WV Beekeeper - Cass Cohenour

Supering Made Easy

2009-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Every beekeeper knows that if they want to produce honey that they must have a colony which is strong enough to draw and fill supers. Here is a quick rundown on how I super my honey producing colonies. When the colony is strong enough only then is it appropriate to add a super. When using frames with foundation I will use ten frames in the super. When using foundation only add one super at a time. When this super is 90% drawn it is time to add another super with foundation. Always use ten frames when using foundation.

The title to this post, "Supering Made Easy," is named so because I intend to show you the easiest way to super a colony in order to achieve the most harvest. For this post I have used supers of drawn comb. These supers were extracted last year and have been stored safely away from wax moths, mice, and other unwanted pests. In the below picture I intend to super the colony on the right. This is a rear view of the colony. There are two empty supers over the inner lid on this colony. They are there to surround t6he feeder jars which are over the inner lid. These feeders will be removed so the honey from the colony remains pure.

After the inner lid is removed a queen excluder is put in its place before the first super goes onto the colony.

The supers which I am placing atop the hive contain nine frames of drawn comb. Once the comb has already been extracted it is OK to use only nine frames. The bees are less likely to build any burr comb between the frames after they have drawn out. Also the frames are easier to uncap as the bees have drawn the comb out past the frames. Uncapping goes a lot faster when you are uncapping frames that are drawn out farther than when the bees have ten frames per super. Always use ten frames with foundation or else you could end up with a nice mess. When superimg in the way I am disclosing to you be sure to only use drawn comb as pictured below.

When using multiple supers of drawn comb it is pertinent to have an upper entrance. This allows the field bees easy access to the supers when returning from gathering nectar. This relieves congestion within the brood chambers since the field bees do not have to traverse the combs which contain brood and are covered with the bees which are incubating the brood. It also helps the field bees to bypass the queen excluder. If you have a colony strong enough the bees will have no problem using the upper entrance. In the picture below you can see I created the upper entrance by notching the bottom of the second super.

In this picture I have added three additional supers of drawn comb. The fourth super from the bottom, or second from top, can also be notched for another upper entrance.

The advantages to having drawn comb over using foundation are immense. The bees must consume approximately eight pounds of honey in order to produce one pound of wax. Since nectar has a moisture content of over 80%, which is over four times the moisture content of honey (which is between 16% and 18%) a colony must obtain around 32 pounds of nectar to get the 8 pounds of honey (after evaporated) to make the one pound of wax. Save your wax!!! Of the five supers of drawn comb which I placed atop this colony, the bees must nearly fill all five supers with nectar in order to evaporate the nectar down to one super of honey. It is extremely beneficial for your bees for you to save the comb that they have labored to construct. I know people like cut comb or chunk honey but they get very little of that from me. The comb does so much more for the bees than it does for any human being who chews on it for awhile just to spit it out.

This is the easiest way I know of to super a colony. If you have drawn comb you do not need to labor over installing foundation into frames or assembling frames to hold the foundation. Do yourself a favor and protect all your comb.

I could not help myself, but after taking these pictures I used the top deep on this colony and the one beside it to make up some more nucs so we will not have any future posts showing how beneficial using drawn comb in your honey supers is. I can testify from past years experience that you can obtain more than twice the amount of honey from a colony when using drawn comb as opposed to using foundation.

Make Six Colonies From One!

2009-05-31T01:57:00.000-07:00

Depending on how aggressive you wish to be when expanding your apiary, you can easily make six colonies from one (or more!). This of course depends on how many frames of drawn comb are within the colony, how many bees are in it, how much brood the queen has laid, and how many stores the bees have put in the comb. In this post I am making five nucs from a colony which consists of three medium hive bodies with one deep hive body on top. The hive bodies each contain ten frames so I will use a total of twenty medium frames to make the five nucs. After making the nucs The parent colony shall consist of a deep hive body with three drawn frames and seven frames of foundation on the screened bottom board and a medium hive body on top with ten fully drawn frames. Here I have five medium nucs placed near the donor colony and ready to be occupied with some frames of brood and bees. The entrances are screened ahead of time to keep the bees within.

Pictured below you can see that the three medium hive bodies have bee seperated and that the deep hive body is now atop the screened bottom board. With the deep hive body in place I can now have a place to relocate the queen one I find her in amongst the medium frames. Also with the deep in place, the returning worker bees have a place to go,

As I was going through the medium frames to decide where to place them within the nucs, I came across the queen on the fifth frame I looked at. After placing her within the deep I could work much quicker as I did not need to worry about finding her.

When filled these nucs with frames I started on the right side of the boxes with a frame of honey and attached bees. The second frame from the right is capped brood. The third frame from the right is open brood. The last frame, or the frame on the left is usually a frame of pollen or bee bread. In this case the frames on the left also contained some amount of brood and honey as well.

Before placing the frames into the nuc boxes I sprayed them with sugar syrup. After the bees are sprayed they will not fly and will stay in the nuc boxes until I have enough frames within the nuc boxes in order to put the lid on them. Here is a picture of the sprayer I bough at Lowe's last year for around five dollars. After it is pressured by action of the pump, a button releases a fine mist of sugar syrup by simply depressing it.

Here is a picture of a frame that has just been sprayed.

Pictured below are the nuc boxes as they begin to fill with frames of bees. AS I did with the frames, I started with the nuc box on my right and worked to the left.

Now there are three completed nucs only three frames left to select to finish the last two nucs.

I'm down to selecting the last three frames that I need and I have a medium box on the ground in which I have not looked.

Now with all the nucs filled I need to transport them to an outyard to keep the bees from going back to their parent colony.

I also have three full size nucs in the truck. I made up eight nucs this day. After taking the nucs an outyard they were unloaded and placed atop some small pallets.

After a day I gave each nuc a queen cell. They should all have laying queens by now and will be brought back to the home yard before too long. Now from this colony I made five nucleus colonies and kept the mother colony. I actually could have made six nucleus colonies but I did not want to leave the parent colony too weak. Hopefully the parent colony will build up enough in time to make some more nucs out of it, and I bet it will.

Grafting Queens, Revisited.

2009-05-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

There are a few important things which I forgot to mention on the previous post about grafting queens. Number one, when removing the larvae from the donor colony with your grafting tool you should always slide the tool in behind the larvae and not the front. Pictured above is a piece of black foundation which the bees have drawn comb and begun to lay brood into. The black foundation helps the beekeeper see his targeted larvae much easier than a new light colored comb as pictured below. The arrows point to where you should slide the grafting tool under the larvae in order to transfer it to the queen cups.

In the above picture I am using the German grafting tool. It is a rigid piece of stainless steel and not the easiest type of tool to use. I am also grafting from a new piece of comb. This is when I first started grafting. The situation could not get much more difficult for a beginner queen grafter. The only advantage I had at this time was that I was Harvesting Royal Jelly to prime my cell cups with and the larvae floated off of the grafting tool easier. I have not been priming any cell cups this year and can tell you that I had a higher rate of acceptance towards the grafted larvae when I primed the cups with royal jelly.

You can see the advantage to using the black foundation versus grafting from new comb. Another important factor which will increase acceptance of the larvae is to make sure that you keep the cell bars covered with a warm moist towel during grafting and when you are transporting the cell bar frame back to the cell builder colony.

Recapping what I have said;
1. Prepare cell builder colony,
2. Place cell bar frame with cell bars a cell cups into the colony so it can be polished,
3. Remove the cell bar frame no sooner than 24 hours later for grafting,
4. Select a frame of dark comb with larvae of appropriate age from the breeder queen's colony,
5. Slide the grafting tool under the larvae from the outside of the curl as denoted in the first picture in this post by the red arrows,
6. Preferably prime your cell cups so the transference of larvae into cell cups is more easily accomplished,
7. Keep the cell bars which have been filled with larvae already covered with a warm moist towel,
8. Keep the cell bar frame covered with a warm moist towel while transporting it to the cell builder colony,
9. Place cell bar frame into the cell builder colony.

After you have the queen cells completed you have a few options for them once they are ripe. The most important thing to remember is to not let a queen hatch out into the cell builder colony while the other cells are still within it. The new virgin queen will destroy all the other queen and I'm sure that you do not that to happen.

Caging Queens

2009-05-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

Caging a queen is easy to do. The first thing is to do is to have a cage ready. Here I have two cages ready. Whatever type of cage you use, use your common sense as to how to put an insect into it. The cages each have their tube full of queen cage candy so they can be placed into a receptive colony. The queen candy serves two purposes, it keeps hostile bees away from the queen during introduction and it keeps the queen from running into a colony only to meet her demise. The queen cage candy delays the amount of time in which the queen will be able to have full access to the receptive colony and vice versa. (Do not place a new queen into a receptive colony unless the colony shows proper signs of readiness and willingness towards acceptance for a new queen. Inexperienced beekeepers should allow the bees to eat through the queen cage candy in order to release the queen, permitting extenuating circumstances, e.g.; five days have gone by since introduction and the queen is still confined). During the amount of time in which the queen gains access, by gaining access through a clean candy tube, to the receptive colony the colony slowly accepts her as their leader by becoming acclimated to her pheromone. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you wish.

So we have two queen cages ready to go. It is now time to find two queens to fill those two cages. Here is the first queen.

When placing the queen into the cage it is important to place here head first and to gently coax her into the cage. Do not force her into the cage. Do not hold her by the abdomen. Hold her by the wing or by the thorax only.

Now we have one queen left to go. I'm sure that you can see one cage full and one empty. The full one is complete with attendant bees. How do we get attendant bees into the cage? Well, that is a good question.

In the picture above you can see very clearly the bees with their heads in cells. I have red arrows denoting their location. All you have to do is to take hold of these bees by their wings while their heads are in the cells. If you grasp them in this manner they will not sting you. It is physically impossible for them to sting you if you grab them by their wings (both of them) while their head is in a cell. There is no trick to it. The bee can not see you approach it while its head is in a cell. It is very easy to do. You should also put the attendant bees head first into the cage. Bees are more prone to move forward than backward, especially while their head is in a hole!

You can grab any bee you wish off of a comb and use it for an attendant bee and I have but do not recommend it. What I like most about taking one while its head is in a cell is that it is oblivious as to what is getting ready to occur and that it can not sting me after I have a hold of it. The second thing I like, and is more beneficial to the bees than me, is that it is more than likely placing nectar into the cell in which it has had its head and also has its belly full which it can feed the queen with. Having attendants with full bellies is very important if you are banking queens. Unfortunately (most likely fortunately, if you want fresh queens), I have never needed to bank any queens. Banking queens is what a queen producer does when they have more queens than they can sell. As I said, unfortunately I have never had more queens than I can sell or more bees than I can sell. This is only a simple tutorial on how to cage a queen should the need ever arise.

Here are the two queen cages with queens and attendants. Catching the queen and caging her is no problem for me. Queens are easy to find, and they don't sting so they are easy to cage. The attendants are the ones which take the time. When you find the frame with the queen upon it, though it may not be easy to find her, you can capture her easily by grasping her wings or thorax. The hard part is placing four or five attendants in with her. After the queen is in the cage, the easiest way to find attendants is by studying the frame she was on. Typically around the edges of this frame you will see some bees with their heads in cells. Usually these bees are depositing nectar within those cells. These are the bees that you want. You want the ones which have full bellies to help ensure their queen can make it through the hardship of being introduced to a new colony.

For more on queens cage candy click on Recipes for Beekeepers

For more on how to handle and hold a queen go to Queen Marking

What To Do With Your Grafted Queen Cells... Make a Nuc

2009-05-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

OK, it has been eleven days since I grafted the queens in the last post to my blog. Those eleven days plus the three or four days (most likely three) makes fourteen or fifteen days since the grafted larvae were laid as eggs. It takes sixteen days from egg to queen so we need to do something with the queen cells quickly. Pictured below is some cells I grafted last year. I got in a hurry today and used and sold most of my queen cells before I remembered to take any pictures so I'll use this old picture so you can see what to expect if you do a fairly decent job when you are grafting your larvae.

One of the great things about rearing queens is that it gives you many more options for which you wish to do with your bees. I used some of the cells to replace some queens I sold a few days ago. One cell was used to replace a queen I accidentally killed while marking. It's hard to admit but I do mess up pretty badly sometimes. When replacing queens that were sold or if I'm simply requeening the acceptance rate of queen cells is pretty much guaranteed. After a colony realizes it is queenless you can give it a queen cell with a queen which shall soon emerge you do not need to worry about acceptance. Like I said, it is guaranteed when the queen emerges from her cell within the colony.

Now today I made some nucs since I had some queen cells. I put the old queens in with the nucs and used the queen cells for the colonies. This method may be somewhat opposite of what most beekeepers would do (I'll explain a little more in detail later), however I find that with a smaller population of bees in the nuc that it will not suffer without a laying queens and will build up nicely. The colony from which the nuc is made can handle the absence of a laying queen better than the nuc. The colony can sometimes benefit from not having a laying queen. I have in the past purposely removed a queen prior to a good nectar flow in order to allow the bees in the colony to concentrate on gathering nectar, drawing out supers, and making honey rather than spending all of their time feeding larvae. After the flow you can reintroduce the queen or allow the colony to requeen itself. Remember to always cutout capped queen cells four days after removing the queen from the colony or you may choose to leave the colony queenless for a longer amount of time if necessary to accommodate the nectar flow. The important thing to remember is that you remove the queen at seven days before the flow hits so most of the brood will be capped, nine days is actually more preferable. I would not recommend a novice beekeeper to attempt this. However if you feel that you have enough skill you should try it sometime because you may be impressed what a strong colony can do without having to take care of larvae during a strong nectar flow. OK, enough talk of this. I'm way off subject so let's get back on track.

I went to my outyard at the black raspberry patch to make a few nucs and took my camera along.

The raspberry patch is only a few acres big and I only have four colonies there at the present. I really wish I would have had more colonies there because I feel that I could have harvested more than the eleven supers of raspberry honey I got. I definitely feel that I would not have got nearly this much honey if the bees had to draw their own comb. It is important to save all of your drawn comb to reuse. Drawn comb is almost like gold to me. The raspberries were in bloom for slightly less than two weeks but I can still find a scarce bloom here and there. Shortly after the berries bloomed I grafted the queens so I could make some nucs right after I harvested the surplus honey after it had cured and was capped. The key to getting an early crop of honey from the raspberries is to have strong colonies. This is achieved by feeding your colonies syrup and pollen patties to the point where the brood chamber is full of "syrup honey", bee bread, brood, and bees. If you would like to know how to strengthen your colonies to get an early crop of honey refer back to my posts on Feeding Pollen Patties To Your Colonies, Feeding Inside a Colony, and Strengthening a Weak Colony. You must start making preparations in late February or early March to make sure that you can get an early crop instead of a bunch of swarms, or no swarms, or even some late winter dead outs from starvation. Also, if you need to know how to make syrup and pollen patties for your bees refer to Recipes for Beekeepers.

OK, so when the honey supers with drawn comb went on the colonies the feeding of syrup stops during the flow. We do not want syrup in the honey supers. After the flow the supers are removed. Then it is time to make some nucs. This is all about timing. Knowing your bloom dates, the life cycle of the bees (required for raising queens on a specific timetable), and having the proper equipment (nuc boxes, preferably drawn comb) ready to go is very crucial at this juncture.

Let's put the nuc together. First a good frame of honey is selected.

Now I need two frames of brood. These frames can be one of open brood (eggs and larvae) and one with capped pupae or two frames with a mixture of open and closed brood. The frame pictured below was selected due the fact that it had the queen on it. It also had open and sealed brood, honey, and bee bread which made it a good frame to select.

And another frame of brood is selected.

The nuc is finished off with a frame of drawn comb.

All that is left to do to the nuc is to put the lid on. The entrance was sealed with screen before any bees were added.

The main colony now requires a queen cell for it is queenless.

I prefer to place the cell between the top bars near the center of the colony. This cell was placed between the fifth and sixth frames of the lower hive body. If you choose to let the queen remain in the parent colony you can place the queen cell into the nuc in the same manner as described above. Be sure that your nuc is in place and will not be moved when you put the queen cell in it or it could get damaged from the top bars should they be moved any.

I got lucky when I found the queen to make this nuc. She was on the fifth frame I looked at. I already had the honey frame in place, the the brood frame with the queen, another brood frame, and a frame of drawn comb. It was a very easy nuc to put together. I had to replace the frames I took from the main colony to make the nuc. Luckily I had some empty frames of drawn comb. When you save your comb and keep it safe from wax moths it makes things so much easier on your bees. This picture is of the top hive body after taking the frames from it to use in the nuc.

The thing to do when you put frames back into the hive body is to center the remaining frames within the box and put the empties toward the outside. This helps to consolidate the brood near the center of the hive. After the upper hive body is back in place it is time to put the inner lid and feeders back in place.

With the feeders in place the must be filled to feed the bees. I now have a short amount of time to coerce the colony into filling the empty frames I gave them before the next nectar flow which will be tulip poplar.

Taking some brood from this colony will set it back some but not too badly. Taking the queen from the colony has set back more than taking some bees and brood from it has. The good thing about it is that this colony will not be set back as far as it would have if it had swarmed. In a sense, I made it swarm, or made an "artificial swarm". Most beekeepers make artificial swarms as a last ditch effort to stop a colony from swarming after it has made swarm cells and gone through the preparations to swarm. My reasons for doing this is because I want more colonies, to stop a swarm before it starts, and to requeen a colony with a new queen. Some beekeepers would not dream of doing this before the main honey flow starts. Then again, these are the same people who will most likely have their colony swarm and lose half their colony up in a tall tree and then lose their honey crop because there was not enough bees left in the colony to take advantage of the honey flow.

There are many things to consider in beekeeping. There is no "right" or "perfect" answer to every situation. This is why beekeeping is an art to be performed at the discretion of the beekeeper. One of the many things to consider is what kind of goals do you have concerning your bees. Most beekeepers goals are to let the bees make surplus honey and then harvest that honey. If this is your goal I hope you are working to achieve it. Don't let your bees do all the work. You can be proactive and share the burden. Don't be one of those guys who only goes out to his colony just add a super when needed and then take them off in July, if your lucky enough to get anything. Be one of those guys who starts feeding in late February or early April. Look in the brood chamber and see what's going on. What if your colony is pollen bound? What if you got sac brood? What if you got swarm cells? What if you have a queen that lays very poorly? What if the colony is infested with mites and on the verge of collapse? Please go out and look in your hives, and I don't mean tomorrow.. See what's happening in there. Maybe you need to make an artificial swarm so you don't lose half your bees and half or all your honey. Maybe you find a bunch of swarm cells and could use them to make some nucs, or put them in some mini nucs, or use one in a queenless hive before it becomes a drone layer. The list goes on and on. Be proactive with your bees, be a beekeeper.

I really did not intend to talk about a bunch of stuff other than making a nuc and what to do with a queen cell. It is just hard to contain my enthusiasm, especially this time of year when the bees are bringing in nectar. I love it. I hope you love it too.

Grafting Queens

2009-05-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

At one time or another every beekeeper will need to requeen a colony. Some will requeen annually. Queens can be costly for a beekeeper so why not raise some yourself out of your best colony? I prefer raising my own queens because I know what kind of bees I have. I do not know what kind of bees the queen breeder on the other side of the country has for twenty dollars a piece.

There traits you must consider when selecting a queen to graft from. If gentleness is important to you be sure to select for it. Hygienic behavior is important for colony health. Fecundity and a solid brood pattern are important. Honey and wax production need to be top notch. Disease resistance is a valuable trait though I doubt most beekeepers are going to submit their colonies to being tested with a disease to see if it is resistant. These are a few of the things to consider when selecting a queen to graft from. Since you are grafting for yourself you should decide what is most important to you and try to breed for it.

Once you have prepared a Cell Builder Colony you can add a frame with your freshly grafted larvae. Pictured below is my cell builder colony.

My cell builder also has a shallow super full of bees to be placed atop the deep hive body.

Here is a picture of the cell bars with the queen cups in place. The queen cups are where the grafted larva are placed.

Here is a picture of the cell bar frame. The cell bars slide into the slots on the end bars of the frame. The queen cups are faced down to simulate a natural queen cup within a colony.

Also in the above picture are some Chinese grafting tools in the coffee cup. They are submerged in water so they can easily be cleaned of the royal jelly they encounter while in use.

Now it is time to do some grafting. First we must select a frame with larvae of appropriate age from the colony we wish to graft from. This frame looks like it is acceptable.

In the picture above you can see the royal jelly in the bottom of the cells along with a very small larva. The larva which is most desirable are the ones which have not curled into a "C" yet. These are the youngest larvae. It is a good idea to graft your larvae of all the same size so the queens will hatch at about the same time. I have grafted queens which were curled with good results before. The main thing is to graft all your larvae of the same age, or size, and to make sure not to graft any which do not have any royal jelly in their cell. If they do not have any royal jelly do not use the larvae. They are too old, to big, and their diet of royal jelly has been interrupted and will result in an inferior queen. You can click on the picture above to see the larvae in their pools of royal jelly in the bottom of their cells. If you look hard enough you can see the ones which have not curled yet and are very ripe for grafting. Ideally you would want to graft the larva after it hatches from an egg, which is at three days. I have found that as long as all the larvae that is grafted are of the same size and are still being fed royal jelly that they will make good queens. The only thing that will vary is how long it takes for them to hatch out. The youngest larvae are more desirable because it is easier for the beekeeper to time out when the queens will emerge from their cells.

Here is a picture of me using the Chinese grafting tool to graft the first larvae. The Chinese grafting tool has a flexible tip which slides under the larva and removes it along with some royal jelly from the cell.

The Chinese grafting tool has a push button on the end similar to an ink pen which when it is depressed it will push the royal jelly containing the larva in the queen cup. I've used other types of grafting tools but the Chinese grafting tool is the easiest to use.

In the queen cup to the right is the first larva that has been transferred. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. You can then see how small the larva is. You may need to get some magnification glasses from your optometrist to graft the small larva. Fortunately for now I can do it unaided from any optical devices.

On the end of the Chinese grafting tool you can see a small pool of royal jelly. Within that pool is a very tiny larva. You'll have to take my word for it because it is nearly impossible to see even when you enlarge the picture.

Here is a picture of all queen cups filled with larvae.

Now the cell bars are ready to be placed into the cell bar frame.

And now the cell bar frame with its freshly grafted larvae is ready to be placed into the cell builder colony.

After the cell builder colony is put back together it is important to give it some sugar syrup. The extra syrup will help the bees make the wax for the queen cells. Also make certain that the cell builder colony has a frame of pollen. The bees need the pollen to make royal jelly for the larvae if they are to become queens. These queens should start hatching about twelve to thirteen days after I grafted them.

Grafting or raising queens is easy to do and every beekeeper at one time or another should do their best to make their own queens. I spent maybe twenty minutes at the most breaking the cell builder down, finding the frame with larvae to graft from, grafting the larvae, taking pictures, and putting everything back together. I'm raising eighteen queens for myself to make some nucs with. Most places charge close to twenty dollars for a queens. Provided all eighteen queens hatch out, I made $360 in twenty minutes, or $1080 an hour for grafting those queens. Of course this example is not quite fair because the queens you pay twenty dollars for are mated, or they should be. So my virgin queens are probably worth only ten dollars a piece. I guess I can buy some frames or foundation with the money I saved. Saving money is not my main objective for raising queens. My main objective is to raise a queen that I want. I don't want bees from Texas, bees from California, bees from down south, or bees from anywhere else. I want to continue raising my own feral queens that I captured here in southern WV. I doubt if I'll be seeing any of these queens available in Bee Culture or American Bee Journal so I will continue to raise my own.

Queen Marking

2009-05-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

Why mark your queens? There are a few reasons a beekeeper should keep his queens marked. The number one reason many novice beekeepers like to have their queens marked is that it makes the queens easier to find. More experienced beekeepers can usually find the queen with ease and do not need them marked to find them. The big reason to have marked queens is so you know how old the queen is. Many people like to requeen every year. Some people like to requeen every two years. It is known that young queens display higher levels of fecundity and produce more pheromone. Colonies with older queens are more likely to swarm due to the lack of queen pheromone. Young queens produce a pheromone that prohibits the worker bees from making queen cells. The older a queen becomes the less pheromone she produces. If you like catching swarms and losing your honey crop keep some old queens in your colonies.

Another reason for having marked queens is to ensure that you have the same queen that you put in your colony the last time you requeened. I don't know how many times I heard someone say they bought some Italians (for example) off of such and such queen breeder and that they were not worth having. My first question is usually, "Are your queens marked?" When they say, "No," I ask how they even know that the queens in their hives are the same ones they requeened with. The truth is they don't know. Recent studies have revealed that colonies that are requeened have high levels of supersedure and chances are that the queen in the colony that is getting trash talked probably is a totally different queen that has bred with who knows what kind of drones. This is a very good reason to keep your queens marked so that you know exactly what kind of bees you are keeping in your hives.

I've raised a few queens already this year and marked a few today. I decided to take a few pictures to demonstrate how this is done so you can keep your queens marked, if you want to. The queen pictured below is close to a month old.

When catching the queen it is extremely important not to grab her by the abdomen. The abdomen is full of eggs and is very fragile. The way to grab the queen is by the thorax. Remember that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you want to see the pictures in more detail.

A queen marking kit is relatively inexpensive and makes the job of marking the queen a cinch. I ordered my queen marking kit from Walter T Kelley Company. Here you can see that I am putting the queen into the tube.

Once the queen is in the tube the plunger is then inserted to enclose the queen within the tube.

The next step is to push the queen against the screen on the end of the tube. Once again this must be done very gently. Only enough force to hold the queen against the screen should be applied.

You see that the kit was used last year from the red paint. Green is the color for 2009. I use Testor's model paint. A toothpick works well. I like to use what is handiest though, and a piece of a twig is really handy thing here where I live. I apologize for the blurry picture but if you could see clearly I am using a twig to color the thorax of the queen.

After applying the paint, give the queen some space to within the tube. I usually set the marking kit on the end of a bee brush to allow her to dry before giving her back to the colony.

After a few minutes the paint is dry and the queen is ready to be returned to her colony.

The easiest way to let her into the colony is to jet let her walk out of the tube on her own. Letting her walk out on her own means there is one less chance of her being injured from a clumsy beekeeper handling her. Believe me, it is easy to injure a queen so be careful. Remember that you can click on the picture to enlarge it if you want to see the queen.

Hopefully this will encourage some of you to start marking your queens. If you order your own queens and have them shipped already marked you may think that you have nothing to worry about, but remember that when a colony swarms you will have a queen that needs to be marked. So let's just do yourself a favor and keep your queens marked so you know what kind of bees you have and how old your queens are.

Raising Queens Without Grafting

2009-05-07T04:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to raise your own queens? Even if you can't graft larvae or have the equipment to do it, you can raise own queens. This comes in handy early in the year when it is nearly impossible to order queens from the big queen suppliers. I'll let you in on the easiest way I know to raise queens. The picture below is of a split I made on March 30, 2009. This picture was taken on April 3, 2009.

When using this method to raise queens it is imperative to open the colony and cut out any capped queen cells four days later. That is why this picture was taken four days after I made the split, because I'm getting ready to cut out the capped cells. First off, you must carefully inspect each frame for cells. Just a few bees gathered around a cell can hide it from your view so look very carefully. If the one capped cell gets by you it will hatch out first and kill your better queens.

Why does one cut out capped cells after four days? Wouldn't it be better if it hatched out so I could have a queen that much sooner? NO! It is very important that the new queen be fed a rich diet of royal jelly after it hatches into a larva from an egg. In order to ensure that your queen is reared from a very young larva you must cut capped cells at four days after making a split.On the fourth day after the egg is laid it hatches into a larva. Once it has been decided by the workers to raise a queen from it, it takes eight days from egg before the queen cell is capped. Queens can be raised from larvae as old as seven days. The larva between five and six days old are the ones we wish to eliminate by cutting out the capped cells four days after making the split.

What's wrong with a queens that was raised from a larva that was between five and seven days old? There is enough wrong with them that I shall continue cutting out the capped cells at four days. People commonly requeen their old queens with fresh quality queens annually. Why would you want a less than quality queen. Queens raised from larvae that are too old can lay fertilized eggs. However they have lower ovarian weight, are smaller, are weaker, lay less eggs, produce less pheromone and are therefore more aggressive, lay patchy or shotty brood patterns, are superseded rather quickly, just to name a few. These make bad queens because they were not continually fed royal jelly from the time they hatched until the time they were capped. If she lays fewer eggs than a quality queen then your going to get less honey because you have less bees.

Though this method of raising queens may produce what is referred to as "emergency queens", it does not imply that they are inferior. When they become inferior is when they are raised from larvae that is too old. This will produce what is sometimes called a "semi-queen" or "intercaste". These type of queens come from the true "emergency" cells. That is why we must cut out all capped cells after four days from making the split or nuc.

Pictured below are some queen cells along the bottom of the frame. These cells are still open and can be left alone.

I only found two capped queen cells that needed to be cut out. As you can see these cells are rather small in size and would no doubt make some small inferior queens.

Here is a picture of three queen cells from another split I made on the same day as the the one pictured above.

If you would like to sit up a colony to raise some queens please refer to my previous post on making a split. After you make the split do not add a queen or queen cell. Four days later go in and cut out the capped cells. If you only want four queens and they are making twelve, cut out some of the smaller cells. I like to do this because it makes me feel as if the queen cells remaining will receive more royal jelly than they would otherwise and that they end up being slightly better than they would otherwise. But when I make queen cells like the one pictured below I doubt if I'm going to start second guessing myself.

Though raising queens through this method is easy, you lose the ability to decide how many queens are raised and can not ensure they eggs were laid on the same day. The queen cells are also sometimes easily damaged when handling. When you graft you can virtually eliminate these problems which makes it a desirable skill to have. But if you only need a few at a time this is by far the easiest way to let the bees raise a queen.

Splitting a Colony

2009-05-07T01:52:00.001-07:00

There is a quick and easy way to split your colonies. You can simply separate your hive bodies into two colonies. Take the top deep and put it on a floor with a lid. Let whichever half raise its own queen and not worry about them. This is the easy way. However, I like to have more control over what happens to my colonies. I like to leave the existing colony with the new queen, queen cell, or maybe it's raising its own queen, in the old location. I prefer to put the old queen in a new location. When doing this be sure to put extra bees with the old queen as many of them will drift back to their old location. As long as you have enough brood in the split you should not lose many bees. It is OK when some of the bees drift back to their original location because there is going to be an interruption of egg laying in that colony so some extra bees are a good thing. If you have a mated queen she should be accepted and laying eggs within a few days. A ripe queen cell will take around ten days. If you let them make a new queen you could be looking at nearly 28 days before any eggs are laid. So let's make sure we have enough bees depending on how we are going to queen the split.

When splitting a colony one must first ensure that the colony to be split is of sufficient strength. I usually will not split a colony which has less than eight frames of bees. Splitting a colony before it swarms is an easy way not to lose a swarm. It is also an easy way to increase colony numbers. After choosing a colony to be split I like to smoke the colony well and let the colony sit for a few minutes before beginning work.

Letting a colony sit for five minutes or so after smoking it will give the bees enough time to fill themselves with honey because they think they may need to leave the hive due to fire because they smell the smoke. Bees with a belly full of honey are less likely to be aggressive because they feel important to the colony's survival. Dry bees, or bees with empty bellies, can get pretty nasty sometimes so it is important to use your smoker properly when going into a colony.

After smoking the colony and before opening it, be sure to gather all the necessary hive components needed to make the split.

In the picture above you can see two deep hive bodies, hive base, floor, inner lid, and outer lid. Also there are twenty frames of drawn comb. Drawn comb is a beekeeper's best friend when making early splits. Bees need to consumes an estimated eight pounds of honey in order to produce one pound of wax. When making early splits it is essential to feed your bees even when using drawn comb. Here you can see that I am removing the inner lid with two jars of 1:1 sugar syrup placed over the ventilation hole.

In addition to sugar syrup, it is also imperative to provide the split with pollen. You can use a good pollen substitute or in my case I am using frames of drawn comb which contains bee bread. In order for the colony to raise one frame of brood it must have one frame of nectar and one frame of pollen available to feed the larva. So make sure your bees have resources available especially when making splits before the honey flow.

So now I'm going to tear the hive down in order to split it. The top super contains bees and brood. I will sit it aside for the time being.

Pictured above is the colony to be split after the shallow super on top was removed.

The top deep hive body contains nearly five frames of bees.

Now it is time to examine the lower deep hive body for content.

The lower hive body appears to have a little more than four frames of bees.

After separating the individual hive bodies it is time to sit up a new hive to transfer some frames of brood, honey, and the old queen into.

Pictured below is a frame which has been drawn out for drone brood. Drone comb is easy to spot out due to the larger size of the cells. Early in the season is does not do much good to replace this frame with foundation because the foundation will most likely be drawn into drone comb as well. Later in the season the bees are less likely to build drone comb, but for now I will replace this frame of drone comb with a frame of drawn worker comb. It is important not to simply throw away the drone comb. It can be used in a drone mother colony for breeding queens, can be used to catch varroa mites, or can be used to store honey above a queen excluder.

Here is a frame with some fresh pollen. I will put this frame into the new box.

I also want to select a few frames of brood to put into the new box.

A few frames of nectar, or sugar syrup, with bees are also essential to the split.

After putting enough bees and brood into the new box I fill in the rest of the space with drawn worker brood.

The above hive is the one I want to put the old queen in. After having gone through all the frames in order to make the split, I still have not found the queen. So I looked through the shallow super and found her in there. You can see her near the middle of the frame. Remember that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you want to see the pictures in more detail.

An easy way to put the queen into the split would be shake her off of the frame. I would rather pick her off the frame and place her into the split by hand. This way she does not get shook too hard or suffer an accident from being shook. It is important when handling queens not to ever hold one by the abdomen. They are very easily injured when they are full of eggs. I prefer to hold them by their thorax when handling them. All I had to do was simply place her onto a top bar and she disappeared in the hive body.

After placing the queen into the split a second deep hive body with drawn comb was added. This is the colony pictured below on the right. Pictured on the left is what remains of the original colony minus the shallow super.

The hive on the left will have a ripe queen cell added to it. It is always handy to have some queen cells on hand if you aspire to split your hives or make nucs. Queen cells are also nice to have should you decide to requeen your colonies. As a beekeeper you can save yourself a considerable amount of money by rearing your own queens. First I need to select a cell to place into the colony. This cell looks like a nice big one.

I have in the past cut a piece of comb from the frame large creating a space large enough to accommodate the queen cell. However I have had just as much success by placing the queen cell between the top bars and using a small amount of pressure from the top bars to hold it in place. I also prefer to place the cell above the most crowded or congested area in the hive.

Pictured below is two queen cells between the top bars.

I made this split on April 12, 2009. In a few more days I will have new bees hatching out from the new queen. The queen cells were from a split I did on March 30, 2009.

After placing the queen cells in place it was time to put the hive back together. The super went back on, then the inner lid, and the feeders.

The hive is topped off with a shallow super and a shim to accommodate the feeders. An outer lid seals it up.

The hive below on the left was the original colony which now has some ripe queen cells. The middle hive has the old queen and should not have its brood laying interrupted too much. Some bees will drift back to the original location. But once again, that is OK. Since it could take near ten days for the new queen to start laying eggs the colony will benefit from some extra bees. The colony with old queen is already hatching out bees which were laid after the split and is steadily increasing in population. It will not be much longer before I can split this colony again. The colony with the queen will most likely be split before the end of the month.

I hope this helps explain in some detail on how to split a colony. If you enjoyed this post please show your appreciation by clicking on the google sponsored advertisements. Thanks.

2009-01-01T23:11:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email from a lady who hooked me up on a colony extraction job last summer. I thought that I would share the query and reply with those who wish to read about it.

Subject: bees
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:13:30 -0500
From: *****@****.com
To: wvbeekeeper@gmail.com

Hello Cass,

I got you the bees from Arbuckle Creek in Mason/Putnam Co. I was just wandering how they are. Did they survive?

Karen,
Thank you for contacting me so I could remove the colony there at Arbuckle Creek. It was a pleasure and a joy to meet your family. (If I remember correctly, that was your family, right?) The colony was an easy one to remove. I have had some colonies which required up to two weeks to remove. This includes restoring everything which needed to be removed in order to gain access to the colony. I did find the queen. She was a pretty one. Unfortunately for me, the queen did not have the superior genetics which I am looking for in my bees and one of the major reasons I perform colony extractions for individuals. The bees within the colony had varroa mites, an abundant amount, IMHO, based upon a visual inspection while removing the colony and after setting the colony up in my bee yard which is specifi9cally designed to hold colonies in quarentine until all proper health inspections are achieved. This colony was in such poor health when I extracted it, (I suspect insecticide had been administered to the colony though that accusation was enthusiastically denied), I attempted to requeen it with one of the queens that I had reared last season. I believe the colony would have been just fine but the degree of varroa infestation was overwhelming to the small number of bees which were removed and relocated. The colony perished. This was one of two colonies I removed last season which had wax that was heavily contaminated with insecticide and also a healthy population of mites. I personally believe that if this colony would have been left alone it would have died out not long after I removed it. However, I am glad to have performed the service for you and gave me additional experience at removing unwanted colonies. Thank you again, and if you have any additional questions please contact me anytime.

Thanks again and Happy New Year!!!!

Cass Cohenour

Should you ever need bees from a structure on or near your property, please do not spray the bees with Raid, Ortho, or any other insecticide. Go through the proper channels in your state or area to find who is willing to remove the bees for you. There is a few sites on the web which will give you the name of beekeepers local to your area who are willing to perform extractions for a fee. I will in the future charge more for my service the bees have been sprayed, possibly twice as much, for the bees are no longer any count to anyone once their wax is contaminated. During the upcoming Spring, and swarm season, if you can not find the proper channels to go through to find someone to remove bees in your area, please contact me and I can
probably find you someone to help.

HAPPY 2009!!!!!!

-CASS COHENOUR, aka WVBEEKEEPER

For the Beginning Beekeeper

2008-12-21T00:14:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for the delay and the time which has lapsed since my last post. I have been receiving numerous emails from individuals asking for more posts or information about keeping bees. I just recently received an email from a future beekeeper here in the state and I would like to share some of the questions and answers to any future or beginning beekeepers who may take the time to read this.

"We're working on getting our first hives/bees, and would like some information/advice, if you have it!"

The first thing you should do is to put in your orders now. Package bees and nuc colonies sale out quick so go ahead and put in an order. Don't just get one colony, try to get at least two. This way you can compare their development with one another. You can also swap brood from a strong colony to weak one if the should arise. These are just a few examples of why you should have at least two colonies and other reasons shall become more apparent when you begin to work with your bees.

Be sure to put in your order for your woodenware as early as possible as well. The spring time is the busiest time of year for the supply houses. You should have your new hive assembled and painted and waiting on your package to arrive. Or maybe you should have it ready in advance to catch a swarm.I don't know how many times I had to put wax foundation into frames in order to go out and retrieve a swarm. Be prepared and do not procrastinate. Procrastination is one of the worst things you could do when it comes to your bees.

The easiest thing to do is to purchase an established colony. Anyone selling bees in the state are required to first have their colony inspected by a state apiarist to insure it is disease free, (actually all colonies within the apiary must bee examined and deemed disease free before any one of the colonies can be sold.) The state inspector will give the beekeeper a certificate of health when after the colonies are inspected and deemed free of disease and parasites. Be sure to ask to see the certificate before making a purchase. A strong and healthy colony should produce you a surplus of honey the first year that you have it.

If you choose to buy a package of bees, keep in mind you will also need to buy the hive components to install the package. You will also need to continuously feed the package sugar syrup in order for them to draw out their broodnest and accumulate enough stores of honey for the upcoming winter. Packages are inspected in the state of their origin before being shipped abroad so there is no need to worry of that. One large drawback of purchasing a package of bees is the possibility that it may abscond once you install in your new hive. By the time you purchase your equipment and pay the price of the package it may be equivalent to that of an established colony as mentioned above.

Nucleus colonies, or "nucs" as they are more commonly referred to, is a good step up from a package of bees. A nuc also needs to build in strength and be fed sugar syrup to help it build comb. raise brood, and accumulate enough winter stores to survive until the following year. You also have to buy additional woodenware as the nuc expands it broodnest as you do with a package. Nucs are much less likely to abscond than a package. If purchased early enough in the spring, a nuc could build up to a strength sufficient enough to produce a surplus of honey. Once again, nucs are inspected for disease and parasites in their state of origin before it is legal to sale them.

You could join your local bee clubs to meet some local beekeepers. This is a great way to possibly score a free swarm of bees in the early spring. I personally like swarms (provided it came from some other beekeepers colony), the earlier the better. In my opinion, they have a drive to survive that exceeds that of a nuc or package and build up much quicker. I have had new colonies from swarms that have provided me a harvest of honey from building up so quickly. In our area, WV, we do not have to worry about AHB, Africanized Honeybees, as do our fellow beekeepers in the southern states, so you beekeepers in AHB territory be careful when collecting swarms this spring!!!

"What do you suggest, as far as set up kits go (we do have a Better Bee catalog, and I've wandered about the internet looking at various apiary sites). Wood? Polystyrene? Is one company better to deal with than another? If there is a 'beginners book' that you would consider a must-have - what would it be? Anything else we need to look at or should consider?"

I personally buy what I don't make myself from Walter T Kelley. The prices are fair and they produce a quality product. Having never used any polystyrene hive components, I prefer wooden equipment. Most of the supply companies are like any other business, they all get good and bad reports. I can say that I can not say anything ill towards Kelley's and I have developed a personal rapport with one of their sales agents. Their are plenty of books and educational materials for beekeepers to use in order to become better beekeepers. Bees are the most studied insect in the past and present so you can much on the subject. I went to my local library last winter and found a nice book on the subject to check out and read. Also, you could get a subscription to "American Bee Journal" or "Bee Culture." There is a lot of up to date information on new studies and goings on in the world of beekeeping. The best thing you could do is to try be as well as informed as possible so your bees will appreciate you more. By appreciate I mean that you can institute methods into your beekeeping to keep them healthier, hygienic, gentle, fecundate, populous, gentle, and disease free. If you do good by your bees they will do good for you.

"We have spoken with a bee keeper in Ohio, but it seems he's very much pressing to buy his stuff ("Forget the catalog! I got it all!") and since we are so very new to the idea, I thought I'd find another WV beekeeper and ask for their opinion - and I found you."

I am honored that you would ask my opinion. As you talk to more beekeepers you will find that there are many different beliefs and opinions in regards to the same questions you may have. Though I have a good working knowledge about bees, I still have much to learn. Regarding the Buckeye Beekeeper, I would try to stay away from any used equipment and purchase new equipment. used hive bodies and frames could contain the spores of American Foul Brood (AFB). The only cure for this brood disease id to destroy the colony. The bees and all hive components are typically destroyed my burning them. Though AFB contaminated is safe for human consumption, it can easily spread the disease from colony to colony through the act of "robbing". I would hate to see your investment and hard work go up in flames because you did spend a few extra dollars to purchase new equipment for your bees. If the Buckeye Beekeeper is wanting to sell you new homemade equipment, make sure all components are of the standard dimensions of the Langstroth hive bodies and supers. I've seen some homemade jobs which were totally incompatible with the store bought stuff. This is okay sometimes, but it does create problems like violation of "bee space" and could result in excessive burr or bridge comb which would make hive inspections more of a chore than a joy.

If you have anymore quetions about getting your first colony please let me know.

Merry Christmas fellow beekeepers.

Cell Builder Colony

2008-05-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

This is the first year that I have raised my own queens by grafting larva into cell cups. One of the main things that I needed to raise some queen cells is a cell builder. Some queen breeders will use starter colonies to start a large number of cells and then disburse those cell cups between multiple finisher colonies to build the cells and to cap them. Some will also use special nursery cages or banking bars in incubators to free their cell finishers up to increase production. Since I am just getting starting and do not need to make the amount of queens as those who sell them commercially I decided to use one queenless colony to start, build, finish, and incubate my queens.

The first thing you should do is make sure that your cell builder colony is populous and disease free. I would also like to recommend that the colony you use is extremely gentle. A colony which goes queenless for a while can become agitated rather easily and may become ill tempered. After you select your colony there there are few few manipulations that should take place. Keep in mind that this is only one scenario and that there are other ways to end up with the same results. This is just what I did and it worked for me. However I do wish I would have used a more gentle colony but now I know better and will next time.

This is the colony which I chose to build my queen cells. After I decided to use this colony I brought an extra hive body to the rear of the colony. As I went through the frames looking for the queen I placed the frames which contained the most eggs into the extra hive body. When I found the frame with the queen I placed it over to the side to isolate her from the colony. After finding and placing the frames with the most eggs into the empty hive body I then began placing the frames with the most youngest and most larvae into the empty box as well. After getting the frames with the largest patterns of eggs and larvae I searched for any other frames with open brood. After I had the extra full of those frame the remaining frames went into the bottom deep along with the frame with the queen. Once the remaining frames and queen was in the bottom deep I put a queen excluder over it and then placed the hive body which contained mostly all open brood atop of that. The picture above was taken nine days later when all the brood cells in the upper deep were capped.

At this point, nine days after putting all the open brood in the upper deep, I removed the lid and placed the upper deep onto it.

The lower deep is removed from where it is sitting creating a vacancy for the upper deep.

After placing a bottom board where the lower deep was I placed the upper deep upon it.

Once the top deep, now queenless, was in the place where the lower deep was originally, I placed a solid piece of plywood atop it then I placed the queenright hive body on that facing towards the rear.

Since the bottom deep now has all capped brood and is queenless there is no way, or should I say no larvae, for the bees to attempt to raise any queens. Also, with the queenright hive body on the top facing towards the rear all of the returning foragers which leave the top will enter the lower queenless half boosting the population for cell building. The queenless hive body, now on the bottom, also has many young bees in it. The bees have the most time and effort invested in the capped brood so they will stay on the capped brood to keep it from becoming chilled. After two more days many more foragers have left the top queenright hive body only to return to the queenless hive bottom.

After the two additional days I moved the queenright portion of the colony elsewhere so I can gain access to the cell builder more readily. At this point you will need to remove a frame so you can add a frame of eggs for some easy queens without any grafting or you can add a cell bar with some freshly grafted larvae.

If you don't think that there are enough bees in your cell builder you can always shake some in but be sure not to shake a queen in. After a while the population of your cell builder will become depleted but you can keep the population up by adding frames of capped brood.

Harvesting Royal Jelly

2008-05-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

If you decide to graft your own queens you may decide to use royal jelly to prime your cell cups with. Royal jelly is a substance secreted by special glands in immature worker bees. It changes otherwise ordinary bee larvae into queen bees. Queen bees live 50 times longer than worker bees, exhibit extraordinary fertility, and have great stamina in spite of their stressful lives. Some grafting tools, such as the chinese grafting tool are easy to use as they will push the larva off the tip along with a small amount of royal jelly. If you use a stainless grafting tool which is stiff on the tip you will find it easier to float the larva off of the tip into a small pool of royal jelly. Two days before I decided to put some queen cups with grafted larvae into a cell builder I split a colony in two in order to harvest some royal jelly to prime my cell cups with. After the two days I went into the queenless colony to find the emergency cells being built.

The bees can build the emergency cells anywhere that there is larvae. So the easiest way for me to find all the cells was to create an empty space in the queenless to shake or knock the bees off the frame in.

Once I got all the bees off of the frame I could find every emergency cell on the frames with ease. This frame has six emergency cells that are easily identified when the bees are knocked off.

Once I got the bees off the frame and found the emergency cells I removed the larvae within the cells to keep from pulling them into the syringe.

After the larva is removed you can pull the royal jelly into the syringe and you don't have to worry about clogging the end of the syringe with the larva.

The royal jelly can be stored in your refrigerator until needed, but it must be warmed up before priming cell cups and placing any larvae in it. I timed the harvesting of this royal jelly to coincide with my cell builder being queenless for two days and used it immediately for priming my cell cups.

Overwintered Nuc Becomes "The Pink Hive"

2008-05-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

Going back to Building Up an Overwintered Nuc, Part 2, I would like to show the progress that this little nuc has made so far. This nuc overwintered on eight shallow frames, two four frame nuc boxes. I added a pollen patty, some syrup, and a deep four frame nuc with drawn comb and honey to it back in February. In March I added another four frame deep nuc box to it. Around the first of April the little nuc was starting to not be so little anymore. There were a lot of bees and it was time to put it into a bigger box. I started out by making a screened bottom board for and eight frame hive body.

I also had some eight frame equipment in need of repair and painting. After doing what I could to repair the boxes I painted them pink. This was the color my daughter had chosen for her colony and I was more than willing to oblige. I actually like the look of the hive myself. Pictured below is the pink boxes along with some other woodenware which was repaired or repainted..

After getting all of my equipment prepared, I loaded everything up to go visit the overwintered nu and to help build it up some more. Looking from the outside of the hive it appeared pretty much as I had left it.

When I started removing the frames from the nuc and putting them into eight frame equipment it began to rain. This picture is the last one I could take because now it had started to downpour. By the time I had finished transferring the frames I was standing in the middle of a full fledged thunderstorm.

In this picture you can see the eight frame pink to the left. I put the eight shallow frames it overwintered on in a shallow super above the screened bottom board I made. Then I placed the eight frames from the deep nuc boxes into the first eight frame deep hive body. I also added another deep hive body with frames of foundation above that.

I'll soon be going to go inspect the Pink Hive for progress and development. I would have liked to have been able to some pictures and would have if not for the thunderstorm. The queen is laying a really nice pattern. When I go back I will be adding a super and will do my best to remember to take some good pictures.

Raspberry Patch Outyard

2008-05-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

I really nice older gentleman, Mr. Dolan, recently gave me some used woodenware. I went an collected about four truckloads of hive bodies, supers, and other miscellaneous equipment from his outbuilding there at his home. The price of the woodenware was easily paid, as he wanted as few colonies placed onto a couple of acres of raspberries for pollination. Seeing how I was going to be raising some queens this year, I jumped at the chance to put a few undesirable colonies in the raspberries before any drones hatched. I sent samples of bees to the Beltsville Bee Lab last year and had one colony come back positive for tracheal mites. Though I decided to feed this colony some grease patties through the winter I still wanted it out of my main yard before drones started hatching. I also have a hot colony which needed moving too.

In the picture above you can see the colonies after being placed into the raspberry patch. The picture below shows me adding frames of foundation to the mean colony. I made a split out of this colony before moving. I thoroughly went through the two hive bodies as I made a split from it. I had confined the queen to lower deep with a queen excluder nine days before making the split. I moved all the open brood above the queen excluder at this time. Nine days later after locating the queen in the lower deep I isolated the frame she was on and shook five frames of bees into the upper deep which was now on its own bottom board. I took the queenright half to the raspberry patch and left the queenless half, which contained all capped brood and no larvae or eggs, for raising some queens. As an extra precaution, I also scraped the cappings off of all the drone brood I could find in the queenless half, or I should say cell builder now because that is what it has become.

Pictured below are the two colonies sitting on a pallet at the raspberry patch. The one on the left was the one with the hot bees and on the right is the one which was fed grease patties to help combat tracheal mites.

Since I really weakened the strength of the hot colony I found it necessary to give it two inverted half gallon jars over the inner lid to help them replenish their numbers and to aid in drawing out the upper deep of foundation.

Pictured below is a top view down into the colony which had the tracheal mites. Though it did have the tracheal mites, I believe that by feeding it grease patties with essential oils through the winter really helped the colony. You can see in the picture that the population is quite sufficient for pollinating the raspberries. If I would have removed the the top deep you could really see a lot of bees int the gap between the two hive bodies.

This colony was definitely strong enough to add a shallow super for some honey production so I took one with me to add the the colony when I moved them there.

This colony also got a few inverted jars of syrup over the inner lid as well to help them draw out the super and for feeding larvae. Pictured below is both colonies as I left them at the beginning of April.

The colony which had the tracheal mites had the feeders removed after they emptied them. It did not draw much comb in the supers when they fed from the feeders but I am positive the extra syrup helped to dramatically increase the population. I checked the colonies two days ago and the mean colony has nearly drawn out the upper deep and is not taking any more syrup due to the heavy locust flow I am experiencing here this year. The other colony which had the tracheal mites now has a fourth super on it. Though they had the tracheal mites I believe they may have mostly been eradicated due to the fact I made sure it had grease patties on it all winter. Having an outyard to set some colonies which have undesirable traits when you plan on raising queens is a great benefit. Though I may have helped the colony rid itself of the tracheal mites they are still susceptible, or not resistant. After the raspberry bloom dries up these colonies will be split down and will be given some of the hygienic feral queens which I have been raising. I am also thankful to Mr.Dolan as he is allowing to keep some colonies there as an outyard after the raspberries are done and over with and has told me I can keep all I want to there. I'm sure that eventually I will end up with close to twenty colonies here in the raspberry patch probably before August.

Colony Extraction at Buffalo, WV

2008-05-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

On April 13th I went and performed yet another colony extraction at an old farm house near Buffalo, WV. This was a fairly simple cutout as I could do it from out side of the house while standing on a picnic table. Here's a nice picture looking up through the field where the farm house is located.

After meeting and becoming acquainted the the the land owner, who drove down from near Columbus, OH, I began to start the work. Finding the entrance to the colony was easy enough. It looked as if someone had possibly shot a hole in the fromt of the house with a small rifle, possibly while deer hunting on the property. Once the hole was formed it became a perfect place for a swarm to settle down inside the wall cavity.

Once the entrance was discovered it was time to remove the old asphalt siding and the old oak boards underneath.

As you can see from the previous picture, the colony was not very old. I would guess that it was a late swarm from last year, possibly in July, which never had the opportunity to build up nicely. The picture is a closer of the comb. I forgot to take my digital camera with me so most of the pictures are quite blurry.

In the next picture you can see the manner in which the comb is measuered and cut to fit the wired split frames.

Here is a good example of a wired split frames full of comb which was cut out of a hive.

It took me a little while, but I did find the queen. The picture is blurry because I tried to get too close with the disposable camera.

This picture is of a wired catch frame with some brood comb in it which I place into the wall where the colony was to attract the stragglers. You have to leave a large enough gap between the inside wall and the comb or most of the bees will festoon over onto the wall.

After removing the comb and bees from the wall I reinstalled the old oak boards and asphalt siding. I also used a scrap piece of OSB to cover the hole in order to deter any returning foragers from reentering to old nest site. I also placed the the hive body which was the bees new home over the old entrance on the edge of the roof to encourage them enter it.

At dusk and after the bees had seemed to settle into their new home. I sealed the entrance and proceeded to bring them to their new home. This picture was taken the following morning before the screen was removed from the entrance.

I must say that out of all the cutouts I have done that this was possibly in the worst shape of any. There was absolutely no capped honey and no nectar in any of the cells. I don't know whether or not this colony would have made it until the flow began or not. There was a small amount of pollen that the bees had gathered. I noticed that there was also quite a bit of varroa mites. Actually, there was a lot of them when compared to how small the colony population was. The mites I seen did not include the mites which I did not see inside of capped brood or between the abdominal segments of the bees. A few days after getting them home I performed a test for hygienic behavior which they failed miserably at. I had grafted some queens from some of my own hygienic feral stock and have since replaced the original queen of the cutout with one of them. The cutout is now building up nicely.

Colony Extraction From Within a House

2008-04-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I received a call a while back about removing some bees from a House. The lady said that they had been there for a while, about three or four years.She also said that she had tried to get several different beekeepers to get the bees but no one wanted to do it because the bees were in the chimney. Since I'm always up for a challenge, have good carpentry skills, and love honey bees I decided to do the job for her.

Since the dandelions started blooming here recently I decided to go ahead and remove the colony before it became too populous.

I took a day and drove out to her house, which is in Huntington, WV and almost two hours from where I live, to take a look at the situation and size up the job. This is a picture of where the bees were entering their nest.

In the next picture you can see the crack where their entrance was and if you enlarge the image by clicking on it you can see the propolis they used to seal some of the crack to help weatherproof their nest.

After I found the entrance I put up a ladder to go take a look into the entrance. I couldn't see into the entrance very well so I had to remove some of the siding. After I removed some siding to get a better look I could see that the bees were in the wall and not in the chimney. They were actually in the wall to the inside of the chimney. The only way I could extract this colony was to do it from the inside. So I put the siding back up and left the job site to go and prepare for doing the cutout from the inside the next day.

When I returned the following day on March 31, 2008, I had to get everything set up. After removing the baseboard, crown molding, window trim, and the trim from around the fireplace I laid a sheet of plastic on the floor and used tape around the edges to help hold the plastic in place.

After getting the plastic on the floor properly in place and secured I then made a temporary wall of plastic parallel to the chimney wall by taping a sheet to the sealing and to both walls on the end.

You can kinda see the door in the picture above. You can also kinda see it in the picture below. I overlapped the almost four foot to allow myself a way to get in and out of the extraction area. I taped about two feet of the top of the seam so bees couldn't get through at the top. I also used tape along the edge of the plastic so the bees couldn't get out. It was very important that the bees not escape because the woman who lived in the house was allergic to bees and didn't have an epipen.

After getting the area secure I then moved my equipment into the extraction area. I took one deep hive body with bottom board to put the bees in. I also use a nine space frame rest. Using only nine frames helps because of the irregular nature in which bees will draw their nest naturally. I have found that the extra room is essential when putting the wavy comb into the split catch frames I use. I also have a couple sprayers for spraying sugar syrup on the bees. I didn't want to use my smoker inside the house and it makes it really difficult for them to fly when they are covered in syrup. They stay on the comb and it is easier to transfer them into the hive body when you cut the brood comb. I also have a five gallon bucket of water and some towels to keep my hands clean. There is another five gallon bucket for holding the honey comb.

Since all of my equipment was in place it was time to remove the paneling. I was told that there was noting under the paneling but I soon found out that there was furring strips over plaster and lath. In the picture below you can see some honey comb was built between the space created by the furring strips and paneling.

After removing the honeycomb I proceeded to remove the plaster and lath to expose the colony.

In the next picture you can see the light coming in from the gap between the chimney and wall. This is where the bees made their entrance. The brood nest is in the center cavity. The cavity on each side of the brood nest is honeycomb. There was enough honey comb to nearly fill a five gallon bucket.

After exposing the colony I decided it was best to remove the old brood comb and inspect it as I placed it into a garbage bag.

As I was inspecting the comb I found some suspicious looking brood which had not emerged. I examined it closely for scale due to the sunken cappings. I also stuck a splinter in one of the capped cells to see if the remains of the pupa could be drawn into a rope. It was not ropy. As I was talking to the homeowner about the possibility of the colony having a brood disease, such as American Foul Brood, and might have to be destroyed by burning she then informed me to the fact that the colony had been sprayed with poison last summer by the boy who mows the lawn. She also told me that the colony had been sprayed with some poison three years ago as well. Even though it eased my mind about the colony having brood disease I still sent a few samples to the Beltsville Bee Lab for AFB testing. The picture below is of the suspicious looking brood which was sent for testing.

After talking a little more about when the bees were sprayed the last time she told me that they used a whole can of spray and sprayed into the entrance of the nest. I doubt that the bees have a brood disease due to the fact that the residue of the insecticide could kill brood for a a long time after first being applied. I thought it was still best to send samples to Beltsville just to ease my mind and to be a safe and responsible beekeeper. Please do not ever poison any honeybees. Find an experienced beekeeper to help you out should you ever have a colony take up residence at your residence.

I did find the queen. She looks a lot like a Carniolan. There was not much brood or bees in the colony so she was easy to find. The pictures I have are really blurry so I will take a picture of her later and post it. But until then, here is a blurry picture of her.

After getting her and her colony home I gave them some new drawn comb to start on. I took only the minimum amount of brood comb from their nest due to the poisoning. I will rotate these frames to the outside of the hive and cull them out eventually. Even Though I am still awaiting the test results from Beltsville, I added some bees to the colony to help them become better established at their new location. Pictured below is a frame with some honeycomb and a couple pieces of brood comb. I made up one mere frame like this with a little more brood comb and less honey. I then either put the rest of the comb in the honey bucket or in the garbage bag.

Here is a picture of the wall after all the comb was removed.

The bees had built up into th wall an additional eight inches which made it a little more difficult to remove the comb and bees from there. This picture was taken looking up into the wall.

This was the first time that I lit up my smoker. I smoked the bees in this recess a whole lot. I smoked them enough so that they either fell out of the recess or took flight. The bees that fell were brushed into an empty butter bowl and dumped into the hive body. The bees which took flight went to the windows, toward the light, and were easily brushed off the top of the window into a butter bowl and then dumped into the hive body. After capturing all of the bees I sealed up the hive body with screen on the entrance, screen on the ventilation hole of the inner cover, and taped the inner cover to the hive body. wedges from a wedged top bar work really well to hold the screen in place and is easily removed. I must say it is much easier to use the and remove the wedges than it is to staple the screen on the entrance.

I do believe that above the top plate of the wall, in the previous picture, that the colony had moved up above it to build a new brood nest due to the fact that the lower area had been poisoned. I would have had to remove the ceiling and another ceiling above that tho gain access to this area. This was an extra expense the homeowner did not wish to incur. I could here bees buzzing in the wall above where I removed the honey comb and brood nest. If there is eggs or larvae of the appropriate age above the top plate the remaining bees can make a new queen and will continue to live in the wall. I informed the homeowner of the possibility of this occurring and agreed to come back and trap the bees out if this happens. I told her to wait a month to see if the bees were still there. If I was just hearing some stragglers buzzing chances are they will go find another hive to join or they will die alone.

All that was left to do was to clean the area and then reinstall the trim and paneling.

Here is a picture of the wall after everything was cleaned and put back into place.

You can't even tell that I had been there when the job was done. Performing a colony extraction from inside of a house or building is easily done if you are prepared and have some skills as a carpenter. Using plastic on the floor helps to keep honey and debris from embedding into the carpet fiber. Also sealing up the plastic really well along all the seams and edges will keep the bees out of the rest of the house. Be sure to have a shop vac, or a bee vac, on hand to capture all the stragglers which you couldn't put into the hive body before taking down the containment tent.

I hope this helps any of you who may be considering performing a colony extraction from inside of a house or other structure. Also, if you have bees in your house please do not poison them. Contact someone qualified to remove them for you. If you would happen to get lucky and kill them with poison, which is doubtful, the honey wax will melt and honey will drip down the inside of your walls and seep out into your carpet. You'll most likely never be able to get rid of the ants and other insects that will move in when the find the honey. Also if you spray poison on them most beekeepers will not remove the bees for you or will charge twice as much if they do. I doubt very seriously if I would have removed these bees if I would have known that they had been poisoned. When sprayed with insecticide, the honey is not fit for human consumption and the wax can not be utilized for beekeeping.

Feeding Pollen Patties, Part 2

2008-03-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

I began feeding pollen patties" to my colonies near the middle of last of last month. I can already see a difference in the bee population more so than in previous years. Here is a picture of a colony about a month before I gave it a pollen patty.

Here is a picture of the same colony when the pollen patty was added. There are remnants of a sugar cake on the top bars if you were wondering.

I had to smoke the bees off of the top bars to get them off the tops so I could add the pollen patty.

I checked this colony about a month after adding the patty and discovered that the bees had consumed the patty and were dramatically building up the population. If you click on the picture you can see the bees packed in like sardines between the frames. The pollen patty is completely gone but you can still see what is left of the sugar cake on the top bars.

The bees are beginning to move into the upper deep as they are beginning to need more space. I am going to have to start making nucs from my stronger colonies really soon before they begin to feel the impulse to swarm.

The pictures of these frames of brood are pretty typical of most of my colonies now. These pictures were taken on March 14th. I had to shake some of the bees off to get a good look at the capped brood.

Here's a frame of brood before shaking any bees off. If you are wondering about the excessive burr comb on the bottom of the frames, that is what building your own bottom boards with a 1" rim will cause your bees to do.

The two frames pictured above are from a colony that I started last year with a daughter from the feral colony which was in the first few pictures. I started six colonies with feral daughters and they all overwintered well. The new colonies still need to build up. I gave them each a super of honey last fall before winter. When the population of the new colonies are strong enough I plan to take the supers, which should be full of brood, to start new colonies and a deep hive body back in it's place for the bees to build in. I have an aggressive plan for expanding my apiary in place this year and this why I am feeding the pollen patties.If I was not planning on expanding like I am I most likely would not be feeding the pollen patties. I have been adding additional vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to my pollen patties to help ensure the pollen patties contain the proper nutrition. If you would like to see some of the things that can be added to your pollen patties to make them more nutritional and beneficial to you bees visit MAAREC's website and read their article on Honey Bee Nutrition And Supplemental Feeding.

Since no pollen substitute is as good for bees as natural pollen I will not be giving them any more pollen patties this spring as they are bringing in large amounts of pollen. Pictured below is a frame with some bright yellow pollen the bees are bringing in. I am guessing they are getting this from the maple trees in the area as there are plenty of maples around. This is a frame from my weakest colony so you can imagine how much more the stronger colonies are bringing in.

Depending on your goals you may wish to implement feeding pollen patties as part of your beekeeping strategy. Just keep in mind that building up your bees before a good flow of nectar may also require you to feed you colonies syrup as an artificial nectar. I have read that it takes one frame of pollen and one frame of nectar to raise one frame of brood. If you fail to ensure your bees has the pollen or nectar you could cause them starve when stimulating them before a good nectar flow so be sure to monitor their progress early in the year.

Feeding Inside a Colony

2008-03-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

During certain times of the year directly feeding a hive is beneficial to colonies development or survival. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish there are different ways to feed a colony inside of a hive and different things you may want to feed. You may want to feed pollen patties to your colonies to help build up the population or to supply a source of protein when there is no pollen available from foraging. You may find your colony light on stores during the winter and choose to feed granulated sugar. Medication may be administered through feeding syrup to a specific colony which needs it. Syrup is also used for brood rearing, wax production, and for building up winter stores. Though I am not feeding any medicine this post is about feeding invert sugar syrup to my colonies to help with brood rearing before the spring flow starts.

I have been feeding my bees communally for the past few weeks but have decided to place some syrup inside of my weaker hives. The stronger colonies have had an advantage over the smaller colonies with the communal feeding so by placing syrup inside the smaller colonies i hope to level the playing field. These colonies will no longer have to rely solely on the bees of foraging age to return from the field with syrup or nectar but now the house bees can gather syrup from within the hive and move it down to the brood where it is needed most. Another great advantage is that the bees can still continue to feed through inclement weather and during the night.

There are a few different types of inside feeders available commercially. There are a few different styles of hive top feeders, available but beekeepers do complain about bees drowning in them. The hive top feeders are convenient for the beekeeper because it holds a lot of syrup and is directly under the lid where it easy to refill. There is also a division board feeder but there are also complaints about bees drowning. This feeder holds less syrup than a hive top feeder and is more time consuming to access and use since it usually located in the brood chamber. Entrance feeders are really easy to use because you can see when they are empty. However with the syrup near the entrance it can induce robbing from other colonies. I have never experienced robing while using and entrance feeder and I do like to use them for the convenience factor. This time of year I prefer to use a double inside feeder.

To use the double inside feeder you need some extra hive bodies to place around the jars after they put on the inner lid. In the picture below you can see an empty hive atop each colony which will be getting a feeder.

You also need the double feeder. I made enough for every colony I have but only needed to use eight. The dimensions of the feeder is 12" long, 5 1/2" wide, and a 1/2" rim on the bottom. The 1/2 rim allows enough space for the bees to move freely under the feeder.

If you don't have any lids to go on the jars for the feeders they are easy to make. All you need is a 1 1/4" nail use to nail a top bar to the end bar when assembling a frame and a small block of wood. A soft piece of wood like pine will work best. Use the nail to poke holes in the canning lid while being careful not to drive the nail all the way through. You can make a few holes or more depending on how fast you want your bees to feed. The lids you can buy from the supply companies usually have sixteen holes.

After you get the hive bodies, double feeders, and syrup together it is time to put them to use. First remover the outer cover to expose the inner lid.

Then place the double inside feeder over the ventilation hole.

Then the jars go into the feeder. Be sure when that when you turn the jar over not to do it over the hive as syrup will stream out until the vacuum is created and keeps the syrup from coming out of the jar.

Then the empty hive body goes on to the inner lid to protect the jars.

After placing the outer lid in place it is best to use some weight to hold it and the empty hive down because the bees will not be able to access the cavity within to propolize them everything together.

In the picture below you can see the hives with the empty hive bodies in place over the inner lid.

I'm sorry about the poor quality of the pictures but it was near dusk and it was the best I could do at the time. I had spent most of the afternoon making syrup, painting hive bodies, cleaning jars, poking holes in lids, and making the double feeders so it was actually dark by the time I got finished with feeding the hives yesterday. Hopefully this has enlightened some of you about an inexpensive way to feed your colonies. The cost of the lids and bands for the canning jars were minimal and if you buy jars they will come with them. The wood I used to make the double inside feeders was some scrap lumber that I've had laying around garage that finally found a use. The jars are easy to use. All you need to do to refill the jars is just take a few jars out to your hives and replace the empty ones. I feel it much easier To use the inverted jars than it is to carry around a pail to refill a hive top feeder or division board feeder.

Strengthening a Weak Colony Part 3

2008-03-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

I am still babying this colony. The queen is laying better and is laying a larger patch of brood than before. However the colony only has about three frames of bees and I feel it is near impossible for them to keep a double deep at the proper temperature to efficiently raise the amount of brood that they should be. So I am busting the two deeps down into a two story four frame nuc.

First I need to the nuc box into the position of where the full size double deep is. I begin by removing the upper deep which is still heavy and full of last year's honey. I like to place these heavy boxes on an empty super on the ground. It is easier on my than putting one of them atop an adjacent colony.

After removing the upper deep I got a good look to determine approximately how many bees were in the hive.

After seeing how few bees were in the hive I decided that they absolutely needed a smaller box. I had been wanting to put them into a nuc box for a while but finally had enough time last Sunday. I removed the lower brood chamber with the bottom board from the hive stand and placed the bottom board for the nuc in its place.

Then the deep nuc box went onto the nuc bottom board so I could begin transferring frames.

The first frames that I needed to locate were the ones which contained brood so the could be placed near the center of the nuc box.

The picture above is of brood from the small colony. You can see near the center of the brood patch where bees have been emerging. The queen is continuing to lay back into those empty cells to keep the brood concentrated together so the limited amount of nurse bees can take care of the brood more efficiently in a smaller area. Click on the picture to gen an enlarged picture to see the larvae in the center cells.

After locating two frames with brood they were put into the nuc box.

Next I found a frame with freshly gathered pollen which was located next to the brood frames.

This frame was put back into position in the nuc box as was a similar frame with pollen and nectar on the other side of the two brood frames.

I then added the second nuc box atop the first. I also placed the remnants of the pollen patty onto the top bars of the brood frames.

With the top nuc box in place I picked through the old upper deep to locate some nice frames with honey to put into the nuc. Since the bees will be able to maintain the cluster on the brood at the proper temperature more easily they will be able to raise more brood than they have. This means that they will need more food to feed the brood. I made sure to do my best to put four frames entirely filled with capped honey above the small cluster for easy access.

After filling the top nuc box with frames of honey I placed a migratory cover for a lid.

I have neglected putting this weak colony into a smaller box since I first began trying to save it. I do have more bees in it now. I also have the queen laying decently. She wasn't laying yet back when I first started working on the colony to save it about a month ago. I am sure the smaller area will help them out. They had way too much space in the full size equipment. Hopefully in another month from now that nuc will be packed with brood and bees. I gave the comb and honey I took from this weak colony to a couple of my fastest growing colonies. Hopefully I won't have to worry about the big colonies until I make some nucs from them. I also hope that I won't have to turn them into a nuc like I did this weak colony. As soon as I can requeen this colony it will be done.

Bait Hive

2008-03-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

During this time of year your colonies may be making preparations to swarm. A lot of beekeepers implement certain management techniques to discourage their bees from swarming. One of these techniques is checkerboarding. Another method of swarm prevention is reversing the brood chambers. Both are methods used to expand the broodnest. Some people let their bees have an unlimited brood nest. This means they do not confine the queen to lay in certain boxes, usually with the help of a queen excluder, and gives her free reign to lay her eggs wherever she wants within the hive.
Bees swarm for different reasons. It is in the honeybees' nature to reproduce as it is the inborn instinct of any other living being. Honeybees reproduce by swarming to make new colonies. In reality, a colony of honeybees is a superorganism. Since so many individual organisms are required for the superorganism to live bees must swarm in mass to reproduce. If a colony of bees is not given enough space and outgrow their hive they will swarm due to overcrowding. A colony may also abscond from the hive but this should not be confused with swarming.
The problem with bees is that you may implement every known swarm control management technique known to man and still have a colony swarm. One of the easiest things to do is to make a nucleus colony from the one which is going to swarm or to split it. The easiest way to see that a colony is going to swarm is if the colony has capped swarm cells. These are typlically located near the bottom of the frames. I have also noticed in the past that a few days before a swarm emerges that some bees will mass on the outside of the hive facing down toward the entrance as if watching for the queen to come out and take flight with the exodus of bees which will make up the swarm.
Let's face it. We all lead such busy lives that it is impossible for some of us to check our colonies every week for capped swarm cells, sit and watch for a colony to swarm, or to even implement any swarm management. This is where a bait hive comes in really handy.
Though I am planning on making nucs from my colonies and continue to do so as they are strong enough up until mid July, it is quite possible that I may have a colony swarm and not be available to retrieve it before it disappears into the surrounding mountains. Therefore I am preparing a bait hive to use in case one of my colonies should swarm when I'm away.
For the bait hive I'm using an old nuc box I built a few years ago and only used to start out a few new colonies. If I should catch a swarm there is a rear chamber for holding an inverted jar of syrup for feeding until the population is large enough to move to a full sized deep. I am also using some drawn comb from a deadout I had this January.

The frames that I selected for the bait hive have drawn comb which brood has been raised in. The honey and pollen is not important to put into a bait hive as it will most likely be robbed out before any swarm moves in. However, the honey and pollen will definatley get the attention of any possible scout bees in the area.

All I did was to fill the five frame nuc with frames of brood comb. If you don't have much drawn comb on hand you can take a frame from the outer edge of the brood chamber from one of your colonies to use, Just replace it with a frame of foundation, a frame with a starter strip, or an empty frame. You can also put this frame between frames of of brood which can help to relieve congestion and overcrowding by opening up the brood area. This is a form of swarm prevention that some beekeepers use. If you just use one frame of brood comb for the bait hive you can use frames of foundation, frames with starter strips, or empty frames to fill the nuc.

Aside from the brood combs, there are other attractants used to lure the scout bees to the bait hive. Once scout bees find a new home for the swarm and agree on the location they will lead the swarm there. A good attractant to use is lemongrass oil.

It only takes a small amount of the lemongrass oil to use as a lure in your bait hive. A drop or two on each frame and a few drops at the entrance will last quite a while. A honeybee's olfactory senses are far superior to ours. They can smell the aroma of the oil long after we can't. Some people will use the oil evry week, some will every month, some will once a year. I perefer to use just a few drops every couple of weeks after the intial dose at the beginning of spring.

Ease of handling of your bait should be taken into consideration if you make your own. Some outer handles make it easy to carry. The entrance should also be somewhat smaller than on a regular full size hive.

A prime location for your bait hive is somewhere between ten to twelve feet off of the ground about fifty yards away from you colonies. You could even set up a perimeter of bait hives around your apiary. It is not of utmost importance to place your bait hive in such a manner. You could place it on the railing of your deck, on some masonry block a few yards from your hives, or almost anywhere you wish within reason.
If you don't have any brood comb or nuc boxes to use for a bait hive you can always use a swarm trap. Almost every beekeeping equipment supplier has these available for purchase. They also have swarm lure available as well.
I hope this helps you catch any swarms that you may have otherwise missed. I can't remember how many times I've came home in the vening to hear someone tell me I had a swarm and just point in the direction that they think it went. Sometimes I got lucky and had the swarm move into an old dead out or stay put on tree limb nearby. This year I am going to try to increase my odds of keeping any swarms that hopefully will not happen by using a few bait hives.

Building Up an Overwintered Nuc, Part 2

2008-03-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

It had been a month since I last vivited the nuc that I am building up into a nice production unit for my daughter. I figured that after a month the queen would bee on the bigger frames in the deep nuc box and laying brood. After taking the outer and inner cover off of the nuc I then removed the empty deep nuc box which surrounded the feeders. The feeders were then taken off for my first look between the top bars to see if the bees had moved up as I had hoped.

Here's a good look down into the nuc. Please keep in mind that you can click on these pictures if you wish to enlarge them for a better view.

I know that just because there are bees near the top bars that it does not indicate that the cluster has mooved near there. So it was time to pull out a frame to inspect it for bees and brood. As I moved my hand over the nuc I could feel the heat rising from the small colony. The smaller sized small nuc boxes greatly benefit a colony's ability to thermoregulate itself. The first frame I pulled out was on the outer edge of the box.

Here's a slightly closer view of the same frame. Around the patch of capped brood is all stages of larvae, and eggs are on the very outer rings of the brood patch.

Since this was the first frame I pulled out I knew the next few frames would have brood as well. This is the next frame I took out of the nuc for inspection. If you look closely enough you can see the queen. You can see here near the open cells surrounded by capped brood on the left center of the frame. She was in the process of laying eggs back in the cells from which some new bees had just emerged.

Here are two more pictures of the queen, if you can find her.

After pulling a few of the frames I looked down into the nucs that the colony overwintered in that I put the pollen patty on when I added the first deep nuc box with frames. The small colony had eaten all of their pollen patty excepet a piece that was about one fourth of the original quantity I gave them. I didn't feel the need to pry into the lower two boxes to look for additional brood but I am confident there is some there. The pollen patties and syrup has really helped to build up this little nuc so far. You can see a piece of what was left of the pollen patty below.

After putting the frames back into place it was time to do what I had planned to do to this colony a month ago, and that was to add some more space. First I put the empty deep nuc box into place.

Then I began to insert deep frames of drawn comb into the empty box.

Then I inserted the rest of the frames. The deep frames of comb contain potions of honey, pollen, and some empty cells. I put the frames which were most empty to the center and the frames which had more honey and pollen to the outside. I believe the queen will be moving up to lay some eggs in those empty cells as it looked as if she was almost running out of space below.

Then the inner lid was put into place.

Finally, the outer cover was put into place.

The next time I go to this nuc it will be to put it into some full size equipment. I'm almost positive that I will be using eight frame equipment for this colony. The inside feeders are now at the entrance in an entrance feeder and the next time I visit the colony another pollen patty will be added. With as much early growth as this small nuc has already shown it is likely that I will be able to harvest a few supers of honey from it. I'll be sure to keep you posted.Thanks.

Communal Feeding

2008-03-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I set up a feeder for my bees so they could have an easily accessible source of artificial nectar before the honey flow. This time of year the sugar syrup can trick the bees into thinking that they are having a honey flow and they will begin to raise more brood than they normally in order to catch up and have a large enough population to benefit from the nectar flow. This is a great way to get your bees to increase their population before the honey flow so you can benefit from it with a larger than normal honey harvest. This is also a great way to make the colonies strong enough to split or make nucs from a little earlier than you could otherwise. This is why I am feeding them stimulatively. Feeding pollen patties with the proper nutrients along with feeding sugar syrup for artificial nectar will increase the strength of your colonies and may cause some early swarms if you don't implement proper swarm prevention techniques. Another drawback is that putting the syrup out in the open can attract other insects or other people's bees. Your neighbor's bees may benefit more from the syrup if his colonies are stronger and have more foragers. I don't have any other beekeepers near me and if other bees feed here they are probably from a swarm which has escaped me in the past.

For communal feeding you can use High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or choose to make some invert sugar syrup. I made up 10 gallons of invert syrup and need to make more. The bees can go through a lot of syrup when they are raising brood. I decided to use five gallon buckets for feeders this year in an effort to avoid having to continually fill smaller inverted jars. However I will also be using jars to give an extra place for the bees to feed.

I added some spearmint oil, lemongrass oil, and some mineral salt to the syrup. These essential oils are reported to beneficial to the health of the honey bee. The salt is also something that is beneficial to the bees. I have read that the calcium helps the bees grow a stronger exoskeleton during the pupal stage of development. Mineral salt can easily bee found at hardware or feed stores in the form of a salt lick for cattle. I added about one pound of salt to the five gallon mixture and about 30 drops of each types of oil mentioned above. The mixture tasted good to me and the bees seem to enjoy it too.

After making the syrup I had to drill some holes in the lid. If you drill too many holes the bucket can not hold its vacuum to keep the syrup from leaking out. Through some trial and error I found that a lid with 24 holes worked rather well.

Here is a picture of a lid which had about twice as many holes. It acted more like a sieve than a feeder when the bucket was turned upside down. Something to consider when making your own bucket feeder is that you want to start with an airtight container. You can see the rubber gasket around the inside rim if the lid. It's a good thing I have a limitless supply of these old pickle buckets because I did go through a few lids until I made one that worked well.

After finally making a lid that worked well I need a way to suspend the bucket to allow a passage for the bees to access the feeder. I used 3/8" thick pieces of scrap wood and a piece of plywood roughly cut to the same shape of the lid. The plywood is 5/8" thick and gives the bees a space of about 3/8" to feed within.

When you flip the bucket some of the syrup will leak out until there is enough pressure to create the vacuum. The bees don't mind and will clean up what they can. Just be sure that the feeder does not leak or you could drown some of your bees.

I also used some entrance feeders to give the bees a few additional places to feed from. It wasn't the warmest of days when I put these feeders out but when it does get warm enough for some nice flying weather the bees really convene at the feeding station.

Having a close source of fresh water for your bees is also important. Your bees can become stressed and agitated easily when they don't have enough water or if they have to fly too far to obtain it. I have a creek that is constantly flowing nearby. Last summer it got really dry here during the drought so I used one of those plastic swimming pools for small children as a watering station. It's important to place some kind of object in the water that the bees can rest on while retrieving water for the colony. Here is a small scale example of bees collecting water from atop a bucket.

Communal feeding of dry pollen substitute or supplement is also easily done. Dry feeding pollen sub will stimulate your bees to forage for pollen. I dry feed pollen sub simply by placing a few pounds on the underside of a telescoping outer cover. It's like a big serving tray for the bees and makes it easy for you to take the tray indoors during inclement weather. I had some pictures of dry feeding pollen sub but I can not seem to locate them at this moment. When I find them I'll be sure to add them so you can get the full visual effect.

Strengthening a Weak Colony Part 2

2008-03-02T15:13:00.000-08:00

I checked the weak colony today which was featured in the first part of this series. The queen is fat and she is laying eggs!!! This is definitely a good thing. The old bees just were not able to raise any brood on their own and needed the help of a new generation. The two main reasons I feel that was causing this colony to fail was underpopulation and and not enough bee bread from last year. The bees have to have the bee bread to eat so they can produce the royal jelly for their young. Without it the older wintered bees can not raise their replacements and begin to die out. After the population gets small enough the queen along with her remaining subjects will freeze to death when it is cold enough outside. They can't stay warm enough to survive within the cluster when there are not enough bees. If I would not have intervened this colony would have been doomed. I might put this colony into a two story nuc box. It might fare better from being in the smaller space and then I can put it back into the full sized equipment when it is strong enough.

The picture below is looking down into the lower hive body of the weak colony which now is not so weak.

Here is a picture of the queen. She has fattened up once again and is laying eggs. She is laying eggs in the empty cells between the capped brood. This was one of the frames that were donated to the colony. Almost every empty cell represents a new bee which has emerged and joined the colony in the past week. I suppose that since the bees cluster on the capped brood to keep it warm that this was the most reasonable place for her to lay the eggs to keep them warm. If you click on the picture you can see the eggs in the cells, they are left of her. It looks like she just made it over this side of the frame as there were eggs on the other side and another frame.

I must say that I feel much better now than I would have when I discovered this colony had died out. If you can take about fifteen or twenty minutes to devote to a weak colony you can save it. I don't know how much money you make but I'd rather spend about fifteen minutes to save a colony than up to one hundred dollars or more to replace it because I let it die out. It's so easy to do a first year beekeeper could do it if the read the first post, Strengthening a Weak Colony."

I took some pictures but they were not very good. Hopefully these two pictures here will suffice for now. I'll be sure to keep you updated on this weak colony as it gains in strength and population.

Waggle Dance

2008-03-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

The waggle dance is how bees communicate with one another to share information to the location of a foraging source. The food source could be pollen, nectar, water and even place trees from which to make propolis. The dance is an effort to recruit other foragers so when they leave the hive they can make a beeline to the source without having to waste time searching themselves for some forage. The waggle dance is very complex for a human to understand but bees can comprehend the directions from it easily. The length of the dance, the speed, and movement of the returning forager on the comb all give the foragers being recruited information to the location of the resource. The "map" that is given by a dancing bee comprises of the distance and direction from the hive. The angle to the sun is used for direction and the bees change their dance through the day to compensate for the sun's movement thought the sky. To learn more about the waggle dance visit NOVA Online to view "Dances With Bees".

While looking in one of my colonies today I noticed a bee doing a waggle dance. After closer inspection of the dancing bee I noticed her pollen baskets had some pollen in them. This is the first sign of pollen that I have seen this year. Pictured below is a frame that has the dancing bee on it. It is the blurry bee. The camera wasn't fast enough for the movement of the waggle dance so the bee appears a little blurred. You really need to click on the picture to enlarge it to get a better view.

What I like about the picture is the five bees crowded together directly behind the dancing bee as in they are there in an effort to observe the waggle dance to get the directions. You can also see the yellow pollen on the dancing bee's hind legs if you look close enough.

In this next picture you can see by the blur that the dancing be is really getting with it. It looks like she is swinging her abdomen out farther in this picture. The other bees had to move out her way and are watching her from the side now too.

I put out some syrup feeders in the yard yesterday for some communal feeding. I also put out some dry pollen substitute. I have read that dry feeding pollen substitute will encourage or stimulate bees to gather pollen. From what I observed yesterday I can say this is true. While I was walking around the yard there were little powdered bees everywhere that were hovering low to the ground. I believe they were looking for flowers to gather pollen from because they looked just like they do in the summer when working the clover. They have not acted this way before I put the dry pollen sub out for them, or at least since last fall. It seems that one of the bees were stimulated enough to go out and bring in some natural pollen.

Thanks to the waggle dance I now know I have some pollen in the area for my bees. And thanks to you all of you who read my posts and click on the advertisements, I am a little bit closer to being able to get the new camera I need so I can take higher quality pictures to put on here for you to see. So thank you and give me a click so we can have some better pictures sooner.

Strengthening a Weak Colony

2008-02-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

This time of year it is critical that your colonies are strong enough to raise brood. A colony with a low population can not keep the center of their cluster warm enough to raise brood. The only way to get the queen to start laying again is to add more bees to have a larger and tighter cluster with adequate core temperature for incubating brood. If bees become protein deficient, from not having an incoming source of pollen or bee bread in the comb, they lose their ability to produce royal jelly, which all larvae is fed during the early stages of development. Since the larvae can not be fed and dies, the protein deficient bees will eat them from the cells in order to clean the cell and for a source of protein. In a case like this you may think that your queen has failed when the old worker bees with protein deficiency are to blame. The addition of young nurse bees is vital at this point to ensure colony survival.

I had two colonies which ended up being really weak over the course of the winter. I discovered that these two colonies were not doing as good as they should be when I put pollen patties on them two weeks ago. At that time, I also seen which colonies would be strong enough to take some frames of brood and young bees to add to the weaker colonies. I finally got the chance to strengthen the two weak colonies yesterday.

Pictured below is one of the weak colonies. This colony performed well over the season last year as I made two nucs from it and gathered three shallow supers of honey. The queen looks as yet she has to be fed in order for her to start raising brood. Adding more bees which are already in build up mode, they will definitely begin feeding the queen and get her to start laying. The upper deep is packed with capped honey and has plenty of stores available for when the colony kicks into high gear raising brood in a few weeks from the addition of brood and young bees which will only help to raise more brood and feed the queen.

The next picture is of the donor colony that was selected to donate some bees and brood. The bees had been eating the pollen patty that I placed in it two weeks ago. This colony had six frames of bees in the lower deep and about six frames of bees about half way up the upper deep so I'm sure that it can spare two frames of bees and brood.

The absolute most important thing to do when taking frames of brood with bees to add to another queenright colony is to locate the queen so that she is not transferred to the other colony. If this would happen the two queens would fight to the death. The colony from which the queen was taken would become queenless. There is larvae of appropriate age from which a new queen could be raised, but this time of year it is likely that the new queen could not become mated any time soon due to the shortage of drones. It takes a queen approximately 23 days from day one as an egg to become fertile and ready to mate. From day one as an egg it takes about 38 days for a drone to become fertile and ready to mate with the queen. It would take up to five and a half weeks for the queen to become mated if drones eggs have been laid.

In the picture below you can see the queen as well as some capped drone brood. Drone cells are capped at ten days, so if I would of removed the queen it would still take a month to have a mated queen in this colony. Four weeks of no brood rearing would set this hive back dramatically. This is why it is important to isolate the frame which contains the queen so that she stays where she belongs.

The queen is on the lower left hand corner of the frame and the capped drone brood is to her right. It looks as if the colony has already hatched out some drones but I did not waste any time trying to locate any in the colony as I was pressed for time. You can click on the picture to enlarge it to get a better view of the queen, drone brood, and worker brood which is closer to the center of the frame. You can also see some of the newly emerged bees as they appear fuzzier than the old bees.

After locating the frame with the queen and setting it aside I needed to chose two frames of capped brood with young bees to add to the weak colony. I made space in the weak colony by removing two drawn frames with some honey and some empty space to add back to the donor colony. The frame pictured below was chosen due to the amount of capped brood and young bees on it.

Before placing the donor frame into the weak colony I sprayed each side of the frame to lightly coat the bees with a Essential Oil Scent Masking Syrup. I made a gallon of 1:1 inverted syrup and added somewhere between twenty-five to thirty drops of spearmint essential oil to act as the masking agent. You can click on the picture to enlarge it to see the bees being sprayed.

The bees in the recipient colony also got sprayed with the masking syrup. The weak colony only had a small cluster of bees on three frames. Pictured below is the weak colony after adding one frame of brood and bees. The first frame on the left is a honey frame. The second frame is one which was originally in the colony and contained only a small number of bees. The third frame from the left is a donor frame with brood and bees. The fourth frame contains the queen and some bees from the weak colony.

After adding another donor frame and the last frame from the weak colony to complete the process, the lower deep of the weak colony looks a lot better and the chance of survival has exceedingly increased.

The donor colony still looks good though its frames of bees and brood in the lower brood chamber have been lowered by 33%. All that was left to do was to put the upper hive body back onto the lower one and to lay the lids in place.

I had been wanting to strengthen this colony for going on two weeks and finally caught a chance to do so. The weather was borderline flying weather and the bees were a little temperamental from being disturbed while in the cluster. I'm glad I finally got the chance to strengthen colony as I have been worrying about it every time I think about the bees. I really could not have picked a better time to have done it. After I finished with both colonies it began to rain which confined the bees to the colony. The young bees would of stayed with the brood anyway but some of the older bees could have returned to their original hive and recruited other bees to help rob out the weaker colony. This has happened to me before. I was prepared to screen the entrance if I needed to but the rain made a better screen than I could have. Also with using the masking syrup the bees did not fight with one another and began grooming each other to clean the syrup off of their bodies. If I could not have accomplished this task when I did the two weak colonies could have died out before the weather would have been cooperative again. Below is a picture of what the colonies look like today. Snow and lower temperatures make good screen too. Once it warms up the bees will have become accustomed to their new home and I should see some orientation flights taking place as the young bees take to the air for their first time.

When I added the frames to the weak colonies I made sure that at least one donor frame contained some eggs. I did this just in case the queens had failed and needed to be superseded. Also if something would happen to the queens, like being balled by the new bees which were added, the workers would have some young larvae of the appropriate age to raise a new emergency queen from. I will be raising some queens this spring and the queens in these two colonies will be replaced from my feral stock.

Hopefully by reading this you will take the initiative to strengthen your weak colonies so that they can survive through the winter. I know some of you may think that this may be a little drastic but I feel it is much better than to simply sit back and watch my bees dwindle away to nothing or to go out to a dead out just to look in and say that they starved (like I have in the past). By inspecting your colonies and strengthening your weak ones until they can be requeened your percentage of successfully overwintered colonies will increase. Thanks.

Building Up an Overwintered Nuc, Part 1

2008-02-18T19:58:00.001-08:00

I had a colony last summer which had a single deep and a shallow super for the brood nest. I wanted to take the shallow away from the colony ans replace it with the deep that was over the shallow. Since the shallow had brood in it, the top deep was full of honey, and I had a few queens on hand the time was right for making a nuc. I took eight frames from the shallow and made a two story four frame nucleus colony. I did not do anything else for this nuc for the rest of the year and it has overwintered just fine and now is the time to start giving it extra room for the spring build up.
I put a double inside feeder on the nuc a week before I went back to give it extra room.
Last Sunday, 2/17/08, I went back to add a pollen patty, a deep nuc box with four frames of honey and pollen, and to refill the feeders. Pictured below is my daughter, Mindi, who was brave enough to remove the outer lid and inner cover for me.

When she took of the lid she told me that one of the inverted jars were empty. So she reached in pulled it out.

She then took the other jar, empty deep nuc box, and the double inside feeder off of the nuc.

After we got down to the brood area I went over to take a look while Flower came over to paw around on Mindi's leg and seemed jealous that the bees were getting her attention.

After looking at a few frames I found some eggs and some larvae so I put the frames back into the nuc box and added a pollen patty. Putting the syrup on the nuc a week earlier got the queen to start laying.

After adding the patty I added the deep nuc box with four frames of honey and pollen. The frame below is a good example of a honey dome. At the lower center the cells are empty, around that is some pollen, or bee bread, then a band of honey. This little nuc got lucky I had a dead out or it would not have gotten drawn comb with honey and bee bread. For a closer look at the frame click on the picture.

Then we put the inside double feeder on the top bars of the deep frames.

With the double inside feeder in place, Mindi put the inverted feeder jars into it. I'd like to see the queen move up to the deep frames to lay her brood. Since the bees were never given any additional space last summer they built a lot burr comb. If the queen moves up and lays in the deep frames I won't have to worry about damaging the brood in the shallow frames when I move the nuc into full sized boxes. With the feeders on top of the frames the bees will probably move up closer to the syrup.

Then she put the empty deep nuc, inner cover, and outer cover back onto the nuc. She's quite brave around bees being only ten years old.

I'll continue to give this nuc more room as it needs it. Hopefully in the next few months we will see this nuc become a nice productive colony as it grows in population and size. Thanks for reading this post and be sure to follow this small overwintered nuc during its journey through the upcoming year.

Are Your Bees Alive, Do You Need to Feed Them? Part 2

2008-02-17T06:50:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the colonies that I fed back in January? I put granulated sugar atop one colony and icing in the drawn comb of another. The bees in the colony with the icing really took to it. Here is a picture of one of the frames that had the icing in it.

This is what one of the frames looked like before I put it into the colony when it had icing in it.

The other colony I fed with granulated sugar.

They didn't use hardly any of it. However that is a good thing about Carniolan bees. They are extremely frugal with winter stores and have a smaller winter cluster than other races of bees and will thereby also use less stores.

Both colonies were approximately the same strength when I gave them the feed. They also had about the same amount of stores available. It is quite clear to me that they prefer the icing over the granulated sugar although feeding granulated sugar can be a great way to keep your bees alive and should not be discounted.

The left over sugar has been removed and will be made into syrup shortly. Both of these colonies will be set up with some inverted jars with 1:1 to help with brood rearing.

The colony that had the sugar on it now has a pollen patty and an empty shallow of drawn comb. Hopefully when the shallow is full of brood around the first of April it can be taken off the deep hive body to start another colony with.

Feeding Pollen Patties To Your Colonies

2008-02-16T22:40:00.001-08:00

After you have decided to feed your colonies pollen patties, whether they are premade patties or you make your own, you need to put them on your hives. The first thing to do is to prepare your hive by smoking them in order to calm the bees before you open them. I like to puff some smoke into the entrance and wait a few minutes before opening the hive.

After smoking the entrances and staying ahead to give the bees time to become sedated, I take off the lid to make it easier to lift the upper hive body of the brood chamber from the lower one. Once the lid is off I separate the two hive bodies and puff some more smoke between them before lifting the upper hive body off. I find the bees remain more calm this way and I rarely use smoke under the outer or inner lid like I have seen some people do. I might use a little smoke when adding a honey super but I mainly do it to sedate the bees between the inner and outer covers before removing the outer cover.

After removing the upper hive body of the brood chamber I could see the remnants of a sugar cake that added to the colony a while back. A really friendly beekeeper in Washington state gave me a recipe for the cakes. The colony didn't really need the cake but I needed an excuse to open the hive.

After opening the hive down to the cluster area I decided to examine the the frames for brood. It had been a weeks (maybe three?) since I looked for any brood or eggs and this time I found some! The bees are not bringing in pollen yet so they are using last years reserves to begin brood rearing. It looks as if I intervened at the opportune moment. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see eggs in the cells adjacent to the capped brood. The frames beside this frame have a similar brood area. The bees are rearing brood closest to the center of where they cluster in order to keep the pupae at the proper incubation temperature and to avoid chilled brood.

The next picture has the queen in the midst of the workers. She is on some natural comb from a colony which I extracted last May. I can easily tell that the comb was from the cut-out because it is in a swarm catch frame.

After looking at the frames it was time to place the pollen patty. When placing the pollen patty be sure that all bee are off of the top bars. You can do this by gently smoking the bees or by lightly brushing them. After the top bars are clear of bees scrape off any comb that may be on the top bars before placing the pollen patty.

After the pollen patty is in position the upper hive body must be put back into place. Be sure to look at the bottom bars of the frames to ensure that there is no bees that will be squashed into the pollen patty. If there are bees there smoke them off and scrape away any burr comb that may be on the bottom bars.

Here's a picture of the top hive body back atop the lower hive body. This hive body is still full of honey and heavy. I doubt if I will need to feed this colony syrup. The only syrup this colony will most likely be getting is from stimulative communal syrup feeders.

Here's another colony with a pollen patty added.

Here I am clearing a seat for another patty.

Once the way is clear the patty is put into place.

Around an hour after placing the patties within the colonies I could see a big difference in the behavior of the hives. All the colonies were abuzz with action. Pollen patties encourages the foraging of honeybees as well as brood rearing.

It was really neat to see the increase in activity outside of the hives. It has been warmer here today in the past few weeks than it was today and the colonies exhibited much less activity. Though I monitored the entrances for bees returning to their homes I never did see one bee return with pollen. I believe it is a good thing that I gave them each a pollen patty since they are raising brood and do not have a source for pollen as of yet.

I surely hope that you enjoyed this post to my blog. This time of year it seems that there is always a lot of chatter about feeding pollen patties as everyone wants their colonies to start raising a lot of brood. Now instead of talking a big game I just go ahead and do what I want or need to do. I didn't need to add the patties but I wanted to help ensure healthy populations in a few months so I can start making nucs and raising queens. Thanks for reading the post and stay tuned because there is more to come.

Making Pollen Patties

2008-02-16T21:08:00.000-08:00

Why would someone want to feed their bees pollen patties? To build the population of the colonies of course. Beekeepers have different reasons for wanting an early spring build up. The reason I am doing it is so hopefully I'll be able to start some nucs sooner and have plenty of bees in each colony to do so with. Some beekeepers do it to build the colony population so they can demand top dollar on pollination contracts. Other beekeepers do it to have higher populations of bees in order to collect a greater surplus of honey. Some build up their bees to make packages or shook swarms from them. Whatever your reason be sure that you implement some preventive swarm management if you give your colonies stimulative feed unless you just like catching swarms.

Making pollen patties for yourself is fairly simple. You may choose to feed a store bought pollen substitute or or mix your own. I bought some pollen substitute to mix into patties instead of mixing a bunch of different ingredients and to keep things simple. When I made my pollen patties all I needed was pollen substitute and sugar to make into syrup. High fructose corn syrup can be substituted for sugar syrup. The amount that you need depends on how many colonies you plan on feeding.

After I open a bag of sugar, and in this case also pollen substitute, I like to store it in a five gallon bucket. The lids to the buckets have rubber o-rings and are airtight. I don't have to worry about the contents drawing moisture and becoming ruined.

I have only sixteen colonies that need patties on them so I'm trying to make only enough for each colony. After doing some math I decided that a gallon of 2:1 syrup mixed with some pollen sub should be ample. To get a gallon of 2:1 you need to stir in eight pounds of water in to two quarts of boiling water. Be sure to add some cream of tarter to invert the syrup. The pollen patties will retain their moisture longer when using inverted sugar syrup.

After making a gallon of 2:1 invert syrup I measured out approximately one gallon and a half of pollen substitute.

Then I added the syrup.

After adding the syrup I began mixing the syrup and pollen sub with a paint mixer attached to a drill.

I used the drill and mixer until the ingredients were well mixed. The mixture was too thick so I added another pint and a half of 2:1 syrup so the mixture would gain the the texture of dough.

The best way I could think of scoping the mixture from the pail in which it was mixed was with a drywall finishing knife. One pound of the mixture will make a sizable patty when flattened to fit between the frames within the brood chamber of a colony.

Before scooping out some of the mixture it best to already have a piece of waxed paper ready and waiting to receive the mixture.

After I flattened out the patties I weighed them and was pretty consistent in making each patty close to one pound. I adjusted the tare on the scale according to the weight of the plate being used.

Below is a picture of the last four patties I spread onto the waxed paper. The patty on the right is for a little four frame nuc that I'll be building up over the next few months.

I did rather well with my guesstamation of how much syrup and pollen substitue to use. I did not have much left over after making sixteen patties. What I had left over was used to make some heavier patties for the bigger colonies since they can got through them quicker. I hope this helps you if you are thinking of making some patties and haven't before. They are really easy to make if you have some time and the right ingredients and equipment. I'll be sure to let you know how good my bees build up between now and when I split them.

If you enjoyed the information that I have passed along in order to help you make your own pollen patties, please click on one of the Google sponsored advertisements to show your appreciation. It would be like Throwing a few cents into the "need a penny, take a penny" tray at the gas station, only that it isn't your pennies!!! Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Recipes for Beekeepers

2008-01-30T02:22:00.000-08:00

Occasionally it becomes necessary to supplement a colony’s diet. This may be due to lack of food stores, to encourage a particular behavior, or to medicate the entire hive. Here are some recipes that are considered to be bee safe. Each of these recipes may be of benefit when supplied at the correct time and prepared properly.

HONEY

Though you may think it because they make it, honey is not the best feed for bees. Honey is in essence bee food that has been processed so that it won’t spoil. Bees prefer to eat nectar when given the chance. Be sure to know the source when honey is used as a feed or as an ingredient in one of the following recipes. If at all possible only re-feed honey to the same hive it was harvested from. Never use store-bought honey. Store-bought honey may contain AFB or other such spores that can be deadly to bees.

Sugar Syrup

Check out my previous post for making invert sugar syrup.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

It is not uncommon for a beekeeper with many hives and little time to use high fructose corn syrup in place of 2:1 syrup, however this method is not cost effective or practical for small-scale beekeepers. Pollinators are more prone to feed with corn syrup because most of the crops that they pollinate doesn't produce enough nectar for all the colonies in the field. Be sure to check the list of ingredients when purchasing high fructose corn syrup not specifically packaged as bee feed. Many suppliers often add extra ingredients that may not be desired when feeding bees. Your best bet is to buy from a supplier of beekeeping equipment such as Mann Lake.

Bee Candy

Occasionally it is not advised to feed bees syrup. Sometimes when emergency feeding it is best to use a dry or semi-moist food. Some times bee candy is used because it is not as messy as feeding syrup. Even though bee candy may be convenient to use as feed, it is not recommended as a complete substitution to syrup.

Un-prepared Sugar

The simplest bee candy is crystallized cane sugar. Pure sugar is generally only fed during dire emergencies. Bees will sometimes carry it out of the hive rather than consume it. In the winter when syrup is not a preferable supplementary food source,s ome people place it over the top bars in a hive on newspaper. If the colony runs out of stores it can eat its way up to the sugar. I have a good description and pictures of this method of feeding in the post entitled, "Are Your Bees Alive, Do You Need to Feed Them?"

Fondant Bee Candy

Fondant bee candy can be fed directly to the bees once cooled. Fondant is a good food source for mini-mating nucs because there is no drowning involved when you have a small amount of bees. It is also common to use this recipe in small quantities to plug the hole on a Queen Cage.

> 4 parts (by volume) white sugar
> 4 parts (by volume) 2:1 Syrup or HFCS
> 3 parts (by volume) water

Boil water and slowly add the syrup and sugar until dissolved. Continue heating until the mixture reaches 238°F (114°C). Without mixing allow the solution to cool until it is slightly warm to the touch. Then begin to mix and aerate the solution. As you do this the color should lighten. Pour into shallow dishes or mold and save for later use. I prefer to make the fondant thin enough to where I can work it into an empty frame of drawn comb.

Quick Candy

If you are pressed for time quick candy can be used in place of Fondant Bee Candy. It is easier to prepare but may not be as easily workable.

> 1 part (by volume) confectioner’s sugar
> 1 part (by volume) 1:2 Syrup or HFCS or Clean Honey

Just knead the two ingredients together like bread dough until it is mixed thoroughly.

Pollen Substitute

Sometimes there is a shortage of pollen or a beekeeper may want to stimulate the queen into rearing brood before the spring flow. Pollen substitutes can be used in such situations. Despite its name pollen substitutes are no real substitute for genuine fresh pollen.

Dry Pollen Substitute

Dry pollen substitute can be placed directly into the hive or used in bird feeders to attract local bees. If you wish to not order or purchase a prepackaged pollen substitute from a beekeeping equipment supplier you can make your own with these ingredients which should be available locally.

> 3 parts (by weight) Soy Flour (expeller-processed soybean flour)
> 1 part (by weight) Brewers Yeast
> 1 part (by weight) Nonfat Dry Milk (Not instant milk)

Simply mix the powders together and use. Occasionally bees may refuse to eat pollen substitute, most often when fresh pollen is available. It is however possible to trick bees to take the substitute when necessary by adding a small amount of Vitamin C into the mixture. Often 1 teaspoon per 5 cups can be added. If a powered form is not available, it is possible to crush a Vitamin C tablet to add to the mixture.

Pollen Patty

To make a pollen patty mix the Dry Pollen Substitute with enough 2:1 Syrup or HFCS to make a putty or dough like consistency. Some beekeepers will add other ingredients to increase the amount of certain vitamins or amino acids or will add the extra ingredients to make the patty more palatable for the bees.

Grease Patties

Grease Patties that contain both wintergreen oil or tea tree oil and mineral salt appear to have an effect on varroa mites and tracheal mites. These effects can be seen when brood is present and has a devastating effect on mites when brood is not present. Remember that grease patties with essential oils should not be used during time of honey collection for human consumption. When the bees are making a surplus of honey grease patties without essential oils can be used to a lesser effect. For any noticeable effect a grease patty of some form should be used at all times. Replace any consumed patties. Grease patties are awesome to use in the winter time and if mixed to the right consistency can easily be pressed into an empty frame of drawn comb or placed on the top bars above the cluster on a piece of waxed paper.

Simple Grease Patty

> 1 part (by volume) solid vegetable shorting (such as Crisco)
> 2 parts (by volume) white sugar

Mix sugar and shortening until well combined. Split into approximately quarter cup (~6 centiliters) portions and store excess in the freezer sand witched between sheets of wax paper.

Grease Patty With Mineral Salt

> 2 lbs solid vegetable shorting (such as Crisco)
> 3 lbs whites sugar
> 1 lb 2:1 Syrup or High Fructose Corn Syrup or Clean Honey
> 1/3 cup pulverized mineral salt (~1/5lb Depending on mineral content)

Prepare the same as you would a simple grease patty recipe.

Grease Patty With Mineral Salt and Essential Oils

> 2 lbs solid vegetable shorting (such as Crisco)
> 3 lbs whites sugar
> 1 lb 2:1 Syrup or HFCS or Clean Honey
> 1/3 cup pulverized mineral salt (~1/5lb Depending on mineral content)
> 3 table spoons wintergreen oil

Prepare the same as you would a simple grease patty recipe.

Extender Patty

If a grease patty contains terramycin, it is called an extender patty, and is considered one of the best ways to control American Foul Brood. Some research has shown that the Terramycin will stay at strength for up to 6 months in this application. Extender Patties can be used in fall on over wintering colonies or during early spring. Extender patty use has been sanctioned by the FDA. Despite this approval, caution should still be used if taking this route of medication as spore resistance has been noted with this form of application.

> 1/3 lb powdered sugar aka Baker's Blend Sugar, not to be confused with confectioner's sugar
> 1/3 lb solid vegetable shortening (such as Crisco)

2 tablespoons Terramycin TM25

This patty can be used to eliminate three weekly dustings of powdered Terramycin, but should only be used to medicate and not as a prophylactic measure.

General Purpose Essential Oil Mixture

A well known commercially available general purpose essential oil product for bees that is similar to the following recipe claims many benefits even though many of those claims have yet to be proven. The following recipe should work about as well as that product and is way cheaper. It can be added in small quantities to feed to encourage feeding. It has been known to occasionally cause robbing behavior due to its great appeal to bees.

> 5 cups water
> 2 1/2 pounds of sugar
> 1/8 teaspoon lecithin granules (used as an emulsifier)
> 15 drops spearmint oil
> 15 drops lemongrass oil

Bring the water to a boil and stir in the sugar until it is dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved remove the mixture from the heat and quickly add the lecithin and the essential oils. Stir the mixture thoroughly. This solution should have a strong scent and not be left open around bees. Cool before using.

Use the Essential Oil Mixture in early spring and during periods when no nectar is available and to build up packages, nucs ind swarms. Two teaspoonfuls in a quart of 1:1 sugar syrup delivers a total of one cc of both essential oils. The essential oils are evenly distributed throughout the syrup. The Essential Oil Mixture helps produce rapid build up of bees when used as a feeding stimulant. In addition, using 4 teaspoons in a quart of one to one sugar water of the Essential Oil Mixture as a spray instead of smoke helps calm the bees, and spraying caged new queens and bees helps with queen acceptance during cage introduction and reduces balling during direct release when sprayed on new queen and bees. It also helps to reduce stings: mix a little on your hands and watch the difference in bee behavior-very few or no stings at all. Acts as a bee calmer when sprayed on the bees and helps prevent fighting when combining nucs, swarms, and colonies. Spray on a colony while doing a cut-out for some extra calm bees! When sprayed on new foundation helps encourage the bees to draw out new comb or plastic comb.

Smokeless Smoke

A solution of the above general purpose essential oil mixture and 1:1 syrup can be mixed and used in a spray bottle. This solution has varied effects depending on the specific history of the hive. Because of differences between each hive it is best to try a ten to one [1:10] mixture of essential oil mixture to syrup and vary the ratio as necessary. Have your smoker readily available during your first few trials in case the bees don’t react to the solution. The bees will stay more calm when this mixture is used as compared to simply using the sugar syrup by itself to spray the bees.

Essential Oil Scent Masking Syrup

Nearly any essential oil can be mixed with a 1:1 syrup solution to mask an undesired scent in the hive. A masking syrup can be used during queen introduction or when joining two hives. Simply add the desired amount of oils to the spray bottle before using the syrup. The stronger the scent the better it will serve to mask other scents. Since essential oils have a strong smell they should be used sparingly. One of the more common oils to use is peppermint oil, but be sure not to use banana oil.

Scent Masking Syrup

A cheap scent masking syrup can be used in the same way as the recipe for essential oil scent masking syrup. Prepare a 1:1 syrup and add one or two crushed peppermint candies for every two cups of prepared solution. Load the solution into a spray bottle and use as needed.

I hope these recipes help you out with your bees. Maybe you can help them in the winter if their stores are low, feed them stimulatively to begin brood rearing a little early, use pollen substitutes for rearing of brood, and employ the other uses that these recipes come in handy for during certain situations. I hope you appreciate the time I have shared with you to help you and your bees.

What to do with a dead-out?

2008-01-29T10:09:00.001-08:00

I made a sad discovery yesterday when I found a colony that had recently been visited by the Grim Keeper. I don't get upset like I used to when I have a dead-out. I have come to expect them in the winter and almost every beekeeper experiences them from novices to experts. Since I have not been using any chemical treatments against parasites, pests, and diseases dead-outs are sometimes unavoidable. However I feel that maybe this dead-out could have been prevented if it had not been for my lack of better judgment as beekeeper.

The best thing that I could have done for this colony would of been to requeen it last August. The colony was outperformed by my other over winter colonies. I feel that the queen had lost her fecundity and her ability to to produce queen mandibular pheromone due to her age. Not only had the queen lost her fecundity, or ability to lay a large amount of eggs, but she also shut down earlier than the other colonies. This resulted in a smaller size winter cluster. By lacking the ability to produce a sufficient amount of queen pheromone the hive began to have a sense of queenlessness and became hot and harder to work. I was going to requeen the colony in the spring when I raised some queens but for now on I'll go ahead and purchase a queen to requeen in the fall. That would have been the smart thing to do because the colony would have had a large enough population to overwinter successfully and would have been going into a new season with a new and more vigorous queen.

When I inspected the colony on the 6th of this month the cluster was in the upper deep. The upper deep had very little stores in it but the lower deep was pretty much full. I should have reversed the positions of the hive bodies then but thought I would have been better off waiting until the first of February when I was planning on putting some pollen patties in the hives and giving them syrup. It may have help the colony to survive but I feel at this point it would of only prolonged the inevitable. I know better than to procrastinate when it comes to the bees but I still inadvertently make mistakes. Now I can honestly say that a winter cluster will not move down to food stores and a beekeeper should definitely make sure to keep stores directly above the cluster. If you can't use honey as stores above the cluster be sure to at least put some sugar or fondant above them.

I originally obtained this colony form an older gentleman who had become unable to care for his bees. He told be that he hadn't been in his colonies for three years. Being confined to wheelchair and partially paralyzed from multiple strokes he could only sit on porch and watch the bees work. When I picked up the hives from him in July he told me he probably had about twenty swarms that spring. He said it broke his heart to see the swarms cluster in one of the trees in his yard to only leave for a new home a few hours later. I hate to even think of it.

I opened the colonies before I bought them home and gave them a good inspection. The supers were only half filled with frames and the bees had drawn comb in all the empty spaces. He said he had a neighborhood kid to rob him a few frames of honey every now and then and neglected to put any frames back in. The supers were a real mess and were very hard to remove from th top bars of the brood chamber. The brood combs were old and black but there was not any signs of disease. I would not have been surprised to find Apistan strips in the colonies but when asked he said he had never treated against mites. After inspecting the colonies I decided to start culling the old comb as soon as I got them home. That was four years ago.

Last October I sent some samples of bees to the Beltsville Bee Lab for disease diagnosis. In this colony that died out there were no traces of nosema disease or tracheal mites. However they did find one varroa mite in the sample from this colony. I numbered the colonies as I took samples so I could easily identify the colonies with the results from the lab.

I'll usually write info about the colony on the back of the hives but this year as my apiary numbers increase and with the addition of a few outyards I will be using colony strength and health record sheets in order to keep up with all my colonies. If I would have been keeping records last year maybe I would have requeened the colony simply by reminding myself about it every time that I would read the record sheets.

So now I'm looking down into the dead colony and wanting to know why this colony died when there was only one mite in the sample. I don't even think that were enough bees left to stock a mini-mating nuc with.

One of the big reasons is that the colony dwindled away to a very small cluster outlined in the picture above. Maybe when I collected the sample to send for diagnosis all the mites were in the cells with capped larvae. I physically examined every bee as I removed them from the comb. I counted sixteen mites from the bees on the combs and four mites from the ones on the bottom board.

I wish I would have taken better pictures. All the pictures I took with a bee in my hand are blurry. You cant see it but there is a mite between the scales on this bees abdomen.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, here is a picture of part of the cluster and the queen.

I removed the queen and placed her in a ziplock baggie. I placed all the bees in the same bag as I removed them and inspected them. Pictured below is where the bees starved out. The arrow pointing to the left is pointing to some bee bread. The bees were watering it down so they could eat it. I tore open the abdomen of some of the bees and the contents were the same color as the bee bread. I guess bees can't live on bread alone. The other arrow pointing down is pointing to a mite. You can click on the picture to make it larger and you should then be able to see the mite.

Here is a picture of the other side of the comb where the cluster was.

After I removed all the bees from the surface of the comb I proceeded to remove the ones that were head first in the cells with tweezers. When bees die head first in the cells it is usually indicative of starving but there could always be other factors just like in this case.

Looks like the bees had built a supersedure cell cup in preparation to replace their old failing mother last autumn. Maybe it got too late for them to replace her or it was one of those cell cups they start "just in case" they need it. I unintentionally tore apart a lot of the bees as I pulled them out of the cells but some came out easily and ended up in the baggie with the other bees. After I got finished with the combs I moved on to the bottom board.

On the bottom board I found three bees that had mites on them. One of these bees had two mites on the underside of her abdomen between the scales. I found a couple more mites on the landing board and I wish I would of had a magnifying glass handy. I don't think they overwinter very well when their host dies. I also put the bees from the bottom board into the baggie.

The reason I put them in the baggie is that I am going to send them in for testing. I am very curious to learn if they had managed to acquire any nosema or tracheal mites since I submitted my last sample. When you collect a sample you need to add some alcohol to preserve the bees while they are in the mail. They can not use decayed bees so if you wait too long to collect samples they can not be tested. Since we have had freezing temperatures here for the last few weeks I believe the bees are in good enough shape to be tested. When you add the alcohol to the bag you don't need to drench the bees. You only need enough to get all the bees wet.

I had been culling comb from this colony for four years. This year I would have had all the old comb replaced with new comb. Here are a few pictures of the frames with honey from the lower deep.

While culling the old comb I mostly gave the colony starter strips cut from Dadant's thin surplus wax foundation which is 5.05 mm and the most cost effective starter strip when using wax. The bees in this colony seemed to consistently draw out 5.0 mm cells for worker comb. When using foundation I use Kelley's crimpedwired wax foundation with hooks which is also 5.05mm. Below is a picture of a frame of the original natural comb that was going to be culled this spring.

If you count the cells between the arrows you will see that there are ten cells to five centimeters. This works out to 5.00 mm per cell. I would like to know why the bees picked one of the oldest combs in the hive to cluster and die on, especially when they had freshly drawn comb to cluster on. Maybe the cocoons in the wax absorbs and holds heat and makes it easier to keep the cluster on or the older comb has more pheromones embedded into it and is more attractive to them than newer comb. Hopefully someone in college who needs to do a thesis might read this and decide to do a study on it.

Above is some natural comb that was drawn out last spring. The cells are still very near to averaging 5.00 mm. Below is some natural comb drawn out last year as well. Where the tape measure is it looks as if the cells are closer to 4.9mm than 5.0mm.

After working on this colony for the last four years to cull the old comb and to help keep it healthy I am quite disappointed with myself for letting this happen. I can't blame the bees because I knew to do better than I did in my management of this colony. The only good thing I can say about this dead-out is that I had the opportunity to share it with you so that you can learn from my mistakes. The only other thin that is good about it is that I know have two deeps full of drawn comb with some honey. The best way to store drawn comb or honeycomb is in a freezer.

Do not ever store comb that has honey in it with Para-Moth or Para Dicholorbenzene Crystals. I no longer use any chemicals so I either freeze the comb or use blue painter's tape from 3M. The painter's tape will seal the supers together and if you do it right the moths can not get in. I really don't know what I'm going to do with the drawn comb. I do have some options. I could use them for swarms, packages, making nucs, bait hives or swarm traps, or could use them bolster existing colonies. Whatever I us them for I need to make sure they are protected form pests until I use them.
I hope that by reading this that you will requeen your colonies as soon as they need it. It is a part of practicing good beekeeping management. Keeping a young queen helps to prevent swarming, provides more bees from a queen with a greater fecundity, and will give a larger surplus of honey. Be sure to feed you bees early in the autumn or summer until the colonies have enough stores for your area and climate. Here we need about 70 pounds of stores for overwintering. Make sure your bees have their stores above them and can remain in contact with them while they are clustering. Just by doing these few simple things this will help your bees avoid the Grim Keeper. Don't make the same mistakes that made with this one colony. I hope you enjoyed the post. Thanks for letting me share this with you. Keep checking back for new posts.

Making Invert Sugar Syrup

2008-01-26T22:09:00.000-08:00

There are times when you may find it necessary to feed your bees some sugar syrup. Feeding syrup can be done for different reasons. You may need to feed syrup to administer fumigiln to help your bees combat nosema disease. You may want to continuously feed syrup to new package to help in the production of wax and to provide an easy source of food to help the colony get established. Some beekeepers feed in the early autumn to help a colony gain extra stores for overwintering. Some beekeepers will start feeding two or three brood cycles before the spring flow to help stimulate the queen into laying eggs. Pollinators need to feed their bees to help maintain strong populations of bees so they can fulfill the obligation of their contracts. These are just a few examples of why beekeepers feed sugar syrup to their colonies.

Different ratios of sugar syrup are fed depending on what you wish to accomplish.

A 1:2 mixture, one pound of sugar to two pints of water is used by some beekeepers as a stimulative feed to get the queen laying eggs.

Some beekeepers prefer to use a 1:1 mixture, one pound of sugar to one pint of water, for stimulative feeding. A 1:1 mixture more closely resembles nectar and stimulates the bees to build comb and provides food for the larvae.

A mixture of 2:1 , two pounds of sugar to one pint of water, is typically fed to administer medications and fed to help build winter stores.

I'm currently in the process of making 1:1 invert syrup for stimulative feeding. The reason I like to invert the sugar in the syrup is that it breaks down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, the two main components of honey. Since it closely resembles honey by being made up of the same two components it is more easily digested by the bees and larvae and can be more readily consumed. Opposed to regular sugar syrup, invert syrup is less likely to crystallize, it retains moisture longer when used in pollen patties, helps to prevent mold, and robbing is less prevalent when invert syrup is used for feeding. Invert syrup is easy to make by simply adding some cream of tarter or lemon juice to the sugar syrup.

To make some inverted syrup to get a 1:1 ratio I simply put eight pints of water into a large pot and bring to a boil.

I then slowly add eight pounds of granulated sugar to the water and stir the mixture to completely dissolve all of the sugar.

Once dissolved cream of tarter is added to the mixture. One teaspoon to one gallon of syrup is sufficient to invert the sugar in the syrup.

When using eight pints of water and eight pounds of sugar you need to add one and a half teaspoons of cream of tarter because you will end up with a gallon and a half of syrup.

When making your invert syrup it is important that you boil the mixture for twenty minutes to invert as much as the sucrose as possible. Be sure to stir the mixture a lot and don't let it sit or it will carmalize in the bottom of the pot. When done properly the invert syrup has a shelf life of up to six months so don't worry if you make extra because you have six months to give it to your bees.

For stimulative feeding my favorite way of feeding invert syrup to my bees is in a one gallon paint can. When placed over the cluster the bees can remain in contact with the feeder when it is too cold to break the cluster and can continue to eat from the can.

If you click on the picture above you can see that the can is close to eight inches tall. When placed on a couple 1/4" or 3/8" sticks on the top bars over the cluster the lid provides a large are for many bees to feed at. Also since the can is eight inches tall it will fit nicely inside of an empty deep hive body.

I like to use jars for feeding as well.

The quart and half gallon jars work well with boardman feeders. There is also an inside feeder that works well with quarts. Half gallon jars are too tall for an empty deep hive body the work well with two empty shallow supers. The gallon jars work well with two shallow supers.

Hopefully this info helps out those of you who have wondered what invert sugar syrup was and why it is more beneficial to you and your bees as opposed to regular sugar syrup.

Colony Extraction from May, 2007

2008-01-24T10:36:00.001-08:00

I'm sure that if you are keeping bees that you would like to have more colonies, right? Of course you do. I don't think I've ever met a beekeeper who would turn down a free swarm if it was presented to them. I'm sure that if you are like me that you already have empty equipment sitting around begging you for bees. The easiest way to get bees without effecting your own colonies by making splits is to collect swarms. If you want to collect swarms you need to get your name out there now!!! Inform your local pest control businesses, real estate agents, landscapers, and tree trimmers that you would perform this service. The best thing is that there is no need to do it for free!!! Exterminators get paid for their services and all that I know will not poison bees. It is hard for a real estate agent to sell a house with a hive of bees under the eave. Landscapers are on a lot of different properties while they work and a busy hive isn't to hard to spot if it's around and is sometimes difficult to work around. Tree trimmers have a hard job to do if they are cutting down a tree that has a colony in or on it. They all will pay for your services or will recommend you to the property owner and they will pay to have their fears absolved by having you remove some bees. It is much easier to make a nuc or a split from one of your own colonies than it is to waste your gas and time running around trying to catch swarms that may have already left. You also don't want to cut out a colony with diseases or diseased brood for free when you don't want it anyway. This is the main reason you should be compensated for your efforts.

One of the big things about collecting swarms, removing bees, doing cutouts, or colony extractions is that you may inadvertently introduce a new pest or disease to your apiary. I collected a swarm while working near Carbo, VA a few years back and brought it home. The colony did great. I had no reason to suspect it had anything wrong with it. After I sent some samples to the Beltsville Bee Lab last Autumn I discovered this colony had tracheal mites. It had not infected my other colonies but the potential was there. Having a call about a swarm here in southern West Virginia is not common but having calls for doing colony extractions are.

Prior to doing the cutout you should asses the site and collect some samples to send to the Beltsville Bee Lab to have the sample diagnosed. After you get the results back you can decide what you need to do to the colony after you extract it. While you are cutting out the brood comb be sure to examine it closely for any brood disease. If you don't see any signs you should be alright. But if you see something out of the ordinary send it in for testing.

Here are some pictures from a colony extraction I did last May in the county east of here. The first picture is of me getting set up to look into the colony entrance.

After looking into the entrance and listening to the humm of the colony I was glad to discover the colony was in the wall on the front of the building and not on the side. This was a great relief as I did not wish to work off of the rickety extension ladder I had. Since the colony was in the front wall it made the work of removing it much easier as I could work off of the front porch on a step ladder.

After removing in the asphalt siding in a manner in which it could be reused I proceeded to cut the wall panels up the center of the stud so the could easily be nailed back into place. Pictured below is my first good look at the colony after I removed the planking from the wall.

After smoking the bees to move them to the comb deeper in the colony I started the slow tedious process of cutting the brood comb to fit some deep catch frames. I removed my gloves while doing this. Manual dexterity is of utmost importance when cutting out comb. I only got stung six times during the entire time and was all my fault because I put my hand or fingers on a bee. The bees were very docile which relieved my anxiety of possibly getting stuck like a pincushion.

Here I am coming down the ladder with a deep catch frame full of brood to put into a deep hive body.

Here's nice picture of a swarm catch frame partially filled with brood comb. You can see where I have removed about half of the comb from the wall at this point and there are still a bunch of bees in the wall.

At this point during the cutout I discovered the colony was making swarm preparations. This was evident by the presence of two swarm cells which were uncapped and still under construction. If I would have waited a week later I would have lost the mated feral queen and half of the bees in a swarm. The swarm cells were later used to make some nucs.

There was a lot of brood in the colony. If I remember correctly I made up eight frames of nothing but brood during the cutout.

This is a picture of the piece of comb I cut out that had the queen on it. The five gallon bucket in the background is where I put all the honey comb. It was nearly full when I finished.

Here's a closeup of the queen. It looks as if she was slimming down to fly off with the swarm within the next couple of weeks.

One thing that excited me about these bees was how quickly they started to remove damaged larva from the comb and hive after I put the comb into the deep hive body. This is indicative of hygienic behavior and was confirmed later when I tested them for hygienic behavior.

It took about five or six hours to remove all the comb from the wall and another two hours to remove and reinstall the sheeting and siding on the wall.

After a little more scraping of burr comb and removal of straggling bees I fixed the wall back to original condition. Too bad my photographer was in cleanup mode and forgot all about taking some additional pictures when I was done. I took all the bees I could and waited until after dark to make sure that I did. I feel sorry for the bees that got left behind but seeing how they were old enough to be foragers they didn't have much longer to live anyway.

I monitored the progress of this colony closely over the rest of the Summer and and it did not take them long to repair what I damaged. This picture was taken about two weeks later.

This next picture is what the upper deep looked like on the colony before winter. I was also fortunate to have this colony make a super of honey which I gave to a weaker colony for the winter.

This picture is of the winter cluster as of January 6, 2008. You can see that the colony only has three of the catch frames left in it because I used the rest for the split that I transferred the queen cells into. That split was later divided and the colonies that resulted are overwintering well so far. You can see in the picture that I used nine frame space frame rests in the hive body. This helps to hold the frames together until they are propolised and eliminates the need to use rubber bands or tie the ends of the top bars together. As of January 6th the bees had not moved into the upper deep and it is still full of winter stores.

If you are interested in doing any cutouts and would like some swarm catch frames feel free to contact me at my email address; ccohenour@hotmail.com

Also, if you are in southern or central West Virginia or near the state line around the area and have a colony you need removed from your property please feel free to contact me as well.

I have a few colony extractions scheduled for the later half of May. Hopefully I'll be able to take some pictures of those as well and post them here for you. If you are doing a cutout on your own just be sure to take plenty of beekeeping equipment, tools, take your time, and be careful. I hope you have enjoyed this. Happy Beekeeping!!!

Are Your Bees Alive, Do You Need to Feed Them? Part 1

2008-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

It's getting into the new year now and I'm sure that many beekeepers would like to know if their bees are alive or if they need fed. If you have bees and want to know the only way to really find out is to check them out on a warm day when they are flying. It got up to about 60 degrees here today so I took advantage of the warm weather to check my colonies out.

Looking at the picture above you can see some flight activity. Just seeing flight activity around a hive does not mean that it is alive. The activity could be foragers from other colonies coming to rob the stores from a hive that no longer has a living colony of honeybees in it. There is an easy way to know if you still have a colony in a hive without opening it.

The picture above shows guard bees at the entrance. They will inspect nearly every bee that attempts to enter the hive to make sure it has the proper pheromone as the rest of the colony. Guard bees can recognize their nestmates from this pheromone and tell them apart from bees of other colonies. Pictured below you can see guard bees defending the entrance from invaders towards the right side of the landing board. These bees were most likely trying to enter the hive due to drift because the bees have not been able to fly for a few weeks here. It seems that drift is more common after the bees have been confined to a winter cluster for a week or longer. The bees need to reorient themselves to the hive location after a period of confinement.

So now that you've seen some guard bees defending the entrance the next thing you would probably like to know is if the colony has sufficient stores and how big the cluster is. The only way to do that is to visually inspect the colony. You could use a scale to weigh the hive but this is impractical for most of us and it is easy to evaluate a colony's stores when you are looking at the cluster size. So let's open a hive.
This is a picture looking down into the lower deep hive body of Cordovan Italians.

This is the lower deep hive body of feral bees from a wall extraction I did last May.

I did not take a picture of the upper hive bodies but they are full of stores. The main cluster has continued to remain in the lower brood chamber in the feral colony. The cluster of the Italian colony was dispersed between the two deep brood chambers. The feral colony has a slightly smaller overall cluster size and seem to be more frugal with their winter stores. I'm not even concerned about these two colonies or my other colonies from last winter having having enough stores for this winter.
Something else you need to consider is condensation in the hive during winter. An easy way to combat condensation is to notch your inner cover like this.

Not only does the notch allow for ventilation for the condensation but it also give the bees another entrance. I prefer to notch both sides of the inner cover because the space between the outer cover and inner cover needs to be ventilated as well. If your inner lid is not notched you can place a few twigs or pebbles near the front corners between the inner and outer covers. This will give you enough ventilation so that your colony will not have condensation build up.
My primary concern as far as winter stores is for the colonies I started as nucleus colonies last June and July. Most of the colonies have sufficient stores but I did find two colonies that I could feed and not have to worry about for awhile.
Pictured below is a colony of New Word Carniolans.

The queen was a virgin daughter of a breeder queen from Latshaw Apiaries. I received the queen near the third week of July. Once the queen had started laying there was a dearth of nectar here which usually happens in August. I had two of these queens and lost one of them most likely during her nuptial flight. I combined the two nucs I made for them near the end of August. Though I fed sugar syrup to the nuc it never really did take off good due to being late in the season. I gave the colony a shallow super of drawn comb at the beginning of the goldenrod flow but they used that nectar for backfilling the brood chamber. Though I'm going to begin stimulative feeding with syrup and pollen patties in a month from now I decided to use some granulated sugar to make sure that this little colony has food if they need it.
I placed an empty shallow super on top of the brood chamber and placed some newspaper on the top bars of the frames.

Then I poured about eight pounds of sugar on the newspaper.

I looked in the hive a little while ago and some of the bees are already taking to the sugar though they still have about thirty-five pounds of honey in the brood chamber.
The way I have mostly fed colonies in the past is slightly more labor intensive than just simply pouring sugar on some newspaper. First you need some drawn comb, some properly mixed sugar icing, and a colony that needs to be fed
I was lucky enough to have a colony that needs to be fed and some drawn comb. Now I just need to show you what to do with the icing. First you need to get a frame of drawn comb.

Then you need to put the icing in the comb.

Be sure when using this method you place the frames with the icing over the cluster so the bees can access it easily. It's not very wise to use syrup for winter feeding. The bees need to evaporate the water from the sugar and that is really hard for them to do during the colder months.
I'm sure you will be happy to know that I have not lost any of my hives this year. I inspected each colony today and seen nothing at all to be concerned about. Every colony had nice healthy looking clusters and I could see no signs of disease or parasite infestation. The only difference was that the colonies I made up as nucs last year had smaller clusters and I'm sure they will be in full build-up mode come spring. As long as I can stay ahead of their needs they all should do just fine this winter.
Since I've given you some basic points about winter feeding I'd like to talk about something else for a minute. I'm sure that some of you reading this need some new hive stands or need to sit some up for new colonies. I've used wooden stands and pallets but they never last very long. Migratory beekeepers need to use pallets because they make the job easier when loading and unloading hives and moving them around in the orchards. I've used masonry block but too much of the bottom stays in contact with the masonry and it will cause them to rot faster. My favorite thing to use so far are metal I-beams.

Pictured above are 12" I-beams. There is little contact between the wood and the metal so the bottom boards stay drier and last longer. I have a friend who has a scrap metal business so I usually have easy access to some I-beams when needed.

Pictured above are a couple more I-beams I recently acquired for hive stands. I need to get a few more for my plans for expansion this spring. I painted the one hive stand with silver colored Rustoleum protective enamel and they have looked great for the last few years.
I hope all this info helps you out with your beekeeping endeavors!!!

Repairing Hive Bodies

2008-01-05T21:03:00.001-08:00

After a while of having an apiary almost every beekeeper is faced with the dilemma of repairing or replacing some of their woodenware. For me the most common piece of woodenware which needs to be replaced or restored are the hive bodies. The hive bodies which contain the brood and winter cluster are subject to all weather conditions every day of the year. Your honey supers usually only experience seasonal usage during which they are in warmer weather and not subject to being damp for extended periods of time through the winter like the hive bodies for the brood chamber are.

Most of the hive bodies that I use are deeps (9 5/8" tall). The deeps are much heavier when full of honey than my shallow supers are when they are full. The extra amount of pressure used to pry them apart with my hive tool also helps to damage them. After they have been in the weather for a few years the corners where you pry them apart degrade due to the weather so it becomes easier to damage them when prying them apart.

A few years ago I went to a hive body rotation schedule due to having older hive bodies which needed repaired or restored. During the winter months I will repair and restore some of the older hive bodies to rotate out with those currently in use. I like to switch them out in the spring when I start to routinely inspect my colonies. The ones which get rotated out will soon be restored or repaired with a fresh coat of primer and paint to be put back into rotation when needed. After I am finished with the rotation the last ones will usually sit around until January at which point I will start getting anxious and start the process again. The winter months are also an excellent time to buy all that new woodenware you need for the spring.
I am sure that some of you have seen hive bodies that look like this.

Sometimes when I have a hive body like this I will cut them down to a medium super (6 5/8" tall). That is the easiest thing to do. The only bad thing is that you either have to cut down some frames to fit it or just buy some new ones. You can see at the bottom left, or a top corner, of the hive body that it needs to be repaired there as well as on the bottom,
Over the hive body previously pictured you can see two deeps which were cut down to mediums. Notice the three different styles of cut in handles. These three hive bodies each came from different suppliers.

This next picture is of a hive body which I simply just cut some rotten spots out of. It's easiest to me if I cut from where the joints meet in the corners and I only try to cut a minimum of wood to remove the rot. It is important to keep your cut square so when you attach the new wood to the hive body it fits properly.

This picture is of the same hive body with the new wood in place. I prefer to use a bead of carpenter's glue between the new and old wood but it is not necessary.

The other end of the hive body had some rot too. Since it was near the center of the hive body I chose to use some exterior vinyl spackling by DAP. I have used bondo before but the DAP is easier to use as it requires no mixing and is easier to sand. The reason the paint looks so bad is because it was an oil oil based paint instead of latex paint which is water based. I'll discuss the paint in more detail a little later.

It's hard to see in this picture but there is a predrilled hole into which a 3" decking screw was used to fasten the new wood to the hive body. For thinner pieces of wood used to replace rot I like to use 16d or galvanized spiral nail instead of the countersunk screws. I also favor using electrical 3/4" metal staples for securing the bottoms together to help hold them flush when screwing or stapling. After removing the paint I discovered another rotten spot. You can see where I used a chisel to remove the rot and where the DAP was used about half way down the right side of the hive body.

The next picture is of a hive body with one of the top ends repaired. There was not much damage on the top of this deep hive body but I felt the bottom was in such disrepair that it needed to be cut down to a medium super. The end had been cracked off from using it as a fulcrum to pry propolised frames from the hive body over the years. The corners were rotted and damaged as well from all the prying. Since these pieces of wood that were used are small so are the nails. A good bead of glue was applied before nailing and the glue will hold better than the nails would otherwise.

I have not painted any of the hive bodies that I have repaired because I am making and ordering more woodenware and wish to paint everything at the same time. When I paint hive bodies I prefer to use two coats of primer. My primer of choice is Kilz2 latex primer. It is a latex sealer, primer, and a stainblocker. It is also water based so cleanup only requires soap and water. It dries quickly and can be recoated in about an hour. The primer helps the paint last longer as well as it gives the paint a prepared surface suitable for painting. If you don't use primer your paint will chip off the unprepared wood in a year or two and your wood will not be properly protected from the elements.

For the paint I prefer latex. The color is not as important as what kind of paint you use. Be sure to use a water based latex exterior paint. When choosing your paint try to choose some that is mildew resistant and with a good warranty. Some people my disagree and think that oil based paint is better. However I do not share these views. Remember the green hive body above with the chipped paint? Would you like to know why it was like that? Wood is a permeable substance. This means that the wood breathes or will allow moisture to pass through it. The oil based paint creates a barrier that will not allow the wood to breath. When a strong colony of bees is curing nectar into into honey the permeable quality of is a benefit and this is one of the reasons I don't like styrofoam hives. When the moisture from the nectar tries to escape through the wood it will be trapped in behind the oil based paint. (I doubt if whiskey would be as good as it is if the charred barrels that it ages it in were painted with an oil based paint. A big part of aging whiskey in a charred barrel is that the wood breathes and allows the flavor to build during the aging process.) After a while the wood will start rotting behind the paint because it is coming from the inside. This is why I now only use latex paint because it is permeable and allows the wood to breath properly. When restoring hive bodies which have been painted with an oil based paint I use a heat gun to help strip as much of the old paint off as I can. It blisters the paint for easy scraping and removal and is much faster than sanding because the oil based paint is pretty tough stuff. If the hive bodies are properly primed and sealed before painting usually all I have to do is a little sanding just to scratch the paint up some and recoat with a fresh paint when I restore them.

Before painting there is another step that I include in my hive body rotation. Before priming and painting I will scrape the inside of the hive body. Then the inside is lightly scorched with a propane torch. After this it is then sanded until the scorching is barely visible. Though I have never had any AFB or nosema in any of my colonies for the ten years I've been keeping bees I do this as an extra precaution to help guard against spreading any possible disease that could be hiding in the propolis, burr comb, or on the wood.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and hopefully learned something to help you become a better beekeeper. When I am ready to get everything painted I'll be sure to take some pictures and to share the experience with you. Thanks for reading.

Registering Your Apiary and Submitting Samples for Testing

2008-01-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

It is important that if you have any colonies of honeybees that you register them with your state's Department of Agriculture. Here in West Virginia sometimes the state will appropriate funds to help beekeepers to maintain the health of their colonies. It also gives you the opportunity to have your colonies inspected by a bee inspector. If you wish to sale any colonies or wish to move your colonies across state lines you must have each colony inspected and they must be accompanied be a certificate of inspection. In some states if you experience bear damage to your colonies the state will not reimburse you the cost of the damage if your colonies are not registered.
This year the West Virginia Dept of Ag is giving beekeepers in the state one gallon of corn syrup and one treatment of Api Life Var for each colony registered with the state. In the past the state has assisted beekeepers with mite treatments as I mentioned in my previous post.
Here is what a Certificate of Apiary Registration in WV looks like.

I no longer use chemical treatments in my hives but I still monitor for mite levels and submit samples for testing of tracheal mites and nosema disease. Though my colonies appeared healthy and robust and with low mite counts, I submitted some samples to the Beltsville Bee Lab for analysis by a trained technician. The results I received verified that my colonies have low mite counts. I was more interested in seeing if any of my colonies had nosema or tracheal mites. I got a clean bill of health for the nosema however one of my overwintered colonies that I acquired as a swarm in southwestern VA had tracheal mites. The level of infestation was at 16%. An infestation level of %30 can cause a colony to collapse during the winter months. Hopefully this colony will make it through the winter. In the future when doing cutouts I plan on collecting and submitting samples from the colony before I even begin the extraction process. I definitely do not want to bring any nosema or tracheal mite infested honeybees into my apiary and am considering not collecting swarms from other people as well.
To me it was important to submit the samples. I had five colonies left after the spring bear attack and did a wall extraction of a colony. I made some nucs from these colonies to increase my numbers. I turned the six colonies into twenty. I sold three colonies and gave my daughter a nuc. The samples I sent were from my overwintered colonies, the feral colony I got from the cutout, and from a few of the nucs which had the feral queens daughters in them. I was satisfied with the results. I used the feral queens daughters in all the nucs I made and the nuc I made from the hive that tested positive for tracheal mites was not infested with the parasite. This is good news because it now seems that the offspring of the feral queens daughter have a resistance to tracheal mites. I will submit some more samples this March to see how the faired over the winter.
Submitting samples is easy and it is free. The only it costs is the price of postage, a few ziplock baggies, some rubbing alcohol, and some time. Anyone who is interested in submitting samples to the Beltsville Bee Lab just click on the link to the left of the page and follow the links on the USDA website.
This is what a Bee Disease Diagnosis sheet looks like.

I am doing my best to not chemically treat my colonies for parasites or disease. I have not treated for anything for four years after I started monitoring mite levels. I also do not believe in prophylactic treatments. Don't treat your bees just because everyone else does. Monitor your mite levels and send samples for analysis to make sure you need to treat. To me it is a waste of your time and money to treat for tracheal mites or nosema if you do not have it. The only way you will now is if you learn to examine your bees yourself with a microscope or to send samples to a laboratory. There is some research that shows that chemical treatments for varroa can have ill effects on your bees. Infertile drones, queens with low body weight, and queens which are superseded often are a few of the ill effects that chemically contaminated brood comb can have on your colony. I hope this helps those of you who are treating prophylactically, are not registering your apiary, or are not submitting samples for disease diagnosis.

When I Got Started Beekeeping

2008-01-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

With the beginning of the new year, I have decided to start a blog to post my beekeeping activities through the upcoming year. This year I plan on raising some queens, making some nucleus colonies, doing some colony extractions, and harvesting honey. Hopefully the documentation of my personal experiences along with some pictures may help any of you reading this who is interested in beekeeping or are already a beekeeper.
I have been keeping bees 1997. My ex-wife's grandfather, Fred Covert, gave me my first hive. This was the next spring after the varroa mite hit hard here in Boone County, WV. Fred had nearly thirty colonies in his apiary. In the spring of 1996 he discovered that nearly all of his colonies had succumbed to some form calamity and was left with only three colonies. Not knowing what a mite was he speculated another culprit, American Foulbrood (AFB). Since he suspected AFB as being the downfall of his colonies, he burned nearly 27 hives. Each hive contained two deep hive bodies, bottom boards, frames, and inner and outer covers. Some colonies also had some shallow supers left on them from the previous year. I must say that this was an expensive mistake because a dead-out, a colony which has died, does not need to be destroyed if they met their demise at the hands of varoasis.
Having been interested in bees and all form of insects since childhood, I implored Fred to let me get a colony of bees from him. My timing could not have been worse for wanting him to help me get a start. He just didn't have the resources to help me out. He told me that if I wanted some bees that I needed to learn how to keep them first. So under his wing I went. The first thing we did was to build some new hive bodies, bottom boards, and inner and outer covers to replace the ones he burned. He quickly got on the phone with Kelly's and ordered a large quantity of frames and foundation to replace that which he destroyed. After toiling in the workshop in the evening for about a week the frames and foundation finally arrived. This was my first lessons in hive construction and the components of the hive.
Of course Fred was more than happy to have a young eager apprentice. He was 79 at the time and had a little trouble carrying around hive bodies due to the colostomy bag he wore under his shirt. I was 20 at the time so I became his mule as well as his student. The weekend after we got the frames assembled and hive bodies painted, he had me come to his house to help him. My first task was to carry enough woodenware up the hill to where his colonies were located for three equal splits. He was the first to go up and he had a chair there in which he promptly sat as I made a few more trips up and down the hill. Next I had to go after his beekeeper's box. It's a box that contains veils, hive tools, smokers, matches, and few other essential items for working colonies. When I returned with the box, that's when he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out three little wooden cages.
The wooden cages had a hollow part covered by a small screen. He let me hold one and asked if I knew what was in it. I simply said, "Bees." He then asked if I seen anything special about the bees. "No," I replied. I was then informed that they were queen cages and was told about the duty of the queen. Of course he told me a lot about bees when we were making the new hive bodies in the shop but now I had a visual aid. I didn't even realize I was looking at a queen bee the first time I seen one.
Anyway, to not get into too much detail, we made three splits with the queens he had. I got to wear the veil and gloves and was the official smoker puffer which I thought was cool. He explained what he was doing as he went through the colonies and showed me brood, eggs, drones, pollen, and the usual stuff you'll see in a colony. I thought he was so brave since he was not wearing any veil or gloves. I now know that him not wearing his PPE, personal protection equipment, was due to having 60+ years of experience, not bravery. So this was my first actual experience in beekeeping, making splits. I mostly just watched, listened, carried stuff, and gave a puff of smoke when he told me to but it was a wonderful day and one that I'll never forget.
At the end of May this same year, two of the survivor colonies had built up enough to swarm. I lived nearby and was fortunate enough to be home at the time. He actually told me night before to stay close to home because he was going to need me to help him catch a swarm. I've seen him during the years after this to sit on his back porch and watch up the hill and point to a hive and say, "That hive is going to swarm in a day or two." It's so amazing because he's hardly never been wrong. My phone rang about shortly after noon and he told me to come up and catch this swarm for him.
When I got there he challenged me to locate the swarm in the trees. I couldn't find it. After he pointed it out I don't know how I could have missed it. I retrieved the swarm out of a white pine about thirty foot from the ground. I don't think Fred is ever as happy as he is when he catches a swarm. I caught one more for him that year. I didn't get to help with the honey harvest because he didn't end up with much and did what little he had with his wife. He showed me how and when to place supers on a colony that summer. That autumn, the bee inspector came by and showed us how to use Apistan strips for varroa. The WV State Dept of Ag gave away Apistan and demonstrated its use to registered beekeepers that year due to all the losses experienced statewide the previous year.
All eight of his colonies had survived the winter. We went into the wood shop again and started making more equipment. He got on the phone and ordered more frames and foundation again. About the first of April we split the eight colonies into sixteen. I caught him a few more swarms a few months later. The last two swarms that we caught were early in June. I was given those two swarms as my first colonies. I'll never forget how proud I was as I set up a little stand on the hill behind the house and put those hives on it. I think the reason I appreciated the colonies so much was that I worked for a beekeeper to become a beekeeper. I had made and painted the hive bodies. I had made and painted the bottom boards. I made the inner covers and outer covers. I helped turn three survivor colonies into 16+. I had learned a great deal about beekeeping in the 16 months leading up to having my own hives as Fred's helper. Though I could have bought a couple hives from someone for a couple hundred dollars, I' glad that I did not and learned for the year before I got mine. To me those two colonies were priceless.