Bees: Sunday, October 23, 2011

Weather: Sunny, 50's, no wind

Our goal this weekend was to remove the sugar water feeders and seal the hives up for the winter. As we approached the hives we noticed that the bees from Hive C had bundles of pollen on their sacks. Each bee was carrying different autumn color...reds, oranges, yellow and whites. The Nasty Hive wasn't as busy but there was activity. It seemed that both hives new what we were going to do and didn't give us much trouble.

We had all of our equipment handy...hive tool, popsicle sticks, duct tape, tar paper, box cutter and glue. We measured the supers for the tar paper and cut the proper sizes. Last year Jim read that putting popsickle sticks between the top cover and the telescoping cover will keep enough fresh air circulating and it prevents any moist air that would normally be trapped in the super from freezing on the bees wings. We did it last year and it worked. Our bees survived and were healthy. Jim prepared both hives with the popsickle sticks and glued it to the top covers.

We both cut the tar paper and used the duct tape to cover both hives. It's amazing how the black tar paper absorbs the sun and actually makes the paper hot. This is exactly what the hives need to help them expend less energy over the coming cold winter months.

Winterized Hives

We finished the project and won't have to really do anything with the hives until March/April. Even though they're closed for the winter...we'll pass by every few weeks to listen in to their wings all vibrating in unison to make that beautiful humming buzz.

Bees: Sunday, October 16, 2011

Weather: Sunny, 50-60's, slightly windy

There isn't much pollen around and the flowers are drying up. The only flowers blooming right now seem to be mums and you'll see an occasional honeybee or bumblebee on them. The leaves are all changing and I'd estimate that half of the leaves on the maple trees in front of the house have already blown away.

We went to check on the bees to see if we needed to add more sugar water and there was probably a gallon left in each hive. Jim and I decided to leave it on for another week and then remove it. If they're not feeding any longer, they've built up a nice reserve of food to last them the winter...at least that's what the hope is.

We reduced the entrance to the smallest hole on each. Our intention for this coming weekend is to place the wooden boards underneath each and then wrap each in tar paper like we did last winter. We'll use Jim's trick with the popsicle sticks by the top cover to keep the air circulating. We'll leave them alone until just before Spring when we give them sugar water and the cycle begins again.

Bees: Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Weather: Sunny, 80's, overall beautiful day

Today was Jim's birthday and the day couldn't have been better. Last night we made 3 gallons of sugar water and this morning we brewed another 3 gallons. Although we originally decided to not give the nasty hive any sugar water to see how well it overwintered, this morning over breakfast we changed our mind. It didn't hurt our Alpha hive last year and if it helps them fend off any illnesses, it's worth it.

We first went to Hive C and the first thing we noticed was that there was activity near the front entrance but nothing compared to the Nasty Hive. Hive C seemed like it had a number of drone bees milling around the front and we were trying to figure out whether they were tossed out and trying to get back in or just coming and going as they normally would. We opened the telescoping cover and saw that the 3 gallons we gave a few days ago was practically gone. Everything seemed to make sense, the drones outside not being bothered and all the sugar water being gone...it's possible that they have built up enough food storage for the winter and not worried about having the drones around eating since there's so much food. We poured another 3 gallons sealed her up and we'll come back to check in 2 weeks to check up on them again. We also decided to reduce the entrance to the smallest hole in order to minimize robbing situations and allow them to protect themselves easier.

The Nasty Hive

The Nasty Hive was beyond busy in the front without any drones milling around. (check out the video below) Jim noticed a yellow trying to get in but there wasn't any way with the number of honey bees out front that it would succeed. There were so many honey bees out front that I thought they were newly hatched worker bees trying to orientate themselves. When we opened the Nasty Hive I noticed something odd but Jim didn't feel it was anything too concerning. When I removed the top cover on the Nasty Hive last week, we tore through some comb with honey that the bees attached to the top cover. Honey was pouring all over the place because of it. Today it seems like there was no honey in that comb at all....like they emptied it out knowing we were going to remove the top cover while the feeder was in place. I shaved off all of the excess comb they built up on the tops of the Pierco frames, placed the feeder and filled it up. The honey bees all found their way to the top and began drinking right away. We sealed her up and also reduced the entrance to the smallest hole.

This next story is sad because of what we needed to do. We opened our wonderful Alpha hive and noticed it completely devoid of any honey. There were hundreds of bees but the reality of the situation was that there weren't any brood or eggs or honey or nectar. The activity we were seeing were basically robber bees taking any drop of food they could. Jim and I decided to torch the hive since there was a bit of mold and the wooden frames were decaying. We read that the best thing to do in those situations were to torch the supers since it could promote disease. We carried the boxes to the center of the field, laid wood underneath with newspaper and up it went once it was lit. It was sad but beautiful to watch nonetheless.

We're looking forward to sealing these last 2 hives up for the winter and making sure they have every bit of energy to make it to the Spring. The thought of having 2 hives with loads of honey next Spring is exciting.

What we did learn this summer was that we should let the bees do what they do best and that's letting them decide when they want a new queen. We will continue to stop any swarm cells but other than that, we'll let them BEE! :)

Bees: Sunday, October 2, 2o11

Weather: Cool, Sunny but slightly damp, 50-60's

Last night Jim and I watched the documentary "Vanishing Bees" about Colony Collapse Disorder and we became concerned because 2 weeks ago we noticed the Alpha hive wasn't as busy as the other two. We decided to build up their food supple for the winter so we created about 3 gallons of sugar water, healthy b and fumagillin.  We used a 2 to 1 mix of water and sugar. The healthy b is a mixture of natural ingredients that boost their immune system and keeps mites away with its peppermint scent. The fumagillin is supposed to help the bees immune system in case nosema disease comes into the hive. We let it cool overnight and this morning we put them in jugs and headed up to the hives.

As we approached the hives we noticed not one was busy...in fact no bees were present. I'm sure Jim's mind was racing as mine was that could it be possible that they've all left. I put my ear against the hive and was happy I heard busy. I'm sure they were clustered together to keep warm as the morning sun didn't generate enough heat for them to venture out.

The first hive we checked was the Alpha hive from last year. We opened the cover and all seemed ok as the worker bees all peered out from the hole in the top cover. As we removed the cover and removed each of the frames, we became disappointed at what we were seeing. Frame after frame of empty or dead brood, no honey stores and barely any pollen. We didn't see any drones and any worker bees we saw were probably robber bees from our other hives. The realization that our first hive, our hive that produced so much honey for us, was dead. It was a disappointment that took a few minutes to sink in. Jim and I decided to close her up and discuss what we'd do to it later on.

The next hive we checked was the Nasty hive. When we opened it we were amazed at the amount of honey they stored. We also noticed the amount of honey bees populating the hive was about 8 times what we saw in the Alpha hive. Jim let me do a test. The test was to let the Nasty Hive proceed over the winter without any sugar water or supplements. We closed her up and we decided to check on her in a few weeks.

The final hive check was on Hive C. Upon opening this hive we were happy to see that this hive was also another healthy hive that was going to make it over the winter. Their sheer number, honey store and brood were a wonderful indication of that. We checked frame by frame and lo and behold, the queen was busy doing her thing...checking empty cells to lay her eggs. The interesting thing about this queen was that the previous queen was either not good or died because the worker bees created this new one. Last month Jim and I noticed a few queen cells and one that emerged and killed the other cells. This was the queen we found today.

While driving home today, we decided to get rid of the old pine box and buy a cedar box for the Spring. Next week we'll use the stand from the Alpha Hive for the Nasty Hive. The Nasty Hive is heavy and the plastic stand isn't able to support it. We'll go to Lowes and buy 1/2 inch plywood to seal up the bottoms of the hive. As we get closer to the colder weather, we'll wrap each hive in tar paper. We'll also stick the popsicle sticks under the top cover. Both of these tricks seemed to have worked on overwintering the Alpha Hive so we'll do it again.

Garden: July 31, 2010

The garden continues to be productive, despite the invasion of cucumber beetles and squash bugs. Late season planting of beets, jumbo snow peas, radishes (for Rose Cresci), and peas are all now beginning to grow.



Just a portion of this week's yield:

Bees: Saturday, July 23, 2011

Weather: Extremely hot, sunny and dry, high 90's

We decided not to fuss too much over the bees the past 2 weeks simply because everything seemed to be in order. This past weekend we quickly opened each hive and made some observations. Hive C was extremely busy with tons of beautifully laid brood. There was much activity outside of the hive which indicated to us that these were newborn honeybees. They do this incredible impersonation of a vacuum cleaner, moving forward and backwards with their mouths cleaning the surface. I believe it's helping with their orientation. It was so busy that we removed the entrance reducer to give them more ventilation and ease of entry/exit. We put a queen excluder on and put on a honey super. We don't know how much honey will be accumulated but it's worth a try.

The nasty hive has been slow.... granted it was the last hive to get another queen. We also noticed that much of their building of comb tends to be on one side of the hive for some reason. I'm wondering if it has to do with the hive being made of styrofoam or possible how the hive is ventilated. Regardless, the new queen is laying nice brood around and we're hoping there's a population explosion shortly.

Alpha hive was busy with newly born honeybees too. They were all out and about the front of the hive getting their bearing. We opened the honey super and there were a number of frames full of honey again. We decided to only pull out the capped ones, which amounted to 2 frames and we'll get the rest this coming weekend when the kids are up. Everything else looked in order and we closed her up.

One other thing worth mentioning is that we made our first colonial style beeswax candles this weekend. Here is a picture of them:

Garden: July 23, 2011

This week's harvest:

Bees: Saturday, July 9th, 2011

Weather: Sunny, mid 80's, Perfect Day

Our purpose for opening the hives today was to make sure that the queen we placed in the Nasty Hive last week successfully emerged from her cage and accepted by the colony. Sure enough when we opened it we noticed a remarkable difference in the comb that was built during the week. We found it to be more advanced and uniform than before. Last week the comb tended to be off to one side of the hive and this week we noticed the honeybees were working more frames.

We pulled out a few frames and Jim being better at this than me, was looking for egg laying. We noticed that the brood was evenly distributed and once we sure that we didn't have any laying workers, we were put at ease a bit and proceeded to find the queen. That was the last stressful thing we needed to make sure happened. Sure enough, Jim found her AGAIN! Jim - 15, Frank - 0

Satisfied we closed the Nasty Hive and off we went to check on Hive C. All was well there. A bit messy with the slow building comb but we feel that the frames weren't spaced properly so that's why the comb wasn't even. Brood existed and we closed her up.

Onto Alpha Hive. The hive was very busy and perfect in every sense. We quickly removed the top honey super and found that there were 3 beautifully capped frames which we took and replaced with 3 empty frames. All in all, everything was going well so that's all to report on the honeybee hives.

We harvested the honey and bottled about 17 honey containers this weekend. This batch was much darker and extremely thicker than the first batch which was lighter and with regular thickness. We're hoping for another prosperous honey harvest with the next nectar flow which will occur sometime later this month and into next month.

Here's a picture of the honey harvest:

Bees: Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

Weather: Beautiful, high 80's, sunny, clear sky

Our mission today was to check on the nasty hive and see if there were any signs of a queen...brood, freshly laid eggs, etc. Upon opening the covers you could hear the roar of a colony without a queen but we still pulled out one frame at a time and examined each one. By the 7th frame, we both realized that in order for this colony to survive, we need to re-queen it asap. We closed her up and instead of checking the other hives, we quickly changed out of our INTEL suits and headed off to Greenwich NY.

When we researched to see if Betterbee in Greenwich was open, we read that because of the holiday weekend they were closing for a few days. Jim remembered there was this other guy Salvatore from the same town that may have a queen to sell us. Jim remembered that the last time he contacted Salvatore via email, he responded quickly. Sure enough when I sent an email, Salvatore responded within minutes that he had one and would only charge us $20.

It was about 1pm at this point so we had a quick lunch and took off. Salvatore's directions were good and since Jim and I had done this drive twice this year already, it was very familiar. We arrived at Salvatore's house and noticed he had a huge honeybee setup in the back of his property. He was a trusting individual and left the queen bee in a cage on his porch for us. We took the queen and left the money in it's place and headed home. Here's the queen in her cage with 3 worker bees that will tend to her until she's released by the other bees in the hive:

When we arrived home we suited up again and headed up to the hives. The queens placement in the nasty hive went well and we're planning on checking the hive again next week to make sure she's accepted. IF they kill her, it can only mean that there are laying workers in the hive and we'll need to remove them before putting anymore queens in. To do this we'll need to shake off the boards at least 100 feet away and make sure no bees hitch a ride back on the frames we've shaken. Any bees that fly back to the hive we can be sure aren't laying workers and only then can we reintroduce a new queen.

We then opened up the other hives and they were both operating wonderfully with no issues. Jim and I ended up taking another fully capped frame from the Alpha Hive and set it in the freezer since the bees had created a tunnel in it and were difficult to remove. The next time we have a few frames of honey....hopefully by the 2nd nectar flow...we'll go through the honey harvesting again. In the meantime, we'll keep it in the freezer.

We also filtered the beeswax this weekend in order to make candles at some point. Here's a picture of the pure filtered beeswax that was poured into an aluminum baking loaf pan...along with some of the harvested golden deliciousness:

Melted Beeswax....and our honey

After we finished with the hive maintenance, Jim and I walked around the property to see what new flowers were sprouting and Jim noticed a honeybee cleaning itself. It appears that this honeybee is a water carrier. These little ladies carry water back to the hive and make sure the temperature is comfortable for everyone. They use it to cool the hive as well as for drinking. Here's a clip Jim took:

While at work this week, we'll be thinking of how this new queen in the nasty hive is fairing.

Bees: Saturday, June 25, 2011

Weather: 80's, Partly Sunny/Cloudy, Quick Shower later in the day, Rainbow Appeared

Capped Honey on the Frame

Jim and I decided that this weekend was going to be a honey harvest weekend. We were up at the house 2 weeks ago and we saw that the Alpha Hive was ready to give up some of its golden delicious. We made our first stop there. I tried getting the smoker going but had difficulties. As we pulled off the covers, I realized that the bees were very calm and we didn't need to smoke them. We purchased several clear storage totes earlier in the week to store some stuff in the barn. I realized one of them would come in handy to store the capped honey frames as we pulled them out. The upper honey super was still being worked on so Jim removed it from the hive and left it on the side. The next honey super was loaded!!! We pulled out the first one and not only did it have every cell filled with honey but it also had over 200 bees on it. I followed the instructions and slammed a corner of the frame on the floor and sure enough...all of the bees fell off in a clump.

We continued to do this on each of the fully capped frames we found. At the end of it, we had 5 fully capped frames to harvest which wasn't a bad harvest. The 5 frames weighted about 25-30 pounds. The sun at this point was blaring and we were sweating up a storm. We decided to move quickly on the other hives by giving them a quick run through to see if we saw any brood or eggs being laid. Unfortunately, with a quick check like we did, we didn't find anything. This coming weekend we'll spend a bit more time on them and fingers crossed everything will be fine. Here's a video of Hive C:

Earlier this year I purchased everything I thought we needed for honey harvesting except the proper honey containers! We set our honey collection area in the kitchen. We cut a 3X3 piece of cheesecloth and placed it over a micro-strainer which straddled the 5 gallon pail we had with a gate at the bottom which controlled how much honey of the filtered honey we wanted to release.

Jim sat on a chair and held the honey frame over the cheesecloth which was over the strainer and pail. I used a regular kitchen plastic spatula that we use to flip pancakes and scraped off the combed honey from the frame and into the cheesecloth. Jim had the difficult job of hold the frame which weighted quite a bit. Once all of the waxed comb was removed from the frame, Jim and I squeezed the cheesecloth with both hands to release the partially filtered honey into the micro-strainer. On and on we did this and realized we had an easy 2.5 gallons of honey!

It's impossible to do this alone and thankfully Jim enjoys doing this as much as I do. We used up a case of jelly mason jars and then moved onto another case of smaller jelly jars only to find out we had much more to do.

Here are the jelly jars we used this first go around:

Honey in Jelly Jars

We decided to hold off doing anymore until we ordered the right kinds of honey containers...which I did today. Hopefully they'll arrive before we head up to the house again.

Here are some more pictures of the honey:

Scraping off the waxed comb and honey into the cheesecloth

More deliciousness being removed

Garden: June 25, 2011

And two weeks later...

Bees: Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Weather: cloudy, low 60's, very mild wind, sporadic short showers

You wanted to see us in our HazMat suits, right?

Yesterday was raining all day and we decided not taking any chances on opening the hive and disrupting them. However we did go take a look to see what they were up to from outside of their hive. There wasn't much activity with a few bees near each opening drinking water to bring back to the colony. The nuc that was set up last week was surprising with bees going in and out. Seeing the activity outside the nuc made me happy because I thought the queen hatched from her cell and was commanding her worker bees to build a colony....WRONG!

At the first available moment on today, Jim and I suited up and decided to open the nuc first. Upon opening it we noticed a large number of drone bees. When we pulled out what was a full frame of capped honey, we noticed it was completely drained of any honey. All that was left was empty comb. The next frame was the brood frame and unfortunately even these were destroyed by marauding bees during the robbing. The queen had emerged but was quickly killed by the robbing bees. I was very disappointed but learned a lesson which was to never mix bees from two colonies in one hive. I believe they fought to the death immediately and when they were dead, the bees from the other hives had an opportunity to rob.

This is what a Nuc looks like

The next hive we opened was the Alpha Hive. The first thing we noticed after opening the telescoping cover was that ants had made a home in the cover. Last week we had put the legs of the hive stand in cups full of water to fend off any ants looking for a free meal. What we didn't count on was a very long blade of grass touching the hive which created a bridge for the ants. Crafty fuckers. After killing them one by one, we went through the lengthy process of pulling off the honey supers and were glad to see this hive was doing an incredible job at making honey. Hopefully the next time we're up at the house we'll be able to remove a whole box of frames and bottle some honey. Jim pulled off each box carefully until he was down to the lower brood super. We found the queen's cage we put in last week and the queen emerged successfully. We then began pulling out each frame looking for the queen herself or even a sign that she exists such as newly laid eggs....no luck. We then pulled out frames from the 2nd brood super and Jim did it again...he found the queen immediately and pointed her out to me. Last week when we installed her, she was on the smaller side and this week she was plump full of eggs. She was making her rounds laying her eggs in empty comb cells and the worker bees were tending to her. We were satisfied, loaded up the remaining honey supers and closed her up.

Empty Brood Cells on frame from Alpha Hive. It's amazing how uniform they create these cells.

The next hive was Hive C. The hive was calm even though when we removed the cover, a few brood cells were killed. We found the empty queen cage and again the queen successfully emerged. Overall the colony was functioning but we believe something is wrong because there were 3 supercedure cells that we killed off. Jim found the queen again quickly and she looked healthy and accepted by the colony. We closed her up and moved onto the Nasty Hive.

The Nasty Hive kept to its name and were dive bombing my face netting as we got closer. They're very protective and Jim believes they're Africanized. We opened it quickly, looked around, didn't find the queen but knew she was there because the brood looked great. We shut her up and called it a day.

Next week we're staying local but the following week we're hoping to begin collecting the honey...FINALLY! We'll post pictures ;)

One more HazMat suit pic of me that Jim took!

Garden: June 12, 2011

We managed to finish all our summer planting despite the rain, adding a couple new vegetables along the way.



Harvested the strawberries and honeyberries; blueberries are just about ready.

Bees: Saturday, June 4th, 2011

Weather: Beautiful 75 degrees, sunny, mildly windy

Jim and I were excited to see whether the newly emerged queen from 2 weeks ago in the Alpha hive was busy laying eggs. As we approached the hive, they were behaving normal so we expected all to be well. We removed the top cover and the guard bees looked at us as they always do with the "not again" look. We removed 2 of the honey supers, the queen excluder and as we inspected the first brood super we noticed it was full of honey. We removed a frame in the middle of the super and lo and behold Jim spotted the Queen Bee Marie Antoinette immediately...he's got a great eye at finding her.

We held that frame with Marie Antoinette and pulled frame after frame trying to spot eggs...but there weren't any. What we had read about in the books about consecutive rainy days combined with a newly emerged queen was a recipe for disaster and it happened to us. Because of the consecutive rainy days the queen doesn't leave the hive to mate and after a few days of this, the queen gives up and ends up laying unfertilized eggs (drones) and eventually the entire hive dies.

Keeping with tradition of any queen named Marie Antoinette, I was forced to chop off her head. Here's a picture of Marie Antoinette before she went to the guillotine.

Can you spot the Queen Bee?

We moved onto Hive C which seemed very sluggish. Bees were coming and going but nothing compared to the busy Alpha Hive. Last week when we checked Hive C, it had a supercedure cell and we were hoping we'd see that a new queen emerged. The frames weren't organized well with comb scattered about in different sizes and shapes...clear sign that a queen didn't exist. We sealed up the hive and took off for Greenwich New York...home to a large beekeeping facility named BetterBees.

We arrived after a tranquil drive through several small towns with beautiful old homes. When reached BetterBees, there were many cars there picking up everything from packaged bees to honey extracting equipment. While waiting on line to pick up 2 new queen bees, a neurotic, loud woman and her husband decided to chat up me and Jim. They started beekeeping last summer but have no idea what to do with a hive. She said that the whole family is afraid of the bees and they go running into the house screaming when the bees come near them. I thought that was an odd comment for someone interested in raising bees. When I asked her if she suits up she said that she never bothered to buy one and uses an old $5 wedding dress & veil and rubber dishwashing gloves when she adds more boxes to the hive. At that point Jim and I looked at each other and realized she and her husband (who kept his distance from her) were loons.

We picked up the 2 queen bees, said goodbye to the loons and drove back home excited that we had 2 eager queen bees ready to lay thousands of eggs in the waiting comb. One of the caged queen bees began piping loudly and when we researched it online, the article said they do that when they're virgin queens ready to battle another queen OR they make that sound soon after mating. We're hoping that she's a mated queen but time will tell.

At BetterBee we also purchased a 5 frame nuc. I wanted to try an experiment to see if it worked. The experiment was to remove the frame from Hive C with the supercedure cell (and messed up comb) and put it in the nuc with a few bees AND taking a frame of honeycomb from Alpha Hive along with bees and putting it in the nuc as well. Originally I didn't want to take any bees from Hive C since their numbers were dwindling but about 30 of them wouldn't leave so into the nuc they went too. I sealed the nuc up and checked it the next day. There weren't as many bees as we'd like but we're hoping they'll do what they need to do and keep the nuc going. We have fingers crossed that they'll make it but I don't believe there were enough bees to manage the colony until the queen emerges and starts laying eggs. They need at least 1000 bees at a minimum to build the comb quickly and keep out any unwanted pests such as moths from invading their space.

Installing the queen bees into Hive C and Alpha hive was successful and we'll check next weekend to make sure all went well.

Also worth noting is that we noticed the new queen bees were thinner than Marie Antoinette. It could be that they're Carniolan bees and Marie Antoinette was an Italian Honeybee or it's possible that Marie Antoinette mated later and it took a few days longer to produce fertilzed eggs....swelling her abdomen.

If you had a difficult time spotting Marie Antoinette, here she is circled:

Great Barrington Saturday Evening

After a busy day driving 4 hours for our bees, Jim and I had a nice dinner at a great woodfired, organic,sourdough pizza restaurant called Baba Louie's in Great Barrington.

Upstate: Sunday, May 29, 2011

Here's a landscape photo Jim took of the house.

The Gardens, May 28, 2011

Frank and I spent the weekend finishing up all our summer plantings for our veggie and flower gardens. Here’s a rundown of where we stand and what’s happening:

Vegetable garden

Bok choy has begun to mature. Some insect damage, but not too bad. Peas continue to do well and should begin producing in 2 weeks. Swiss chard should start maturing in about another week. Beets, which we thinned this weekend (hoping to avoid the overcrowded mess we had last year, are also doing well. The zucchini and string beans are both doing well, having just emerged from the ground. However, after seeing fairly extensive damage to the string bean leaves, we decided to fully cover it in row cover. (A week before, we covered half the garden and found the covered half doing better than the uncovered, with each leaf brighter and healthier.)

Just planted: eggplant, lima beans, hot peppers, tomatoes (small plants, which we bought from Marc Christo).

Waiting to see if the calendula, which I spread throughout the garden, will have an overall good effect on deterring certain pests.

Squash garden

Just planted: watermelon, butternut, buttercup, melon, pumpkin. Chose no row cover, as we found it not particularly effective at deterring “weeds.”

Flower garden

Calendula and bachelor button both continue to grow. Just noticed the gomphrena emerging. And planted lavender, which began to bloom almost immediately. Liatris is moving along, having reached three inches in height.

Just planted: Sunflowers (3 varieties), hyssop and borage.

Fruits

Honeyberry Blueberry

Pear, plum and peach trees are all producing fruit this year, which was a big surprise. The pears are doing the best, with the most fruit. The biggest surprise was the plum tree, which needed a pollinator. Seems our bees found a good match for it, so now we have about a dozen fruits growing. The peach tree has about 7 peaches on it. Nearly half of the blueberry bushes are producing fruit, and so are our honeyberry bushes.

The grape vines are growing, albeit some more slowly than others, but we’re not expecting any fruit this year.

Bees: Sunday, May 29th, 2011

This is Alpha Hive after we removed the entrance reducer.

Last weekend before heading home Jim and I found some abandoned pallets and decided to use them under the Nasty Hive and Hive C. My dad stayed up there and earlier in the week he was kind enough to load the pallets on his little tractor and dropped them off near the hives for us. Apparently he left the motor running a bit too close to the Nasty Hive so between the racket the engine was making and the exhaust it was spewing out, the Nasty Hive did what it does best and got NASTY. A few of them made a BEEline right for his face. The other thing that annoys bees in general is anything that swats which my dad continually did. He said one darted at him and got him on the nose.

Today we suited up and had a number of things to do, one of which was to lay the pallets down and carefully move the hives onto their new location. Our first stop was the Alpha Hive and we wanted to check to make sure the new queen was laying brood. We opened the top and the girls were wonderful as always. Jim and I think they play games with us because when we open the telescoping lid, a few of them peer out of the top cover and we have a staring game.

Once we removed the top cover, the honey super was full of worker bees all doing their thing. We estimate about 50% of the honey super was being worked on. Jim suggested we go deeper into the hive to find the queen or at least find bood. Removing a few frames of the brood supers was difficult because it was FULL of capped honey. We did find the 2 supersedure cells we left a few weeks ago and according to some websites we researched, we did find that the queen Jim spotted last week did indeed tear into the 2nd supersedure cell and killed off the other queen before she emerged. Unfortunately Jim, who is excellent at spotting laid eggs, couldn't find any. We believe because of the 2 weeks of torrential rain and wind, that she wasn't able to leave the hive to mate and she could possibly be laying unfertilized drone eggs. We'll check early next Saturday morning and if we still don't spot any brood, we'll hike up to Greenwich NY to purchase another queen and introduce her in the colony. Finding the virgin queen and killing her will be a daunting task.

The last adjustment to the hive was removing the entrace reducer. This was a great move because it allowed them all to come and go at a much faster pace. Other than the missing brood, the hive is behaving fantastic with their nectar and pollen collection.

Onto Hive C... we removed the feeder that's been on there for a few weeks. This hive was a bit disappointing because they haven't really drawn out enough comb and we couldn't find any trace of egg laying. Having pulled out a few frames, we were surprised to find several swarm & supercedure cells on some frames. We believe that there wasn't proper ventilation with the top feeder on and think that this was the cause for those cell creations. We ended up closing her up and moving her onto the wooden pallet was a breeze.

The Nasty Hive was another surprise...they were much calmer. Could it be that they're getting used to us or was it the smoking we gave it? All indications point to the smoking which we'll need to do going forward when we have to go into the hive. The 2nd surprise we had was how much comb was drawn AND the nicely laid eggs. Jim, of course, spotted them. There were some empty frames on the Nasty Hive so there wasn't any need to add another brood super just yet. We closed it up content that this one will survive wonderfully. Moving the hive onto the pallet wasn't as difficult as I thought. Since this one faces North, in a completely direction than the other two, we decided to slowly rotate her every weekend until this hive faces the same direction as the others. We believe this will help the hive survive the winter since the opening will face the rising sun and keep them warmer.

We're keeping our fingers crossed this week that the lagging hives will pick themselves up and be active by the time we see them again.

Bees: Saturday, May 21, 2011

Weather: 60's, overcast, cool, periodic showers

When we arrived last night there wasn't any electricity at the house and my dad said there were thunderstorms throughout the day. While sitting around in the dim light of a few candles my dad recounted the days events since he had arrived. He said one thing that concerned Jim and I which was that one of the hives wasn't active while the other two were busy. We were concerned because we knew we had left 2 supercedure cells in the hive and also knew that they hatched sometime during the week.

What we didn't know was whether half of the hive swarmed away with the old queen, whether the old queen killed the new queen or whether the colony killed the old queen and the newly hatched queens could have both fatally injured themselves leaving the hive queenless hence no activity! Since there wasn't any electricity to do research online, we decided to go to bed and get an early start in the morning.

Bees: Saturday May 14th, 2011

Weather: Overcast, some showers, mid 60′s, hardly any wind

Let me start by saying we finally have a name for Hive B and it’s now going to be called Nasty Hive. Yesterday Jim and I decided to check on the top feeders on the new hive because last week they seemed to be getting cloudy. We decided since we were only going to check the feeder that we didn’t need to suit up. WRONG!!! We were 2 minutes into the process when a bee landed on my t-shirt. Jim told me not to move and saw that it was trying to sting me but the way the shirt was folded it wasn’t getting me. Jim grabbed it and threw it away. It was a that point that the bee came back with a vengeance and was going for any part of Jim that it could. Jim quickly ran out towards the open field however this bee followed and stung Jim on the shoulder. Although Jim and I have been stung quite a bit, you never really get used to it. A throbbing lump quickly started to swell on his shoulder. Hence the name NASTY HIVE. We called it a day at this point.

On Saturday we suited up properly and decided to finish checking on the hives. We first changed Hive C and all went well. We removed the feeder and replaced it with a clean one we had in the barn, quickly filled it up and sealed it up….nothing worth mentioning occurred. We then moved onto Hive B which did have cloudy water but we didn’t have another clean one to put on so we decided to leave it for one more week. When we lifted up the feeder, the bees had begun to seal a frame to the underside of the feeder. We’re trying to figure out why and came to the conclusion that because we had accidentally left out a frame a few weeks ago, the bees had built comb similar to comb in a Top Bar hive…. in the empty space. Jim removed the frame and seeing they were all agitated at our intrusion, we put the feeder back on with cover and sealed it up again…but not until I got stung in the ankle.

We walked away but they wouldn’t let up. We walked a good 500 feet away and 5 minutes later they were still aggressive. We then moved onto Alpha Hive when things calmed down. Since this hive didn’t have a feeder and we put on a honey super the week before, we decided to check on those frames first. There was comb building on most of the center frames at the top, there was glistening nectar being deposited which made us feel great that these girls were doing the right thing. Jim had read some articles where some people had difficulties getting their honey supers going…not these girls.

Next we wanted to inspect each frame in the brood supers to see if anymore swarm cells were present. We also wanted to see how things were going since we had reversed the brood supers a few weeks ago. The top brood super had plenty of swarm cells and supersedure cells. I removed each of the swarm cells and we counted about 8 of them. Most of the frames had something going on…some capped honey, some brood but there were also some empty frames at the ends and also some wavy looking comb. We ended up leaving 2 supersedure cells on a frame until we understood exactly what our next step would be. More on that later. Overall the hive was extremely busy and I’d say crowded which makes sense why the swarm cells were being created. We haven’t seen the queen in quite a while. Also worth mentioning is that the bees in this hive have a great temperament. We closed the hive and left since we pretty much pulled their hive apart and they were all milling about outside waiting for us to leave.

We checked on the hives later in the afternoon and that’s when one of the bees from the NASTY HIVE decided to sting me on the cheek. I’m hoping the swelling goes down by the time I go into work tomorrow. I look like the Godfather on one side of my face with a puffy jowl. Jim’s a trooper and not complaining about his shoulder.

Last night Jim found some good articles on both swarm cells and the supercedure cells. We decided to let nature take its own course and let the supercedure cells hatch. Not having found the old queen, it’s possible that she’s aged and not giving off enough pheremone to keep the hive happy. We’re expecting them to hatch by next weekend.

Here’s one of our honeybees on our apple tree blossom

Garden: Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Flower garden: Calendula and bachelor button growing, but still at seedling stage. California poppies came up five days early. Liatris is growing as well, and possibly seeing the Verbena coming up — although too early to tell. Planted additional seeds on Saturday and Sunday — English Thyme and Lemon Balm.

Vegetable Garden: String beans are doing well, about 5″ tall. Bok Choy will be ready to start picking in about a week. Swiss chard still has a ways to go, still in its early seedling stage, as are beets, although they’re moving along quickly. It’s been a week and they’re about the same size as swiss chard, which had more time in the soil. Planted zucchini and string beans, using the Farmer’s Almanac lunar calendar (favorable time for planting above-ground crops and flowers). Added some tansy (mugwort) to the garden, and the calendula added two weeks ago is coming up in the zucchini area by the fence.

Fruits: Planted two honeyberry bushes. Small fruit on the bottom. Waiting to see what comes of it. Planted another blueberry bush, which had a lot of young green berries. Waiting to see how they mature. Of the two young blueberry bushes added a couple of weeks ago, both flowered — but not sure whether the flowers will turn into fruit. The flowers dropped off, possibly due to the low temperatures. Planted another plum tree so that the existing one could cross pollinate. And finally planted yet another grape vine, which had along green vines. The two existing ones are coming along, albeit slowly.

All the fruit trees, particularly the apple trees, have or are currently flowering.

Bees: Sunday May 6th, 2011

Weather: Sunny with some clouds, 65 degrees, 30 minutes of rain at one point in the afternoon

We decided to open the hives to check on the sugar water in Hives B & C and also remove the wooden cage from Hive B. Both hives had some sugar water left and the solution was turning murky. At some point next week we will either remove it altogether or clean out the feeder and add new sugar water.
When we opened Hive C we noticed that bees were still getting stuck in the pollen trap so we both decided to remove it, paint it and put it on at some later date. They handled the removal fine.

Hive B was a bit of concern because upon lifting the feeder the honey bees had built comb from the bottom of the feeder into the brood super. This all happened because we were one frame short in the brood super. Jim and I were trying to figure out how we had an extra frame in the barn and at that point realized where it belonged! We quickly shaved off the beautiful comb that they worked so hard to create and installed the correct frame in the super.

Jim then noticed on the Alpha Hive that we never removed a piece of plywood that we kept at the bottom of the landing board to protect the inside of the hive from the chilly evening weather. As we both lift the hive a bit and pulled the board out we noticed a WAX MOTH Larvae squirming around in wax and pollen remnants. We realized then that there really wasn’t anything to worry about because the colony is VERY strong and would have corrected anything wrong and there was also protective barrier made of a wire screen where nothing could have gotten into the main hive. We crouched down to view under the hive and Jim noticed some odd peanut shaped comb at the bottom of some frames. This meant that the colony in the Alpha Hive was crammed and they were preparing to hive. Although swarming is a good thing because it means the hive is very healthy and it wants to replicate, we don’t want them to swarm so we’ll have a nice honey stream this year. We then opened up the hive and shaved off each of the swarm cells. Inside were Queen pupae with quite a bit of creamy white royal jelly. We’ll continue to add honey supers and shave off any swarm cells but all it takes is to miss one and half the hive will leave with her.

Who knows what will happen next week….stay tuned!

Garden: Sunday May 1st, 2011

It’s been two weeks and the peas have begun making their climb up from the soil. The swiss chard has just begun to emerge, along with the bok choy. It’s been two weeks since Frank and I hustled to get the garden in shape for the summer. Here’s what it looked like three weeks ago. More to come.

You may be able to notice in the picture that the weed blocking fabric isn’t the best. It’s too thin and weeds are beginning to grow. Next year we’ll use this plastic weed blocking material since nothing grew underneath it. The dark rectangle path you see is made from recycled car tires and this too has weed blocking material built underneath it. We’ll hopefully be able to use this year after year and not have to worry about weeds.

Bees: Sunday May 1st, 2011

Weather: Sunny, high 60′s, hardly any wind

Today we woke up and the first thing we did was digging up the old lavender shrubs along the patio stone stairway and planted the new lavender plants Jim purchased over the past few weeks from the farmers market. He placed them perfectly and we’re making it a point to trim off the ends to prevent them from getting woody. We decided to plant the old lavender plants that were dug up and create a row of lavender plants by the bee hives.
This afternoon we decided to put the honey super on the Alpha hive. Jim read that we shouldn’t put on the queen excluder in order for the worker bees to begin building comb. At some point next weekend we’ll see if we should put the queen excluder on.
Each of the hives were busy this afternoon. One point that Jim and I noticed was that hive B wasn’t as active as the other 2 hives. We believe the reason was because the hive faced North and it took a while for the sun to reach the entrance; giving them the go-ahead to begin foraging.
Lastly, we also heard odd tapping noises, similar to the tapping noise a moth makes when it hits a lighbulb, coming from hive C. Upon getting closer we heard it was at the bottom of the hive. It could have to do with some bees being trapped below the pollen trap since there’s an opening there. Next week we’ll open the hive to check that everything is in order.

Bees: April 30th, 2011

Weather: Sunny, mild wind, 60′s

On Tuesday we received the delivery from H&L Bee Farm (www.hlbeefarm.com) in Ocilla Georgia (229.468.7660) of 2 3lb Bee Packages and they looked in relatively good shape with not many dead bees. The bees we purchased from them are pure Minnesota Hygienic Italian Honeybees. The queen bees will lay wall to wall, winter well, are not bad to swarm, easy to work, and are the leaders in honey production. Jim and I decided to leave work early on Wednesday since not many of the bees would survive until Saturday cooped up in the wooden box. We arrived at Craryville Farm at 5:30pm and we had little time before the sun set to get the bees to their new home. As the minutes ticked by, the wind got stronger but we had no choice but to get the job done…and quickly.

We installed the first package in hive C and all went as smoothly as possible. Hive B, the stryofoam hive, was next and that too went well. We put a 3 gallon top feeder on each, sealed them up and decided to come up again over the weekend to make sure the queens emerged from their cages.

Today 11am we checked up on the hives and noticed very little activity from each hive. It had been a cooler evening and the coolness still lingered. Hive A probably had the most activity. My feeling is that since it’s the older hive, with many more bees, they’re already used to the cooler mornings and are a bit quicker to start coming out. Hive B and C had minimal activity but we did notice a few bees flying around.

After lunch we suited up and noticed a tenfold jump in activity from each of the hives with Hive A being the busiest. We first opened hive C to find that 1/3 of the sugar water from the feeder had been eaten. We removed the feeder and searched the frames for the cage. The cage was waxed to the come and we found that the queen had emerged from her cage. We examined the frames and the worker bees were drawing comb. Jim also spotted the queen quickly which told us that she was alive and she had been accepted into the colony.

Hive B was another story…again the sugar water on this hive was down by a 1/3 and when we searched for the cage, we again found it waxed onto the frame. Surprisingly the candy blocker was eaten away and worker bees had entered the cage but the queen still remained inside the cage. Jim and I decided to let the queen emerge on her own and we put the cage back into the hive and sealed it up.

When we checked Hive A, most of the frames on the top brood super looked fine however one frame in particular made me uneasy since it had odd looking brood cells. Jim assured me that this hive was fine since the other brood pattern was fine and the honey was capped perfectly. We quickly searched the top brood super for the queen but after causing a bit of destruction, we decided to leave it alone and check on it another time.

Here is a video clip Jim took this afternoon.