Feeding the Bees again

I like to keep track of our bee maintenance, so I use this blog to do it. We've fed several times, the last was on Thursday, October 10th before we left for our granddaughter's wedding the next day. We plan to feed them again this week. I walked by the hives yesterday and there was lots of activity at both hives. When we fed them on Thursday there were lots of black hive beetles caught in the swiffer sheets. We'll need to put more in next feeding. Hopefully the bees will do well over the winter. We have the patrons of beekeepers on it. Whenever I bless our beautiful property with holy water, I never miss the bee yard.  

Bee Update

The drought has done a number on the nectar flow. There's nothing much out there, so we've already started feeding. Larry did the deed yesterday and we put about two quarts of sugar syrup in each of the hives. That gives the bees something to do and lets them store up food for the winter. We need to do a complete inspection this week, maybe Wednesday to see what the brood situation is and whether we have three queen right hives. Asking the intercession of the beekeeping patrons. 

We are on the beekeepers roller coaster!

Up and down. One minute things look great, the next, not so good! Here's how it's been going this season in the Camp Kreitzer apiary:

May 16th -- Just did a bee check. All well, except for ants, but not so many I'd call the hives infested. Will probably weed whack and put down diatomaceous earth around the stand legs. Busy, busy bees. None of the hives needs a new box yet, but the second box from the top on the middle hive was so heavy I couldn't lift it and Larry was out so I was on my own. Looks like we will definitely get some honey from that hive even though it's the new one. And if we can retrieve the swarm from our garage ceiling we will have four hives this season. That would be great!

Two Hives Queen Right, Two Not!

We've never had such a hard time getting a split to rear a new queen! Bethesda still doesn't appear to have a queen so we gave the colony two frames of larvae and capped brood from Elkridge. Morgantown doesn't appear to have a queen either so we gave that colony one frame of larvae and capped brood from Wheeling. Hopefully, before the end of the summer we'll have four queen-right hives, but this is getting a little frustrating. We  took two frames of honey, one from Wheeling and I can't remember which other hive. All the hives are bringing in lots of nectar and quite a few frames are almost ready to harvest. Elkridge doesn't seem to like the box of plastic frames. Wheeling is doing a great job drawing comb on the plastic and filling it. I got the plastic frames from two different places. Both were supposed to be wax coated, but I'm wondering if one set of frames are more bee-friendly than the other. Hopefully, Elkridge will start to draw the plastic frames before the next bee inspection.

Bee Inspection and a Hive Disaster!

 

Well, we're down one hive today thanks to an infestation by wax moth. Bethesda was the first hive we checked and they were doing okay but still don't seem to have a queen so we added another frame of eggs and larvae from Elkridge. Hopefully they will get queen right and give us a fourth hive.

Bee Inspection Today: Good News and Bad News

We began our inspection closest to the road. We hoped the kingdom of Bethesda would have a queen, but no dice. We saw no brood. I split the hive on April 30th so they should have a laying queen, but maybe she's just a slowpoke. We put in a frame of young brood from Wheeling in case they have no queen so they can rear one. Hopefully all will be well before long. They are going gangbusters with honey production. We took out two frames of capped honey to put in the freezer.

Naming the Hives to Make Management Easier: The Girls are Working Hard Bringing in the Gold!

Our five hives from left: Wheeling, Morgantown, Elkridge, Cleveland, Bethesda --
All of those cities are significant places from our family history.

I decided to name the bee hives after some of our favorite places to make it easier to record what's happening in each hive and keep it straight. I use the blog as my bee diary. I'll give the hives ABC names in an order that helps me identify them individually. For now they are Bethesda, Cleveland, Elkridge, Morgantown, and Wheeling.

• Bethesda is the recent split closest to the road (far right). No point checking it today because they are still a month away from having a laying queen. Bees are going in and out which is a good sign. 

Bad Tempered Bees in the Bee Yard

 I think next bee check we'll definitely use the smoker. I looked at the swarm trap hive first. No sign of wax moth invasion so I left it alone. Hopefully we'll catch a good-natured queen and start a friendly new colony. I checked the hive next to it and just lifted the top box which is already pretty heavy. I looked at one end frame which was full of uncapped nectar. Added a box of undrawn frames which will give that hive plenty of work to do.

A New Adventure: Setting Up a Bait Hive in the Bee Yard

It's swarm season and a good time to try to attract one to our bee yard. So today I set up a swarm trap/bait hive. It looks the same on the outside but inside it has only two frames of drawn comb instead of nine frames. (For non-beekeepers drawn comb are frames the girls have already built on. You start with wax foundation which is like a blueprint. The bees build it out to make cells for pollen and nectar storage and egg laying. I added a few drops of lemon grass essential oil to provide a scent that attracts the bees. Now we wait and see. I'm asking all the patrons of beekeepers to invite swarms to check out our lovely little dwelling.

Have I Mentioned How Much I Love Beekeeping?

Camp Kreitzer gold! It really is worth its weight in golden goodness.

I really do! And Larry and I love sharing our enthusiasm with others. A few days ago we hosted a bee demo and bonfire cookout with several families from our chapel. While I was gathering things for the demo, I found an unharvested honey frame in our pool house fridge. Surprise! Somehow we missed it when we took our honey to the annual bee club honey harvest where we collected about 50 pounds of Camp Kreitzer gold. 

I Want One of These: A Beehive Made from Legos

An Israeli beekeeper made this colorful hive. I think it must be the Taj Mahal of beehives. Somebody please make me one for Christmas!

Poor Bees

St. Gobnait, patron of beekeepers,
Pray for us!

Winter is setting in with a vengeance the next few weeks. Tonight the temps are expected to drop to single digits and for the next few weeks we will mostly see highs only in the 30s. That means the bees are clustered and can't break out to eat or fly. (Even bees need to go potty.)

 The temps aren't the only things impacting the bees. It's supposed to be grey and mostly cloudy in coming days. That means no sun warming up the hives internally. So they will be clustered and if the food is too far away they can literally starve to death.

These are the days I turn to all the patron saints of bee keepers and those who kept bees. St. Ambrose and St. Valentine are patrons, but there are others. St. Isidore the Farmer probably knew the value of bees for pollination and maybe even kept some.

Camp Kreitzer's Bee Enterprise Hits the News

The Mountain Courier ran an article on beekeeping and featured our apiary. Wow! What fun. Check it out here.

July 14 Bee Inspection: All's well!

A frame of capped honey ready to harvest

What a hot day for an inspection. We went out right after 8:30 Mass and it was already 90 degrees and humid. Whew! Those canvas suits are hot!

We were hoping for a bumper crop of honey this year, but it is not looking too promising. All the hives were calm and we saw no ants or evidence of wax moth. We always look closely at the bees and we've never seen any varroa mites but we probably have them because everyone does. But the girls all look good. No evidence of malformed wings or any other health problems. They were all flying and pollen was coming in. The queens are laying like crazy -- lots of brood and larvae. We took out some honey frames and hope to get more on the next inspection but I doubt we will do as well as last year. Here's the rundown:

Watching the Work Progress and Looking forward to the Honey Harvest!

 From my garden:
There will be primrose nectar in the honey harvest!

We went into the hives on June 21st and again today, July 1st (sweaty work on this hot day!). We examined all six hives both inspections, but not all the boxes in each hive.

We used the smoker for two hives on June 21st, but not at all today, since all the girls were calm today! It's hot, bright and sunny with a breeze and every hive had lots of activity. The purple thistle is blooming up the road and the Golden Raintree isn't quite finished down on Water Street so there is plenty of nectar available for harvesting. We saw no ants in any of the hives today and no signs of swarming. Here's the breakdown on both inspections.

Hive #1 Queen Rachel - four boxes (original split from Madeleine - attacked by bear):

Hoping for a Great Honey Season!

a medium frame with wax foundation

We did a hive inspection a few days ago and five of our six hives are going gangbusters. We added a honey super (the name for the box where you want the bees to collect nectar) to five hives. The only drawn comb we have is full of capped honey from last season and in the refrigerator, but we're sure it's mostly sugar water from feeding last fall so we'll save that for winter food. All the new boxes we added have undrawn wax foundation which means the bees have to draw it all out into little cells before they can start to fill it. The foundation is like the blueprint so the bees do what you want them to do.

Beginning Our 5th Year of Beekeeping and Just Collected Our First Swarm!

Five years ago this May we acquired two nucleus hives from a beekeeper in Fort Valley who has since retired. We can never thank Frank enough for helping us get a good start with this fascinating hobby. He and our square dancing buddy, Gordon, a professional beekeeper who once had 500 hives taught us what to do, rescued us when we had queen problems, and were always there with a wise word to the ignorant.

Well...that was interesting! Was that a Queen?

I went out to feed two of the nuke hives which are weak and don't have enough foragers. They probably have queens at this point, but they won't be laying for another five or six days.

But what really struck me as I examined the hives was that there was a bee on the side of one of the boxes that appeared to be a queen. I'm guessing she was either returning or getting ready to head out for her maiden flight. Later in the week we'll check all the hives to see whether they are queen right. And then we'll see where this wonderful 2017 bee season goes.

The early nectar flow has been great. We've had bees on our apple blossoms and on the red bud. I've also seen them on the dandelions and on some trees with white blossoms that I don't recognize.

The bee yard is still somewhat stirred up after the bear attack, but it's not a very nice day -- overcast and raining earlier. They don't like that either. So next visit I'll stoke up the smoker and use it. Several bees buzzed me all the way back to the house. They generally don't do that when it's bright and sunny.

But the bear situation seems to be resolved with the electric fence.

Bears: The Weapon of Mass Destruction to a Beekeeper!

Not a pretty sight, eh? Botox lips for free.

On Wednesday we were doing some work with two of our behives -- moving a frame of brood from a
queen-right hive to a queenless hive. After we finished that in our satellite bee yard, I went down to check out the four hives in the lower yard. Unfortunately I took my veil off since I wasn't going to be working with the bees, but something attracted one of the girls to my face and she stung me on the lip. My whole face started to swell and we decided I better go to the emergency room. So I spent several hours being pumped full of steroids, anti-histamines, and anti-itch meds along with some anti-nausea medicine since I was feeling sick to my stomach.

Queen Cells Galore! Making Nukes!

What a difference two weeks make. We decided to divide Rachel's hive today and when we opened

up the box we found lots of queen cells, loads of bees, some capped and uncapped brood, but no eggs and no sign of a queen. We wondered if we "rolled the queen" when we checked, but there was one capped swarm cell and those are made when the hive is getting ready to swarm. The workers build an egg cup, and the queen lays an egg in it. We didn't see that when we checked the hive two weeks ago so she was likely in the hive then.