into a big plastic box. The hive is an 8-frame setup and the box yielded about 6 complete frames. 

Next was extracting the honey, I rented the Chatham County Beekeepers extractor last week and set to work. The whole process is reasonably easy but very messy (and the uncapping knife is lethal!). The first box yielded about 1.5-2 gallons and really nice. Feeling flushed with this success I got a fume board and Bee Go from Busy Bee Apiaries and set to work getting off the second box. This stuff worked really well but it's reputation for smelling foul is well justified - I would run from it if I were a bee. The total harvest ended up just about 3 gallons and we spent a few evenings filling a mix of nice 8oz squeezy honey bottles (like the ones you get from the supermarket) and some 1/2 pint and pint Mason jars. 

All-in-all we had some fun but now have more than enough to keep us going and give to friends, and I guess there will be more in the fall to look forward to.

State Beekeepers Meeting

The North Carolina State Beekeepers Association held it's summer meeting July 10-12, at the Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst. We went down on Thursday and Friday and it was a great meeting, very interesting and some really good speakers. We particularly enjoyed the talks by NC State's own David Tarpy, University of Georgia's Jennifer Berry and Penn State's Maryann Frazier. David's workshop on the bee dance was particularly interesting - even if the bees didn't play along. We picked up some interesting stickers and I bought a really nice filter/bucket set from Brushy Mountain ready to harvest some honey. 

All in all a great event and will make every effort to get there again next year. Also took the opportunity to take the practical part of the certified level of the NC Master Beekeeper Program.

Pollinator links

There are a number of web sites out there listing alternative pollinators I've found recently. A number of friends and colleagues have asked about colony collapse, the news coverage has been quite valuable in having people think about the value and importance of bees in pollination. But, as a beekeeper, it's sometimes easy to forget that there are other pollinators - and that in countries like the U.S. the honey bee is not native and it's introduction has suppressed a number of native pollinators.

The kids love the new Bumble Bee house, but there are kits for Mason Bee

• Xerxes.org
• Pollinator.com
• Urban bee gardens
• Planting a bee garden
• Suburban habitat
  

Interesting bottom board "muck"

I took some pictures when I took the plastic board out from under the hive after the winter. The board had a pretty good covering of "muck" which I decided to have a good look at before I cleaned it up and put it away for the spring/summer. I found a bunch of interesting stuff, remains from the Api Life mite treatment, pollen, some dead mites, a bee leg or two and wax flakes. The picture below shows some of this, the green fluffy stuff is Api Life, the yellow and orange blobs are pollen - but the things that fascinated me are the neat round brown seeds. They seem to be millet seed, and indeed some were even starting to sprout - but where did they come from? I wondered if there had been a mouse or something in the hive over winter but I could see no evidence. Right now it remains a mystery :-)


The next photo was more interesting to the kids (and me), it shows the wax flakes the bees produce as well as a few bee body parts.

New bee "home"

Last time we had my parents visit my father built a Bumble Bee house (plans from xerxes.org) which we painted and put out a week or so ago. I got a (poor) picture, and thought it should be up here among the more common bee home/hive pictures :-)


It's kind of hard to get a feeling for size, but the grass along the bottom gives some idea.

New packages ordered

At the end of the year I ordered two more packages from Rossman, due on April 30th, so have to get busy. I brought in a truck full of mulch to finish off the bee yard, the last lot (laid over weed fabric) was successful in keeping the weeds and poison ivy at bay. This gave me a whole lot more space and I put out some concrete blocks ready for new hives. I'd like to keep the hives close-to eventually but need to check on an appropriate distance to start them off at (any ideas anyone?)

I have one Brushy Mountain hive ready painted from last years adventures so that's all ready to go, and hoping I can get another in shape before they arrive - if not then I guess it's the nuc for a temporary home.

I'll see if I can get some pictures of the yard together, I did take some of the board from the IPM screened bottom, it had an interesting collection of things stuck to it from the cold weather.

Back after the winter

Interestingly, I was writing a post this morning and even had it saved as a draft when the kids came in all excited that "the bees are swarming!". So, here's the text of this post as it was this afternoon:

Well, everything survived the winter, which given NC weather isn't too extreme. We luckily didn't suffer an Easter freeze and so everything seems set. I have yet to go and check them thoroughly and reverse the boxes, but the weather is turning nice now after a week of grey and rain so should be able to soon. I have checked on them a couple of times briefly in the winter and everything looked good and all the signs are we should be building up nicely.

So apparently the bees had their own idea of when I should be paying attention to them. There's been a lot of discussion on the Chatham Beekeepers mailing list about swarms in the area and so it was a definite possibility, but looking out of the window on the way down there was certainly a lot of bees on the front but not that many. So, just in case, I dug out my nuc, grabbed my stuff and headed down. Even before I got there things had calmed down so I assumed it was the warm day (we hit mid 70's here) and the fact that the last week had been cold, wet and overcast.

So I decided to take the plunge and go through the hive and give it a good check. I had on my usual hat and shirtsleeves but the tone of the hive soon had me decide that perhaps a veil was a better idea. There was a lot of angry flying about, in the end nothing too aggressive but better safe than stung. I took away the top feeder which is clearly not necessary now as all the three boxes on there were nicely in use. I rotated the boxes, the top two were well stuck together with burr comb which I removed the best I could. The bottom box was clearly less used but certainly not empty and I noticed new healthy looking brood on a number of frames.

My smoker played up again, so the whole thing took longer than I would have liked and so I didn't go through each frame (would have been good to check for swarm signs just in case) but maybe next time.

Was nice to be back among them, even on their more "busy" days it's still fun to be surrounded by them.

Smoker fuel - any favourites?

An interesting question -- what do you use in your smoker? When I bought mine I got a stick of fuel which I've rarely used as it's pretty hard to actually get lit. Most folks around here use pine straw and dry leaves which are OK but the problem there is that I have a lot of trouble keeping it lit. So, having read someone say they used baling twine/burlap as a fuel I cut off a strip from some burlap we had in the garage for the garden. I have found that a mix of the burlap (a square about 4"x6") and the pine straw seems to be pretty good and will keep lit for me for a good while.

So anyone out there with favourite fuels, hints, tips?

Woo Hoo!

Well the day arrived, started with a call from the Post Office to come pick up the package of buzzing bees. So this afternoon which was a great day, warm and with a light breeze after a really windy and rainy weekend, we put the girls into the hive. The kids watched as I stumbled my way through the process but it was still pretty easy and painless (no stings).

The only wrinkle in the process was that when I took the cork out of the queen cage there was no candy below and rather than put the queen in directly with the colony I put the cork back loosely and will hope for the best. I'll be back later in the week to check and fingers crossed everything is OK. I did walk down this evening at dusk and there was plenty of gentle activity, orientation flights, a lot of the dead bees from the package already dumped out front.

Will post pictures hopefully tomorrow.

Last week was busy...

Well, in anticipation of the arrival of bees last Friday all the last minute work had to be done last week. More weed cloth and mulch around the hive, mowing down the grass, clearing away all the brush for recycling and more. Thursday I got up at 6:00 to drive out to Brushy Mountain to spend some more money (my birthday gift from the family) and bought a second hive, some additional supers and a nuc. So Thursday afternoon everything looked good, I was ready, planning to work at home Friday, the weather looked good for Friday (not too hot not cold)...

The the call from Rossman, due to the cold weather over Easter and some loss of bees they are running behind in delivering out packages :-( So now it looks as if it will be this week, maybe, before the bees arrive so am a little bummed. On the bright side it meant I got to finish painting the new woodenware and also have a pair of Tulip Poplars to plant before the girls arrive.

Books

I added this post because I had found an interesting book from the library while waiting for my bee package to arrive, The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum. The Chatham County course included Beekeeping For Dummies
by Howland Blackiston and my beginner kit from Brushy Mtn included First Lessons in Beekeeping by C.P. Dadent, both of which are good books although I would recommend the dummies book as a starting place. The reason I liked the backyard book was that the hive setup the author used through the text was the same Brushy Mtn 8 frame that I decided on and so it makes for an interesting read from that perspective.

In particular, for anyone else attracted to this set up it is worth noting that the usual configuration for brood chambers, or hive bodies, is a deep box with 10 frames, in the Brushy Mtn set up the boxes are actually standard medium frames and so not only do you lose 2 frames per box but each box is shallower. The book therefore suggests that for a good and healthy colony expect to use 3 of these boxes as opposed to the usual 2 for standard hive bodies - good to know ahead of time.

Oh, I also bought Teach Yourself Beekeeping book, which is nicely laid out but is an English book and therefore has some discussion that isn't so relevant to a US based new beekeeper. That isn't to say it isn't a nice book and am glad I purchased it, but am also glad it was the last of the books I purchased.

My Hive Site

Here's the result of all the effort so far; this is the Brushy Mtn 8 frame English Garden Hive. The kids chose the nice light green paint - which looks really nice in the full sun. It's late afternoon so the sun is behind the row of trees to the west of the hive which is facing just a little East of South.

You can see the base has been set up for expansion, there's room for another hive on the same base and plenty of room cleared for more if it goes well. The pile of brush on the left of the picture is just a small part of the amount that was pulled out of there to put this all in.

So now have to clean up and finish cutting back the vines around the saplings behind the hive as a lot of our wind comes in from the North and they'll provide a nice wind break if they are healthy.

Start-up costs

Some people will tell you that you can start bee keeping for under $100.00, and while this may be true it is generally not the case today. There are a number of companies that provide really good beginner kits ranging from 125 - 200 but while they have a nice setup they generally don't come with additional supers so if the honey flow is good you're going to need to go back for more (Betterbee is an exception here, their kit has two hive bodies and two medium supers).

Anyway I wanted the look of the English hive and also preferred the compact size of the 8-frame setup and so ended up with the Brushy Mountain Beginner Kit, though I added one additional super, queen excluder escape screen and top feeder for a total of $326.00. I went to Rossman for the package of Italian bees for about $60.00 (due to arrive in May).

Then there was the other cost - the work, I cleared out an area of scrub under a fallen dead tree to make a nice yard, lugged all the gear plus concrete blocks and 6x2 for the stand down there over a few weeks but now it looks really nice. So, while it certainly has cost more than I expected, and I would love to have put in two hives rather than just the one, it looks really nice and there's plenty of room to expand next year.

Links

• Brushy Mountain Bee Farm
• Rossman Apiaries
  
• Betterbee
• Miller Bee Supply
• Dadent
• Bee-commerce (from the writer of Beekeeping for Dummies)

Why bother?

So, I never seem to have time to blog on my work site, so why bother to create an all new blog? Well I guess I've wanted to be involved with bees since I was a kid, I remember seeing those stands at the county fair and saw the observation hives, the jars of honey... There was a park close by home with a museum that had an observation hive and it was fun to look for the queen in there.

So, now with the impact of various diseases on the wild and commercial bee populations there is a real need for even backyard bee keepers to add to the number of bees. So North Carolina has started a number of bee keeping classes, and the local one here (Chatham County Beekeeping School with the Chatham County Beekeepers) was a really well run and interesting 8 weeks. My thanks to Debbie Roos, Jim Williams, Dr. David Tarpy, Bill Sheppard, Don Hopkins, and all those who attended for a really detailed introduction and yes I am now hooked.

So, having researched through various online sellers and the pile of catalogs Debbie made available for us the first week I ended up with equipment from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, their English hive (of course). So I hope that I can keep up to date as the bees arrive and get installed. But for now that's all.