Picture from the Lair!

Yesterday, I visited the Lair to make sure that they hadn't run out of room, and I think all three hives have just the right amount of room left so I didn't add any extra supers.  Here's the picture showing the final height of the three hives:

On the left side, the top super is about a third full, the middle hive (significantly taller than me now) is around 70% finished with the 8th super and hasn't significantly started on the 9th, and the right hive is only around 50% finished with the 5th super.

It was only 4 days since I added the top boxes, so with any luck and good weather, the nectar will continue to flow and the top supers will get filled out.  If not, I'll be stuck with some partially-filled frames, but I can either swap some full, lower frames with the partly-filled ones or use the partial frames to bolster some of our weaker hives at the Acreage (probably both).  I want 2-3 supers full of honey going into winter, and while I can potentially feed the hives sugar-water after we harvest on August 21, it will be a hassle and I'd prefer to simply let the bees backfill the lower boxes as winter approaches.  I hope to have around 100 lbs of honey left for the bees when they go into winter which translates to about 3 Medium supers at a low estimate of 35 lbs apiece.

Lair Update

Over a week ago, on a Tuesday morning, once again I found that the center hive had totally filled the top super (after only about a week!) and the two outer hives had just barely started thinking about working on their 5th super.

As before, I took the untouched 5th super from the right hive and placed it on the center hive right away, and then came back on Thursday after my dad delivered two more supers now empty from the honey extraction for the center and right hives. Unfortunately, I end up rather distracted when I'm at the Lair, and while Jen (a Lair native) took some great pictures of the hives, I forgot, so I can't show how the middle hive has grown to a bit taller than me!

Just yesterday (August 4)  I visited the hives again with another 2 supers.  I quickly inspected the left hive and found that boxes 4 and 5 were totally drawn out and mostly full of honey.  I dug down deeper into the hive and found beautiful brood patterns (seen below) and found a frame of eggs and larvae proving that the queen was there within the last 3 days.

I was short on time and I'd hurt my shoulder earlier in the week (trying to start my lawnmower) so I didn't inspect the other two hives, but I checked the top boxes and found that the 7th box was full of honey and largely capped, and the 8th box was 80% drawn out, and probably 60 or 70% full of curing nectar.  I added a 9th super to the middle hive to keep them collecting as long as the nectar flow continues.

Here's a picture of a fully capped frame of honey on the very edge of the brood nest.  I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this was from the 3rd frame from the end in the 4th box from the ground.  I didn't see any brood in the 5th or higher boxes so harvesting should go very well.

The right hive is still the slowest, having drawn out the 5th box only about 60%.  I will bring 2-3 supers on Monday or Tuesday to add room to the middle and right hives, and possibly the left hive if they've made good progress in the half-week since I last added another super.

I think adding supers to just the center and right hives will be sufficient.  I might lose out on 20-50 pounds of honey that they'd otherwise pack away, but if you provide an excess of space right up to the end of the nectar flow, you have to deal with the large number of partially-drawn and partially-filled frames in the top super.  You can steal some honey from lower down and fill the partially-filled frames by feeding the bees sugar water, but since I can't be out at the lair twice a week, I'd like to avoid fall feeding if I can.

That means I'll have to harvest maybe 25-50 lbs (1-2 boxes) less honey than I otherwise could, and letting the bees fill up the hives to the top might mean they don't collect a similar amount, but at 25+ lbs per box, I'm already looking at over 200 lbs of honey from these two hives, and since my distribution network only had to handle 25 lbs or so last year, I'm not sure I'll notice the "loss."

Assuming good weather, we've tentatively planned to harvest the honey (brush the bees off each frame so that the bee-free capped honey can be transported to the Acreage and extracted) on the morning of Sunday, August 21.  Then I may start extracting in the evening, or wait until Monday evening after work to uncap and extract the honey from the honeycomb.

Honey harvest!

First, some bad news.  One of my dad's 6 hives was totally robbed dry by some of the other hives, and we've seen evidence of some robbing in both my hives.  Also, while we got 10 or so lbs of honey from Jo, most of the honey I had been counting on there was consumed by the drones that have overwhelmed the hive.  With an unfertilized queen (or possibly a laying worker) the hive will probably starve before winter, and certainly hasn't got a chance of making it until spring as the queen isn't laying workers, and unfertilized eggs (drones) can't become queens.

That said, Megmight yield some small amount of honey, there are a couple other hives at the acreage that have between 100 and 200 lbs of honey that is currently being capped and cured, and last weekend, we were able to harvest 100 lbs from one of the better-producing hives along with whatever we could salvage from Meg!

The Harvest

Unfortunately it always fails to occur to me to take pictures of the apiary -- really a clearing with 7 or so hives placed on the Westish edge -- but this picture from the back shows many of the hives.  Jo is in the front -- the hive with the bad queen -- and in the picture I'm selecting the fullest frames for harvest.  Second is Meg, and while we saw maybe 10-15 frames of capped honey in Meg, it was only 60% capped so we left it for the bees to finish processing.  On Sunday we noticed some robbing from Meg, so depending on how bad it was, all her honey might now be in one of the other hives, but we'll find out in late August when we harvest again.

The rest of the hives are "my dad's" although that distinction may become arbitrary as it makes more sense to divide up hives by apiary than person (remember "my" hives started at a different location).  They're named by color, but some colors are similar or being repeated so even my parents can't seem to keep them straight!

We took three and a half supers with about 8 frames each (normally they hold 9 or 10 but I like a little extra space when I'm dealing with heavy, sticky frames full of honey) back to the garage and got to work cutting the wax capping off the cells of honey and extracting the honey with my dad's new toy, a Maxant 6-frame radial extractor!

 

Above, my dad (left) and I are cutting the wax off the frames.  When the bees evaporate enough water so the honey is less than about 18.6% water and will last forever (or more practically, at least until the next summer) without fermenting, the bees seal each cell containing honey with a thin wax cap.  We cut off the caps and any comb that extends beyond the edge of the wooden frame (releasing a lot of tasty honey in the process) so that the honey will flow out when turned in the centrifuge!

Above, left, is a frame of capped honey with all the wax cappings and honey caught in a maple syrup pan, and an uncapped frame of gooey honey on the right.  We looked everywhere for the uncapping tank we had last year, but it was nowhere to be found!

Then my mum took over and spun the frames until all the honey came out (about 1 or 2 minutes of consistent turning for 6 frames).  Note that in this picture, we had tried tangential extraction with only three frames.  It worked, but it took a lot more time and didn't seem to be more effective.  Normally the 6 wooden frames would be arranged like spokes instead of around the edge of the centrifuge.

My dad and I took turns on the extractor, but being male, we were a bit overzealous and the next picture shows how too much force will "blow out" all the wax in a frame so the wax has to be replaced -- a huge inconvenience for both us and the bees!

The honey and some wax that fell off in the centrifuge is poured out the bottom of the extractor into a couple of metal sieves to strain out wax and any other debris.  Some people filter their honey even further to remove even some barely-visible clumps of pollen (usually still leaving lots of pollen, just not in clumps), but our honey turns out quite clear (when it isn't full of bubbles from pouring the dregs of a pail anyway) and while I'm skeptical of claims for amazing health benefits from strained but unfiltered honey, I don't see any reason to add another complex step.  I might change my mind if all the honey starts crystallizing right away one year, but for now, I just strain my honey.

Altogether we filled two 5-gallon pails about 80% full (one for Rachel and I, and one for my parents) for a total of 88 pounds.  Here's most of the 46 pounds I bottled last night in my kitchen!

The jar in the front, left, was the last jar I bottled -- you can tell it is absolutely FULL of bubbles while the rest of the honey is darker and more translucent.

So... anybody want some honey?  I think I'm limited to about 25 lbs for sale right now until our next harvest (but my parents have more, so feel to poke them too!)

I visited the Lair today to deliver one more super to replace the one I'd transfered to the super-productive hive.  The bees were already "bearding" at 7:00 this morning as the high heat index of 85 starts creeping up to a high of 118.  It's hard to cure honey or even evaporate water to cool the hive when it's so incredibly hot and humid.  There won't be much nectar collection today as the bees and flowers both just try to wait out the heat.

 

 

 

The two outer hives were about 80% finished with their 4th box, and the center hive was drawing out about 30-50% of their 6th box, although as I was in a hurry and the bees were cranky on such a hot and humid morning, I just peered in through the top instead of examining any frames more closely.  When the heat subsides a bit, I'll need to spend some serious time on a full inspection in the next couple weeks.

Queenless Resolution

Meg and Jo both have around 2.5 fully capped boxes of honey!  However, only one of them is thriving with a new queen.  Below is a picture of Meg's queen -- she's been laying some pretty good patterns, and I don't foresee any problems going into the winter.

I did notice more brood cells ripped open with Varroa mites than usual.  This is exactly what I got Minnesota Hygenic queens for, although I guess I can't really be certain of the queen genetics now that the queen has been replaced at least once.

Jo, on the other hand, does appear to have a new queen (there are no signs of laying workers) but she's laying mostly drones and I noticed 3 queen cells in the hive.  Maybe they're trying to supercede, but the population isn't up to peak nectar gathering any more.

We're going to wait another week or so to decide what to do.  Maybe we'll combine Jo with a swarm my dad caught at the acreage, or maybe we'll just take all their honey and restart with a split in the spring.

At the Lair, I had a quick look under the covers, and found that while the two outer hives had just barely started drawing out the 5th box (and were only half done with the 4th), the middle hive had drawn out every square inch of space in all 5 boxes!  Since I didn't have any extra supers on hand, I simply moved one from the right hive to the middle hive to even out the space.  I'll stop over there tomorrow or the next day to drop off one more super so all 3 hives have extra space.  As a related note, frames with wax should not be left outside in a hot car in the sun where the temperature can exceed the melting point of wax.

Here's a picture of the lair after my manipulations.  I should really come up with names for these hives, but now that I'm having trouble with Meg and Jo (I'm sure I'm screwing them up now and again) I'm not sure what kind of naming convention I should look for.  Maybe just serial numbers?

Quick update

The weather is finally good and sunny for a prime nectar flow!  If we get a few more weeks of good weather, we could end up with a fine honey harvest!  The bees have been slow this year as the rainy and cold weather pushed back nectar production, but there's still a good chance of a good harvest if the weather holds.

I brought my friend Chris to the Lair to see the hives there, and we had a lot of fun going through the top two boxes.  I was worried that given their past progress they might be almost done with the 4th box, but actually only one of the hives had even started on the 4th box.  I thought it was interesting that the hive pointed South was about a frame ahead of the other two hives (pointed East).  This is not remotely outside of normal hive variability, but it would be interesting if the South-facing hive did better year after year.

I added a fifth box to all three hives so I won't have to follow them quite so closely in the next couple weeks.

At the Acreage, Meg and Jo are still broodless as of Wednesday when my dad checked.  He has a hard time seeing eggs and didn't check all 70 frames but with any luck the queens are now mated (or getting mated) and getting ready for laying.  If I have a chance tomorrow at our dinner party, I might have another look, but otherwise I'll put it off until next weekend as by then the queens should have emerged (2 weeks) been mated (10 days) and started laying with some time to spare.

Two queenless hives.

As of last Saturday, Meg and Jo were both queenless.  I think Meg may have made a new queen who just hasn't started laying yet, but just to be sure, I moved three of the seven queen cells I found in Meg over to Jo.  Above is a picture of a frame with some queen cells.  I plan to do a close inspection again in 3 weeks as by then both hives should have egg-laying queens again, if not, I'll have to move a couple frames of eggs and brood from other hives to give them another chance to make queens, or just buy queens for the hives.  My dad will have a look under the covers to see if they need more room for honey storage (I suspect so!) and my whole family is helping with hive construction to keep up with the bees' productivity!

At the Lair, I'm planning to add a 5th box to each hive this week and put in queen excluders at the same time to keep the honey supers clean.  The weather has been too rainy for a serious nectar flow, but I expect it could take off at any moment.

More Supers and Supercedure

Last week at the Lair, I found that the hives were around 50-60% done drawing out their third medium box, so on Thursday, I went out and added another box to each hive.  I didn't check below the third box this time, but all three had great brood patterns with partially capped frames toward the outside.  I saw one of the bees eat their way out of their cocoon while I was inspecting some of the frames.  As it happens a couple thousand times a day on average, it's not a particularly rare occurrence, but since I wasn't going through the lower boxes, I had time to sit and stare until she made it out.

I moved up a couple of the frames into the third boxes to get them started and when I left, the bees were still zipping in and out of the hive.  They've built up their populations well, so if we get a strong nectar flow, I think we'll get 30-60 lbs of honey from each hive!  I also knocked down the grass around the hives to keep them from overheating too badly in this warmer weather.

After this 4th box is fully drawn out, I will consider adding a queen excluder to keep her from laying eggs in the honey areas.  Some beekeepers think this slows down honey production as well, but it's awfully inconvenient to have to sort brood and honey frames, and as I'm unlikely to turn a profit either way (and I'm not sure what I'd do with 300 lbs of honey) it might be a good idea.

At the Acreage, Meg is doing very well, and Jo seems just as strong, but I found some capped queen cells.  This either means that Jo already swarmed (as they usually swarm just as the cells get capped) or that the queen died and they're working on replacing her.  It could also mean that they're superseding the queen, but as I didn't see eggs or larvae in the hive, either she's dead or stopped laying.

Jo looks stronger than I would expect if the hive had swarmed, but it's certainly possible.  The loss of a month of laying will badly slow down production in this hive, but I'm curious to see how it turns out if I don't immediately requeen.  Tomorrow I will check again for larvae (after two weeks from the last check) and if there are none, I'll add some eggs and larvae from Meg and see if they turn some of those into queens -- as they should if there's no queen in the hive.  As it takes a queen 8 days from capping to emergence, and about another week to start laying eggs, we should see the start of a new brood nest by now.

I'll also be looking to make sure that the brood nest hasn't become totally filled with honey while the hive waited for more egg-laying.  If it has, I'll have to rearrange some of the frames to provide plenty of room in the brood area.

My dad also bought a 6 frame radial extractor (or 3 frame tangential -- we'll see which orientation we prefer)!  It's a hand-cranked model so with any luck, we'll be spending a sore and straining weekend turning the crank, but it should be upgradable with a motor for a few hundred dollars, and I think neither of us has real plans for expansion in the next year or two.  The boys are at least a year too young to think that turning a crank for 10 minutes to get really tasty honey is a good use of their time (especially when they can just be silly and get honey for free) but next year we'll put them to work as much as they'll tolerate.

Up to 3 Boxes Each at the Lair

Two days ago, I added a box of foundation to each hive at the lair bringing them up to 3 each.  All three hives were more than 50% finished drawing out and using their second box (with the first box almost completely full of brood and a couple frames of honey on the outside) and while the general rule is to add a box of foundation when they're 70% done with the previous one, I don't get out there often enough to be really certain that I'd catch them before they got overcrowded so I added a third box a bit early.

I looked closely at many of the frames with Jen (a Lair native) and I'd guess there was 10 frames of eggs and brood in each hive -- they're really making new bees fast!  They'll have to pick up honey production to hit more than 4 medium boxes in August, but if the weather allows a good honey flow in the next couple months, they'll certainly have the population to take advantage of it!

I noticed something I haven't seen so obviously in the past -- we smoked the hives, primarily so we could scrape off burr comb between the boxes without angering hundreds of bees (we just crushed two or three each time) and when I inspected frames, I saw many more bees than usual with their butts sticking out of cells with ripening nectar.  They were obviously sipping some of the nectar, possibly filling up on sugar in the event that they had to leave in a fire.  I think it happened much more than usual because none of the honey was capped yet -- they were still evaporating water to get it thick enough to preserve -- and I wasn't really that aware of normal bee activity early last year before they started capping honey throughout the hive.

Tomorrow, we'll be visiting the Acreage where Meg and Jo now reside, but I don't really expect good weather.  I think I'll try to have a look at activity in the top box if it's not actually raining, but it doesn't look promising.  ONE of these days, I'll get out there to see what's going on in a second-year hive!

Quick Inspection Update

Meg and Jo moved from 75 to East Bethel where they reside with my Dad's 5 hives.  It's pretty soggy up there right now, but they're on cinder blocks and dirt piles so they should stay nice and dry barring a bizarre flash-flood.  They're both very strong, and have filled the first three boxes with brood and some honey and when I peeked in yesterday, they were working hard on all 10 frames of the fourth box.  My dad is going to try to open up some space in the brood nest by moving any frames of honey up to the fourth box and replace them with foundation.  He'll try to put the foundation between frames of capped brood to encourage proper spacing of all the drawn comb.

At the Lair in Afton (so named long before I set up an apiary there) all three hives are growing fast with a dozen frames of capped and partially capped brood each.  They started with one box each of drawn comb, and have drawn out 4/10 frames in the second box.  With the quick progress they're making, I'll add an extra box of foundation -- probably on Wednesday or Thursday when the Lair's residents can help!

Spring Cleaning and 3 New Hives

I've been a bit crazy since adopting a new child (yay!) but I still manage to make some time for the bees.

Mid-April, I opened up Meg and Jo to make sure the bees were near capped honey so they weren't in danger of starving.  Even if there's honey in the hive, if it gets too cold, and they bees are forced into a small ball to keep warm, they may starve with honey just a few inches away as they stay put to try to keep their brood warm!

Both hives were clustered in a great spot near plenty of honey, so I just took off the winter cover and swept out a couple of inches of dead bees that had collected over the winter.  Last weekend, my dad was kind enough to reverse the hives -- swapping the top and bottom of the three medium boxes to push the queen's brood rearing back down to the bottom.  This helps organize the remaining space for the year's honey collection and harvest.

On  April 23, my dad and I traveled out to our new location in Afton where Jen and Lucia have kindly allowed me to put up three hives on their property!  We built a simple fence to keep their dogs from getting too close and installed three 3lb packages of bees with MN Hygenic queens.  All three hives have one box of drawn comb from last year, a second box of foundation (undrawn honeycomb) and two boxes on top holding a small feeder jar.

Today, I went out to make sure the queens were laying, and I found all three hives had eggs, and at least one of them had capped brood in it!  I'll have to make a regular pilgrimage to the apiary as it was really nice to take a long lunch break (the apiary is MUCH closer to work than home).  I removed the feeders and found that each hive was well established in the bottom box and none of them had started drawing out comb in the second box.

Here's a couple more pictures.  First, the collection of bees on top of the first box of one hive, and
second, some eggs and larvae on a frame after I blew on them a little to get the girls to move out of the way.

Spring Inspection

Last week, the temperature got up to around 50 degrees, so I went in for a quick inspection.

The bees were out on their "cleansing flights" to get rid of waste they'd been saving up for weeks or even months (to avoid dirtying the inside of the hive) and there were a few hundred dead bees outside the front of the hive where some of the girls hadn't quite made it back in the chilly winter air before running out of energy. The picture doesn't show them very clearly, but you can see some yellowish spots where the bees relieved themselves and darker spots where some of the bees fell into the snow and died, leaving a little melted pit as their body heat was drained off by the snow.

I first had a look inside Meg (the closer of the two hives in the above picture).  I could tell there were bees in there since they'd buzz when I knocked on the side of the hive, but I couldn't see any through the top of the top box.  I pulled off the top super (which is totally full of honey) and found a small cluster of bees about the size of a grapefruit near the back of the hive!  I put the top super right back on and closed up the hive -- they're in a great spot with lots of honey above and around them, and I didn't want to stress them out any more than I had to.

The bees are probably raising brood right now inside their cluster, so it's important that they have plenty of food within close reach for those cold winter days when they can't walk far in the hive before freezing and won't leave the brood to die unless absolutely necessary.

The other hive didn't seem at all in "winter mode" and instead of clustering tightly, they were active across three different supers!  The top of all three supers looked like the below picture -- it was like there were a full 30 frames of bees in there!

You can see some of the girls flying around to get at me, although most were smart enough to stay in the hive where it's much warmer.

For whatever reason, it looks like Jo has totally broken out of the winter cluster and the girls are running all over the top three supers.  Actually, when I first opened the hive, I noticed that the top two supers were quite heavy with honey, but since the bees were so active at the very top of the hive, I moved the third super (about 1/3 full of honey) to the top.  They quickly took over this top super too.

I don't think this move was smart -- the top two supers were so heavy that no matter where the smaller brood nest is, I think they'd have been fine, but initially I didn't realize that the bees were active throughout two full supers and I thought they were stuck at the very top of the hive.  Adding a less-full super on top of the hive could entice them to move up further and then die when they run out of honey, but with only a month or so left until good weather (we hope!) and such full supers, I think they'll be fine.  Of course, I can't just put it back the way it was because the bees are now active in the top 3 (instead of just 2) supers, so I'll see what happens and learn from it.  Worst case, I end up with the 4 hives I intended (when ordering 3 packages) instead of the 5 I'm half-fearing.

I've got a great new site for bees near my work, but it's far from home so my wife wouldn't be involved much.  Last night, there was some talk about leaving a hive or two at my brother's house, so we might just end up with 2-3 at his house and the 3 new hives at the new location.  I wouldn't move them until May I think, so there's no rush to make a decision!

A Honeybee Hive in Winter

It's been 5 months and spring is in the air!  The queens are laying again, the girls are out on cleansing flights on warm days and some of them are even starting to despair at the impending job of spring cleaning!

I had intended to describe buttoning up of the hives, but somehow it never happened.  Here's the short version:

Back in November, both hives were heavy with honey and ready to wait out the cold winter.  I reduced the entrance down to a 1" slit and added a metal grate to keep out mice.  Then I added an upper entrance to allow airflow through the hive -- this is critical to prevent condensation that will drip down onto the bees and chill them dead!  It also gives them a route out of the hive when snow blocks the lower entrance.

Finally I wrapped the hive with wax-covered cardboard and threw on a heavy brick to keep the top on in windy weather.  The black cardboard gets quite warm in the sun even on a very cold day and helps to add a little heat to the hive.  It doesn't help too much though since research has shown that the inside of a hive is only around 3 degrees higher than ambient temperature, largely because the bees need constant airflow through the hive to keep condensation from causing problems.  The bees stay warm by huddling together in a ball and "shivering" or beating their wing muscles without moving their wings to generate heat.  They keep the temperature inside the ball well above 70F all winter long and later in the winter when eggs and brood are being raised they keep the temperature no lower than 95F!

Here's a picture of the hives after a winterfull of snow:

Both hives are still alive and well, and I'll go over my recent visit in a future post (well before another 5 months go by I promise!)