A Bee Keeper's Diary

April 15, 2013: Visiting the Bee Yard

The Bees Arrive

Bee Keeping Resources

Second Bee Feeding: Getting the hang of it already!

Good Day for Flying

Checking Out the Bees and Naming Our Queens

More Than Honey: A Bee Movie

Collecting Recipes for Lip Balm

Honey Wild - July 11

Honey Harvest - July 20th

Splitting the Bee Hives - April 2014

Queen Bees - Spring 2014

Bad Bee Season 2014

Spring Bee Management: Thinking about Swarm Control

Bee Management: Fun and Challenging

8 May 2015 Split the Hive Today

9 May Feeding the Nuc and Watching the Hive Entrance

20 May Queen Status

June 6, 2016 - After Three Days of Rain -- Bee Inspection

June 12, 2015: All's Queen Right in the Bee Yard

June 18, 2015: Bee Status -- All's Well

July 2015 Honey Harvest

January 2016: The Big Snow and the Bees

January 2016: Lessons from Wild Bees: Ideas for Spring Implementation

January 31, 2016: Winter Feeding with Sugar Pies and Pollen Patties

March 10, 2016: Spring is here and we still have to active hives.

March 11, 2016: Being a Good Bee Steward: Spring Examination

April 14, 2016: Splitting Our Strong Hive

April 19, 2016: Lots of Drones at the Queenless Hive

April 24: Examining Bianca's Hive and Watching Entrances

May 9, 2016: Adding Boxes to the Hives

May 12: Bee Inspection: Ant Invasion of Queen Anya's Hive

May 13: Black Pollen?

June 7th: Still no laying queen in Rachel's hive

June 22nd inspection: Finally Queen Rachel is mated and laying 

July 6 Inspection: Made a late split

July 19, 2016 Honey Harvest and Hive Examination

July 21: Adding Queen Excluders and Playing Musical Frames

July 30: Removed Excluders and Removed four Honey Frames

Aug. 23: Grand Check of All the Hives

Oct. 11: Frustration of the Backyard Beekeeper

Nov. 3: Winter is Coming

Feb. 20, 2017 The Bee Gym

March 29, 2017 Are the Girls Thinking of Swarming?

April 5, 2017 Lesson Learned: Check ALL the Hives before you Buy More Equipment

April 10, 2017: Making Nukes

April 15: Bears - Weapons of Mass Destruction

April 17: Feeding Nukes, saw a Queen!

April 18: Collecting our first swarm.

June 12: Hoping for a Great Honey Season

July 1: Watching the Work in Progress

July 14, 2017: All's Well in the Bee Yard

3 comments:

acardnal said...

When you harvest the honey, don't you also collect bee larvae from the cells? If you do, doesn't this affect the number of bees born being reduced?

Mary Ann Kreitzer said...

Good question!

Right now we have three boxes on the hives. There is plenty of space for the queen to be laying as well as for storing pollen and honey. When the nectar flow starts and those boxes are about 90% full, we'll add an empty super on top of the three (maybe two depending on how hard they work.). The queen may lay up there, but it's unlikely since as bees hatch she has plenty of cells to reuse. We could add a "queen excluder" to keep her out of the honey supers, but many beekeepers think they are "honey excluders" as well and reduce the amount of honey produced.

We harvested about fifteen frames of honey last season (50 pounds) and there were no brood cells at all in the frames we chose so it had no affect on the number of bees. If there is a frame with part brood and part honey, the beekeeper can skip those frames when harvesting.

acardnal said...

Thank you.