cool happenings

I discovered I have lost yet another hive today. I will be spending my spring making splits and recovering my losses instead of being able to sell nucs.

I will also be officially starting artificial insemination this year. More to come on that in the future.

I have 2 bee hives in a country club and they needed to be moved. The people there love them so they built me an awesome stand/platform for them. I am amazed at how involved the people at the country club are with nature. They wanted them near the gardens, so we decided on the location and I told them about my requirements. And this is what they built for me:

A neighbor where I have some hives took a bunch of pictures and asked a bunch of questions about bees last year. She has entered an art contest with my photo.... Pretty cool! It has some iridescence in it that the camera cant pick up.

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Motivation

All of my bees that are still alive are doing really well even with the recent cold snap. The candy boards and mountain camp method really helped.

The problem is now me. I have a bunch of comb with dead bees in it from my losses and I am starting my rotation out. I will be removing 2 frames from every box, making the bees make new comb and then processing the wax. I am just really lazy about it and have quite a few supers in need of processing.

Does anyone have a good way of processing? The way I have been doing it is: boil everything in excess water. Once cooled but still hot, I take a cheese slicer and remove the underside that has all of the trash. I then use a double boiler system on the good wax. This workd well, but takes a really long time. Any suggestions?

Lost more hives and pollen

It was 60 degrees yesterday and I was able to go into all of my hives to check them. I have lost 2 more. All of the hives had queens from strachan and were carniolians. They all absconded or underperformed and froze. I had heard nothing but good about them. Oh well.

A bunch of the hives had already worked through their honey reserves and I had to put candy boards that had a pollen party embedded for this spring. By the time they eat through the sugar block, they will be needing the pollen for buildup. I will have to post a picture later of what they look like.

I also noticed 2 different types of pollen they were bringing in. I can't figure out what is blooming for tem to use. It is gray and dull yellow.

losing bees left and right

I had an extraction call in an apartment complex.... Turned out to be yellow jackets. I was not too thrilled to find them in the attic space above the heated apartment. I informed them they needed to call a pest control company.

I still have 12 hives. It is wierd as some of them are only half way through their rations and some are onto the sugar I put on top (to make sure they didnt starve over the winter). We are having a really warm winter and I think a few hives have not figured it out......

Either way, I will be concentrating on recouperating my losses and making honey to sell instead of selling nucs. I will probably end up selling 2 or 3 extras anyway. But, this year I am planning on honey and removing old comb and replacing it with new comb.

I replace 20% of my hives comb every year. That equates to about 1/2 a brood chamber. It takes a lot of sugar or honey to replace that. I am hoping that we will have a good honey flow and I can get them to replace it fast.

Been a couple of months

I have not forgotten about any of you out there who read my blog. I have been busy with the job search and life.

I decided to not do my regular powdered sugar shake this fall for three reasons. First, I forgot. Second, I decided a long time ago that I wanted stronger bees and I didn't want to help the weak colonies. Third, by the time I remembered I was too busy to do it.

Well, I have already lost 4 hives out of my 16. I have no nucs left to replace them with. They all absconded with brood in the comb which all died. I do not think it was foulbrood as it did not pass the ropiness test or the smell test that confirms it. I think it had to do with mite loads or CCD. While feeding and preping for winter I noticed a few hives that had LARGE numbers of bees with deformed wing virus (a condition caused by mites). More bees were like this than usual. I think the sugar shakes helped last year (and I will be doing them from now on if I want to keep my hives).

I have fed out all of the honey from those hives and am storing the frames in the garage. The ones with dead brood will be culled and turned into wax blocks next year.

I have the entrance reducers on and all of the hives should be ready for winter.  I will be placing candy boards on top of some next month around christmas, and sugar on newspaper on the tops of the frames on the rest. I just want to make sure I have some bees this spring to make splits from and try to sell.

2 months with no post

I do apologize to everyone about not posting very often. I get caught up with life and forget.

So here is what you have missed:

The two hives with the Kona queens got a type of paralysis virus. I am no longer in favor of the Kona Hawaii queens. tons of dead bees and tons more quivering clinging to the frames and inside the hive.

I requeened them both and sterilized everything each time I went in them. After a month or two they seem to be doing better. There is no cure, just have to get lucky and get some new genetics.


Cutouts galore!

This one was in a rent house and had been there for over 10 years!

The one below was in an old tree on a golf course. They didnt want to kill them, so they called me.

I did it for free. The reason it was free? They understand the importance of bees and are paying me to keep some hives on their property. I just have to share the honey from them for their chef to cook with (but mostly for them to eat).

And lastly I have a friend who works for a water company and they said there were honey bees in the meter box.

I did this one for free because he is a good friend, and also because they were just going to kill them if I didn't get them. Turned out that the meter reader freaked out and sprayed them and didn't tell anyone. I only got a handfull of bees.

Onto the honey harvest!

In all I ended up with 91 quarts of honey! that is after making 10 splits and quite a few queens! It took me about 3 days to process it all.

It is a beautiful golden yellow color. I have quite a bit left, but I am getting ready to sell a bunch to the local grocery due to the new organic and local food push we are having around here. I am a part of http://www.naturallygrown.org/ and I will be able to get about 2$ more per pint!

But, I have a problem.... or a blessing. I am not sure yet. I managed to keep it at the perfect temperature to cream it (by accident).... And now about half of the jars have creamed. No, not crystalized, creamed. I have about 40 quarts of creamed honey in jars!

Mead me:

I am in the process of making 4 new types of mead. Sweet and dry versions of blackberry and cherry. Both were fresh picked and are doing well. I cannot wait to try them, but it will be next year before I can!

That's what you have missed over the last 2.5 months summed up in a post!

Honey processing

I still have 5 medium supers to extract. I have about 12 gallons of honey so far.

 You can see two different types of honey in the picture above.