Backyard Apiary

I went through the hives today and things are looking good. Antheia has a queen, but no capped brood. I checked every frame, in both boxes, but couldn’t see any sign of a laying queen. I’m assuming there are eggs that I cannot see through my veil or she has been spending her time getting friendly with the local drones. I know about 3 other hives within a quarter mile, so she should have a good selection of drones for her mating. I don’t know why Antheia keeps replacing queens, but as long as the hive is still strong I don’t really care.

Hegemone is doing extremely well. The inspection stopped after looking at four frames in the second (top) hive box. All four frames were full of capped brood. There were two foundationless frames on the far side of the box that have not been drawn out yet, but I decided to give them another box and move one of the fully capped frames up to the third box. Three medium boxes is slightly larger surface area than two deep boxes, so the queen should be happy to have all this space.

Inspection antheia, hegemone, hive, Inspection

Beeyard

After an extensive landscaping weekend, my beeyard is ready for some bees. Every book i’ve read states that location of a beehive is very important. The bees want early morning sun to warm them up and get them moving. In the afternoon, they want shade so they do not have to work so hard cooling the hive. The local beekeepers say that too, but always add on “bees don’t really care”. Apis mellifera is very adaptable. They will start a new hive in full sun, full shade, a langstroth box, a wall, inside a tree, on a tree limb, etc. They don’t really seem to care.

The beehive pictured faces West and the early morning sun is fully shaded until around 11am. Then it receives full sun until the early evening. Not exactly the “ideal”, but they should survive. I’ve been to a few beeyards in the area that were more shaded. The location is good for being out of the way.  Positioned about 50 feet from my porch and over 100 feet to the nearest neighboring house. The bees flight path should not go anywhere near people and the only problem could be if they choose the water fountain as their water source over a bucket I intend on placing near the hives.

Bee Hive bee, beeyard, hive

Me sporting my UltraBreeze Jacket and holding a frame with an unmarked queen (on the back)

For the first time in my life, I opened a hive to do an inspection. A local beekeeper, Bob, was kind enough to let me join him for hive inspections. We opened a total of 5 hives. The first two were strong and doing well. Each was a single 10-frame deep.

Beekeeping Tip: Label all of your frames in a consistent fashion so that you can replace them in the same orientation. E.g. mark one end of each frame and make sure all of them in a hive box are along the same side.

The first had a queen marked with a red dot. The second hive’s queen was not marked. We found her on the 3rd frame and gave her a red dot. Each year Bob uses a different colored, water soluble  marker. Tagging all of his queens to a specific year lets him know the age of the queen and if a queen has been superseded. He lets the colonies decide when the queen needs to be replaced. Some beekeepers and books will state that you should replace your queen every year. From what I’ve read, queens will remain productive for several years. The only time I plan on purchasing a queen is if my hives face an emergency.

The third hive we opened was devoid of live. The bees had most likely froze to death. It was really sad to see a few workers who survived trying their best to remove the bodies of their dead sisters. We cleared out the hive of all bees (live and dead) before closing up the entrance. This was done to keep wax moths out of the hive while it is unoccupied. Hopefully the survivors join another colony.

The fourth hive consisted of a medium super on top of two deeps. This hive had a little bit of bee traffic at the entrance, but it turned out to be bees from other colonies. They were robbing out the honey and pollen. It seems that these bees froze to death also. The bees were covering the brood trying to keep it warm, instead of clustering to keep themselves warm.

The fifth and last hive was the same as the fourth. All of the bees died covering brood. After having the hive open for a few minutes, the stronger hives start to rob it. This hive had the most capped honey of the other hives we opened. Bob decided to leave it open to help feed the other colonies.

Inspection bee, hive, Inspection

In about 2 months, the two nucs I ordered should be ready for pickup. As part of my getting ready process, I built 10 10-frame medium supers. I have been flip flopping between using 8-frame and 10-frame hives. I finally decided on using 10-frame hives because they are a more common standard. Every beekeeper supplier sells 10-frame equipment, but not all of them sell 8-frame. Even those that sell both can get confused and check their inventory for the wrong part (this happened to me a few weeks ago).

To build the hives, I used a miter saw to cut all the pieces to length and a table saw to rip pieces to the correct depth and to create the rabbets. A lot of the wood consists of scraps left over from other projects. The outer cover and solid bottom board uses pieces of poplar that came from my parents’ old dining room table. I’m not sure if I want to paint the nicely finished poplar pieces or attach a plastic cover to provide weather protection.

10 Frame Langstroth Bee Hive Plans

Bee Hive hive

I received confirmation that this spring I will be the proud recipient of two Nucs on medium frames. My hives will consist entirely of 8 frame mediums. There are many benefits (lighter, interchangable parts) to this approach and only one drawback (cost). To get the same amount of comb area as a standard hive, an all medium hive costs about 30% more. To quote some one from Beemaster Forum, “the money spent on mediums should be cheaper than back surgery [from lifting deeps]“.

I am still not entirely sure if I will purchase mediums or build my own. There are many free plans for hives and my only limiting factors are lack of time and lack of power tools.

Bee Hive bee, hive, nucs