Backyard Apiary

Antheia 2010 Honey.

Antheia 2010 Honey. 2 quarts, 2 pints, 12 half pints and one 4oz jar for grandma.

I found time to bottle some of the honey Antheia harvested during the spring flow. It delicious with a beautiful amber color. I cannot get honey that is more local, unless if I were to bring a hive indoors. Most of what I bottled today is already slated for family. A 4 oz jar for grandma, mom gets a pint, siblings get an 8 oz jar, except my sister who gets a quart because she’ll give me a few bottles of mead made from the honey. The rest of the honey will be sold to help cover the larger than expected equipment costs this year.

There are still 9 frames of capped honey in Hegemone that I wasn’t sure if I would harvest this year. They have plenty stored and there is still the fall flow for them to harvest more. I didn’t harvest at the same time as Antheia because crushing and straining a box is a lot of work. Next year I will need to use an extractor.

It’s fun thinking about how much honey I could harvest next year. I pulled 6.5 frames from Antheia this year, despite the hive being split and sending out 2-3 swarms. If I were to average the same number from each hive next year, that would net me 52 frames worth of honey. If I can keep them from swarming, then claiming 10-20 frames per hive should be no problem. This winter, I will need 14 more boxes and 140 frames to allow each hive two honey supers. That doesn’t include equipment to allow me to hive swarms, make splits or put queens in to mating NUCs. It’s very clear to me that I’m quickly transitioning from being a hobbyist to a commercial scale operation.

Future beeswax candles sitting in a tray waiting to be put out for the bees to clean

Antheia, despite being split once and sending out 2-3 swarms, managed to fill an entire medium super with honey. The super only had 8 frames in it, so there was a lot of burr comb connecting the frames together and to the walls of the super. I do not have an extractor, the honey harvesting was going to use the <a href=”http://www.bushfarms.com/beesharvest.htm#crushandstrain”>crush and strain</a> method. Restaurant equipment works well for this and is significantly cheaper than purchasing buckets and such from a bee supplier. I picked up most of the equipment from <a href=”http://www.ureco.com/”>United Restaurant Supply Company</a>.

When removing the honey frames from a hive, there are a few methods that can be used.

1. Use a fume board to drive the bees down lower in to the hive. This works relatively quickly, but I don’t ever plan on fuming my bees.
2. Use a bee escape to prevent the bees from being able to re-enter the box that you want to harvest. This could take a couple days and you need to close up the top to prevent robbing. I have a few bee escapes, which I cannot find so I didn’t use this method.
3. Brush the bees off each frame as you take it out.
4. Rest the box on it’s side and blow the bees out of the box using a leaf blower or air compressor.

Lucky me, I have an air compressor and I must say that it works really well. 100 psi at 6-12 inches will blast the bees off a frame without killing them, even if one get pinned down. I placed each cleared frame in to a busing bin and used a screened hive cover to keep bees from trying to reclaim the honey. I removed 7 of the 8 frames in the box. The one I left behind had half of the frame uncapped. The bees cap the honey after enough of the moisture is removed and its ready for long term storage.

It took about 1.5 hours to cut, mash and scoop the honey comb in to the screened bucket. I tried a lot of different techniques for removing the honey to figure out which works best. A long deboning knife worked pretty well for cutting off the caps and cutting the comb from the frame. I don’t own a <a href=”http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/Cappings-Scratcher/productinfo/787/”>Cappings Scratcher</a>, but a fork work well for opening up the caps. Scratching the caps is something you normally do when using an extractor. When crushing and straining, it serves no purpose, but I was curious to see if a fork would work and it did. One of the 7 frames I removed had a lot of uncapped honey on one side of the frame. Scraping the capped side with the knife, I was able to remove the capped honey without damaging the other side.

Most of the honey has dripped through the screen and the collection bucket is filled past the 5 liter mark. I also collected about 1.5 liters in a smaller bucket by squeezing the wax in the screen. That was probably a bit unnecessary but definitely shortened the amount of time I’ll have to wait for it to all strain through. That honey is not as clean as the large bucket because I ended up dropping some wax in it. Oh well, I can run it through the screen again when I transfer it in to the big bucket. When it’s all done, I should have at least 15 pints of honey (over 20 lbs).

After I was finished with the frames, I swapped them for clean undrawn frames in Antheia. The bees will clean up the honey left on the frames and store it. A few of the frames were wired wax foundation, so they got that back too.  I put the rest of the honey covered equipment about 100′ from the hives for all the bees to clean off. Given that I have 6 hives in my yard, I was a little disappointed at how slowly the bees were cleaning everything up. It didn’t help that a lot of the bees managed to submerge themselves in the honey. A few of them were still alive when I played lifeguard. I even carried them back over to one of the hives and dropped them at the entrance so the other bees could help clean them off. This is one of the main differences between a hobbyist beekeeper and a commercial one. The hobbyist will try and save every single bee.

Did a quick inspection of five of the hives to make sure they are doing okay. The giant swarm hive that I relocated off of the shed roof has been doing lots of orientation flights this past week. I gave the hive a second box and moved three frames up. I saw the queen. She is huge with a golden redish brown abdomen. I expect this hive to start to expand quickly.

The next hive I checked was the split with the queen purchased from the Carolina Bee Company. Monica was not exaggerating when she said the queen is one of the best layers she’s ever seen. There was a full frame  of eggs, both sides and I didn’t notice any empty cells. Each had an egg placed squarely in the middle of the cell. The hive is doing awesome and will need a second box in maybe a week.

I didn’t inspect Antheia because the hive is strong and I can tell from looking at the entrance. There are always several hundred bees wash boarding on the front of the hive and lots of activity at the entrance all day.

Hegemone was in a foul mood today. I used a lot more smoke than I normally would and they were still acting aggressive toward me. I didn’t get stung, but they clearly wanted to let me know they were not pleased with my presence. During the last inspection, I was worried about the hive being queenless and gave it a frame of eggs from Antheia. That was  12 days ago, so all of those eggs would have been capped ~3 days ago, and they were. They didn’t use any of the eggs to raise a new queen and I saw uncapped brood, so there is a queen in there somewhere. The best tip I read somewhere was that unless you absolutely need to find the queen, don’t look for her. Instead, look for signs of her being there. It would take a very long time to find the queen in Hegemone. She could be anywhere on the 40 frames of bees and she constantly moves around. It doesn’t help that the hive has lots of drones, so every frame has many larger than worker sized bees roaming about to distract me.

If the hive is pissy during the next inspection, then I might split it down in size and use the opportunity to raise a few more queens from the purchased one. Hegemone’s queen isn’t showing herself to be worthy of her crown.

The split that is in the double NUC is doing well. Nothing special, but they’ve recovered their numbers from when losing lots of their foragers during the hive swap. The other swarm hive over by the blackberries and raspberries is doing okay. Not building up that quickly, but the hive is stronger than I thought it would be after seeing the low activity at the entrance.

I inspected five hives today, gave each of the ~100-150k bees a reason to sting me, but they did not. While mowing the lawn, I discovered a yellow jacket nest…when they started stinging the crap out of my ankles and legs. I ended up with 4 stings, but it would have been more if the 2 yellow jackets stinging my shoelaces were a bit smarter. I counted over a dozen of them flying around the lawn mower when I returned with the can of wasp spray. I couldn’t see the entrance to the nest, so I decided to “nuke’em from orbit” and just sprayed anywhere they were hovering. I don’t mind yellow jackets. They are a beneficial bug, but they are not beneficial enough to give them a pass after stinging me. Wasps have been known to raid honey bee hives and kills lots of the bees, so I can never let a wasp nest get too strong.

Hegemone, Chloris and Antheia

The weather cooperated today and I was able to do a quick inspection of some of the hives. I started by adding a fourth medium box to Antheia and Hegemone. Despite both hives swarming, there were a lot of bees when I popped the tops and all of the frames in the 3rd box were fully drawn. I didn’t even have hives this time last year and they are already as strong as they were at the end of last summer. The bees get to keep whatever is in the lower 3 boxes, the rest of the honey is mine! I expect to get at least 10 full frames of honey (~50 lbs) because the tulip poplar trees are still blooming.

Chloris has a decent number of bees. I didn’t inspect any of the frames and only wanted to replace some of the frames in the second box because a few of them were assembled, but didn’t have wax or a starter strip. I didn’t have enough frames ready when I made the split and I wanted to make sure there were 5 frames to prevent them from drawing comb out from the inner cover. They didn’t expand in to the top frame yet.

Melissa, the second swarm hive

I next inspected Melissa, the second swarm located on the Western side of my yard. The hive was drawing out nice straight frames. I didn’t see the queen, but I did see eggs laid in the cells. A single egg laid in the center of each cell and she put one in every bit of comb that she could. It’s been 9 days since I caught the swarm and eggs are 0-3 days old. This confirms that a virgin queen swarmed and this raises my confidence that this swarm also came from Antheia. It’s crazy that the hive swarmed twice in the same day.

Demeter after the remodeling

The final hive I opened was Demeter, the first swarm I caught and currently located next to the shed. I didn’t have enough frames made when I caught the swarm, so some of the comb they made wasn’t straight. They decided to attach to combs to the edge frame. When I first went back in to the hive and dropped in a foundation-less frame, they did as I expected and attached the comb on to that frame. They didn’t attach it enough to prevent it from collapsing when I cut it off the original frame. End result is the picture on the left with the collapsed comb removed from the broodnest. They stocked away a lot of pollen in that little bit of comb sitting in front of the hive. I moved the comb up to a top feeder. I couldn’t find where I put the screened tops, so I used one of the utility hive boxes with the screened bottom. This was to prevent robbers from having access up there and to keep them from attaching comb to the outer cover. There was a lot of honey dripping all over the place from the collapsed comb, so I reduced the entrance as much as possible with the scraps of wood I had laying around.

Demeter after the remodeling

Hindsight, I should have brought some string with me so I could tie the comb on to one of the frames they haven’t drawn out yet. That wouldn’t have set their wax building back as far. It would have also spared them the effort of now transferring all of the pollen and honey down in to new wax that they have to make. Demeter was a larger swarm than Melissa and it shows by how much faster they are building up.

Around 9:30am, I noticed a lot of bees climbing up the front of Antheia’s boxes and flying around near the entrance in a tight circular pattern. At first I thought the bees were gathering for a swarm because I have never seen orientation or cleansing flights that early in the morning. It was about 65 F, so all of the hives had traffic at the entrances, but nothing like what Antheia was doing. By the time I put on shoes and got out to take a closer look they were gone. I wandered around the yard trying to spot a clumb of bees in the trees; a bird’s nest looks a lot like a swarm from 50-100′ away. I didn’t spot any and went back inside. About 30 minutes later I was out on the porch and saw the swarm high up in a tree.

I quickly gathered a ladder, clippers, a 3″ limb cutter and threw on my jacket. I scurried up the ladder only to realize that my shins were resting on the 3rd rung from the top and I was still not even close. I went and got the tall recycling bin from the kitchen in the hopes that I could tap the branch with it so the swarm would fall inside. The swarm was still out of reach. I didn’t have a taller ladder and I don’t have a big enough bin. Thankfully, I had rope a 100′ of thick nylon rope that I purchased almost 2 years ago. Now was definitely a worthwhile occasion to open it from its packaging. Anyone who does not have some rope in their house, needs to race out and buy some today. You never know when you’ll need it!

I used the rope to pull the branch within reach and tied it to the top of the ladder. A big warning goes along with this. You want all of the tension on the rope to be pulling the ladder up. Otherwise, you risk making the ladder unstable and you’ll probably fall and then get hit with a ladder. You also need to untie the rope before getting off the ladder. The weight of you and the ladder is holding down the branch, but if you get off the ladder might not weigh enough.

With the branch held within arms reach, I removed as much of the branch as possible to make it easy to carry one handed down a ladder. Success! I managed to clip the branch and get down the ladder and rest the branch over the boxes I had waiting. The bottom box has a screen and spacer wood attached to the bottom. I picked up the boxes and moved it on to my porch to figure out what to do next. I tapped the branch down and the bees fell in to the two, stacked medium boxes. This is a step that I will avoid in the future because this was not the final resting place for the bees. I’ll set up a place for the swarm before tapping the bees in to boxes.

I quickly set up another hive in the yard, about 50′ away from the other hives, and then moved everything over there for the final transfer. I managed to get all of the bees in to their new home by moving the frames in the swarm catch box, a bee brush for stragglers and flipping and shaking the boxes. I made a quart of 1:1 syrup for the bees as a house warming gift.

The new hive will be called, Demeter. This has been an exciting day in my beekeeping adventures and I’ve gained a lot of valuable experience. To those who are not in to beekeeping, a swarm is worth about $75. In essence, I prevented myself from losing that bee wealth, which makes up for the reduced honey harvest that I’ll get from Antheia this year.

For the past few days, the hives have started to beard. This is common as the temperature increases, but I noticed that Antheia had a little beard at 8am when I was getting ready for work. A clear sign that the hive was not too hot, but short on space. I opened up the hives today to give them more space. Every box was overflowing with bees. I would pull out a frame and the bees would just pour out behind the frame. It is really cool to look down between some of the frames and see a row of hundreds of little faces staring back at me.

Antheia had a single capped queen cell at the bottom corner of a frame and many empty swarm cells. Oddly, there were a few frames of nothing but capped drone cells. There was some uncapped brood, so she is still laying or at least was laying a few days ago. I can’t see eggs through the veil. Perhaps she didn’t have much space and laid the drones in honey cells. At least all the other hives in the surrounding area will get the chance to gain some good local genetics.

The queen did something odd. She jumped out of the hive. I saw her large dark body crawling around on the ground in front of the hive. I picked her up with the hive tool and put her on the top of the frames. I had to encourage her to stay in the hive by blocking her attempts to escape. She eventually went between the frames instead of off the edge. Hegemone’s queen was in the top box between 2 frames that were combed together. She contrasts her sister queen with a golden body. The hive had a good amount of capped drone, honey and pollen.

All frames in both of the hives were drawn. As I shifted frames of brood and honey up to the new super, I put a foundationless frame in its place. In less than 5 minutes, I noticed the bees festooning on one of the new frames I added. I will be surprised if they have many undrawn frames before the flow.

I’ve been using my droid to record inspections. It has turned out to be a very effective hands free way of keeping track of what I see. I am looking in to an easy way of posting the audio clips in case anyone cares to listen.

The weather cooperated and I was able to swap the outer covers and give the bees the candy I made for them. Antheia had eaten almost all of the dry sugar and Hegemone barely touched hers. I’m guessing that Hegemone had more stores going in to winter. I didn’t smoke either hive because I was trying to cause the least amount of disruption to the hive. It also doesn’t seem like a smart move to trigger them to gorge on their dwindling stores. Antheia was very tame, but Hegemone netted me a string. It didn’t help that Hegemone managed to glue the inner cover to the outer cover so I completely opened the hive and exposed hundreds of bees that were feeding on the dry sugar.

The sugar definitely absorbed some moisture from the hive. The newspaper that was put under the dry sugar was soaked. The bees were less than thrilled when I tried to remove as much of it as possible. Antheia now has an entrance shim above the inner cover. Hegemone required a shim below the inner cover (in addition to the one above) because of the remaining dry sugar.

Winter is in full swing and I checked up on the bees today. I slide open the bottom board’s tray and looked up in to each hive. Antheia was clustering at the bottom of the lower box. I couldn’t see the cluster in Hegemone, so I’m guessing that they were in the upper box. The weather forecast shows many more cold days and nights and the temperature should creep up above 50 on Friday. If the forecast holds true, then I’ll put bag feeder spacers on both of the hives and give them a lot more dry sugar. I’ll also get a chance to replace the falling apart outer covers with some new metallic topped ones that are a bit more weather proof.

I took advantage of Brushy Mountain Bee Farms December free shipping and ordered a lot of stuff to prepare for next year. Next year I plan on adding another hive and if the bees are strong enough, split a 5 frame nuc. I’m undecided about starting the 3rd hive from a nuc or a package. Still a little bit of time to make a decision on that. To prevent robbing and to make feeding easier for me, I purchased top feeder for all of the hives. I also bought screened tops to sit above the feeders to prevent robbing or having the bees fly at me when I refill the syrup.

As a beekeeper, there is not much to do when the weather is cold. I decided to branch out a little bit more and start tinkering with some of the various bee related crafts. I’m starting off with candle making. I ordered 10 pounds of beeswax, a votive mold and a few other essential tools of the trade. Candles and honey will probably be my gift of choice until I start making mead. If anyone know a good source of candle molds or some good mead recipes, let me know.

The temperature today reached the upper 60s and this might be the last chance to open up the hives until spring. Hopefully this winter is mild and has plenty of warm days in December that will let me feed the bees. The inspection of both hives was very quick. The bees were very calm and I didn’t need to smoke them, but the smoker was going strong just in case. Both hives had lots of activity at the entrance and the bees were bringing back an orange pollen. I’m not entirely sure what it is from, but I do have dandelions and camelias  blooming in my yard.

I only inspected the top box of each hive and only a few frames. I could see many frames of capped honey and was relieved to see that Hegemone is much stronger than I originally thought. A few weeks ago I was worried that the hive was weak because I could see any bees through the bottom screen. I placed a sheet of newspaper over about 2/3rds of the hive top and poured 1 lbs. of dry sugar. I moistened the sugar a little with a spray bottle and covered up the hives. I flipped the inner cover to give more space. I’m not entirely sure this was a good idea, but I’ll figure it out the next time I open the hives. I hope that they don’t build any bur comb up there or seal the inner cover to the outer cover with propolis. The top ventilation hole of the inner cover is blocked by the telescoping top. The sugar should add a bit more insulation to the top of the hive and will absorb moisture. I’m a bit of a pessimist and think that the bees will probably consume the dry sugar before the cold weather really sets in and then suffer moisture problems.

My wife and I plant lots of plants to attract beneficial insects and it seems to be working. Our inspection started with seeing a pair of assassin bugs mating.

The recent trend of a little bit of rain almost everyday is not good for the health of the bees. It keeps the bees from flying and washes away the pollen. It took me quite a few days to realize that Antheia might need to be fed. A quick lift of the back of the hive and it was disturbingly light. I immediately brewed up a fresh batch of 3:2 sugar water for them and have been feeding a quart almost every day. Their feeding pace has been rapidly increasing from when I first started feeding. The hive feels heavier and there are now more bees bearding on the front.

Hegemone has had a constant beard from the top entrance and the nightly gathering on the bottom entrance. To prevent them from (easily) robbing their sister hive, I’ve made sure Hegemone is fed too. Despite having significantly more bees, the hive is taking in less of the sugar water. I hope they’re not depleting the honey they stockpiled during the flow. I still hope to harvest at least a frame of capped honey this year. The hives owe me back rent.