Sweet! I harvested my very first honey!

I knew the time had come to reap the rewards of my very first honey harvest. The bees in the big, yellow mother hive had filled a shallow super with honey over a month ago, but with my busy life and some laziness thrown in, I decided to just let it set. But after checking during a routine inspection, and seeing that my bees were filling up the frames in the brood box with honey too, I knew it was time to take it off. So with minimal smoke and a hearty shake method, I got the bees off every single frame in the shallow...and I have to admit they didn't give me a hard time like I thought they would. As many of you know, when you mess around with honey frames, you'll discover the real disposition of your bees. But I have to admit that mine were pretty cool during the process even though I was 'robbing' them as the old timers call it!  

Let me assure you now that my next purchase will be an extractor and bottling kit. But to get me through this first time, I decided to use the "crush and strain" method with goods I have around the house. Fun? Yes, but a mess. I was lucky to have a few things on hand like this Pyrex strainer to keep the comb from mixing in with the honey I scraped using a cappings scratcher. As you can tell, the honey poured through the screen and into a brand new and thoroughly cleaned five gallon bucket. After scraping as much honey off the frames as I could, I sat them aside so they could ooze what honey was left on them into the sink. And later on I'll put the frames back in the shallow super and near the hives so the bees can clean off what honey is left.

Check out this beautiful, liquid gold! After the honey leaked through the Pyrex strainer, it still had tiny bits of wax and comb in it. So I filtered it again through extra fine cloth to get all the small bits, and the finished product is what you're looking at now. The only reason it looked somewhat cloudy here is because of all the fine air bubbles in it. But before bottling it, I let it rest for a little bit to get the bubbles out while I washed and sterilized the jars and lids si I could bottle it.

It still had some bubbles in it, but as the night progressed on, it cleared up a lot. These are just a few jars from the one super I harvested. I had two full quart bottles and a bunch of the smaller bottles to give to the neighbors and friends. I plan to give the smaller, flatter, 4-ounce bottles to all the adjoining neighbors since they've been really good and adapted to my mini backyard apiary. I promised them that I would give them some of my very first crop, and I'm a man of my word. I hate to tell them, but I'm keeping the quart bottles though! I deserve a little reward. Right?

Isn't it beautiful? Here you can see that the amber color really shows through as the air bubbles settle to the top after bottling. And as you can see, the smaller bottles make it seem lighter colored while the quart jars make it appear darker. Speaking of bottling, maybe by the time I harvest my next batch, I'll have my own personalized labels. A friend of mine that works with me at the television station (he's a graphic artist) is designing a "Mark's Bees" logo for me to use on my website and on my honey too. That should really make it look sharp!

In case you can't tell, I'm pretty darn proud. And I admit it has been a long and winding road. The bees in the mother hive were on the brink of dying when they arrived last year, but with a lot of determination, they made it. Then they survived the harshest winter we've had in years and rebounded this spring. Now they're rewarding me for helping them through it all with the sweet product of their own toils. It really isn't necessary...I'm just having a blast being a beekeeper, but what the heck, I'll accept it with pride. And when I give some away and people thank me, I'll tell them, please don't thank me -- thank the bees! 

Happy harvesting!

Two OLD supersedure cells + Eight NEW supersedure cells = TEN CELLS!

If anyone ever says that honey bees are not industrious creatures, they're liars. I know they're a helluva lot smarter than me and they know what they're doing in their own house, but I can't help but wonder why they do what they do. Maybe a part of it is my years in law enforcement and I know much of it has to do with my fascination with these little creatures.

I decided to give the bees in the new lime colored hive (a split from the yellow hive) a week free of any interference from me so they could adjust to their new surroundings. As you recall, when I first moved the frames from the mother hive to the lime green hive, they had four swarm cells on the bottoms of the frames. But a week later, the bees tore two of those down and made two sealed supersedure cells in the middle of the frames instead. That was last week, so I figured I would give them a week and check on them.

Fast forward to Saturday.

So I decided to get inside the green hive and see how things were doing and if anything had hatched from the two supersedure cells. And the answer is no, the two original supersedure cells were still intact. But there was something new that had popped up in the last seven days. Eight, that's right, eight NEW supersedure cells joined the previous two cells -- so now this hive has a whopping ten cells. Apparently the girls thought two may be seriously lacking -- so they made a whole bunch of new ones to fall back on.

I didn't make the picture to the right, and I didn't carry my own camera with me (honestly I didn't think I would need it) but the picture shows you what classic supersedure cells look like. On one of the frames in my hive, it had three cells; another couple had two cells each and one just had a single cell like the others from last week. All of them were very prominent and jutting out from the middle of the frames. While I was a little shocked to find so many new cells, I remembered that Richard Underhill of the Peace Bee Farm told me that it only takes four days for bees to make and cap queen cells. So while this colony is queenless, they have still been busy building new queen cells -- and they have been bringing in some nectar and pollen too. 

I took the one frame that had three queen cells and cut them off. My mother hive is in need of empty comb so the queen can have room to lay, so I removed every queen cell, shook all the bees off, and put it in the yellow mother hive. The bees in the yellow hive are making honey like crazy and they have made it in frames that I prefer the queen would use for laying eggs. So while they make comb in the shallow supers, and they , I added more deep frames for the queen to lay.

While I was at it in the yellow hive, I removed two frames of old honey that the bees made last year but didn't use over the winter. I scraped the dark honey and comb completely off the frames and then put the frames near the hive for the bees to clean off. Once the frames are clean, I'll put them back in use again -- thus rotating them and keeping cleaner, newer comb in the hive. 

Just what will happen with the lime hive, I just don't know, but it should be interesting. While I'm toying with the idea of letting them raise their own queen, I've read that emergency or supersedure queens are pretty much substandard and weak -- so maybe allowing them to raise their own may be a big waste of time. I will have access to a mated queen or two this coming week, so I may cut all the supersedure cells down, leave them queenless overnight, then put a caged queen in for slow release. I have several days to think about it and mull it over and that's what I plan to do.

By the way, I think it may be time for yet another split from the yellow hive. I have a brand new hive from Brushy Mountain that I've painted orange, so that will be the next hive that I fill with inhabitants. And since I will have access to mated queens soon, I may just go ahead and get another and just make the split now.

More later. Until them, bee happy ya'll!  

Got another swarm call! This colony moved into an apartment!

Wednesday is normally a relatively mild day for me. I like Wednesday because not too much is usually going on at work and then the weekend will be here before you know it. But my office called and said that the manager of a local apartment complex, West End Plaza Apartments, wanted to know if I would like some bees they found on the property. So I took the number and called them back but got no answer, so since the complex is about five minutes from my house, I decided to ride over to see where the swarm was located and what equipment I would need.

When I arrived, I met Tammy, who is the complex manager. I also met Dave who is the maintenance manager who took me to see the bees. When I got the call, I was thinking that maybe the bees were on a tree limb or maybe a swing set at the complex. Boy was I wrong. No, the bees in question had become squatters on the apartment complex property and had moved -- into the building! Apparently they found a hole at the corner of one of the buildings and liked it so much that they decided to move in. 

Knowing that the project was more than I really wanted to do, I politely declined. But I told Dave I knew someone who would probably take them, so I called my good buddy Jared Watkins in Winston Salem, who had previously told me he would like to do a cut-out sometime. Jared's been itching to use his homemade bee-vaccum and to do an extraction -- so when I called him he agreed to come up and sure enough, he got here about an hour later.

Upon Jared's arrival, here's the greeting he got! The bees in the apartment were in full swarm mode and piling out of the hole. Remembering the story that noise will settle swarming bees, the people that lived in the apartment gave Jared some pots and pans, and he banged on them to settle them down. And luckily, it worked. When I arrived a few minutes later, the bees were hanging on the bricks and headed back into the hole in the building. Knowing that dusk would arrive soon and that it was going to take awhile to get the bees out of the building, Jared decided it would be best to come back on Thursday and remove the bees.

Here I am looking out the window as the bees settle back into their home in the wall. Dave the maintenance guy pulled back the carpet so we could try to listen and find their exact location (we could hear the buzzing through the carpet) -- and when he did, Jared pointed out a bee who was making her way through a hole in the floor. So it was obvious that they were right there between the floor joists or along the wall somewhere. And we were right, when they pulled the floor up on Thursday, the bees were in a relatively small space in the corner.


Due to prior plans, I couldn't be there on Thursday. But Jared was able to get some help from Greg who is a fellow beekeeper in Forsyth County, and Dave, the apartment complex's maintenance manager. So when the three pulled the floor boards up, there they were. Jared told me later that it was a small colony, maybe three to four pounds or the size of a package you would buy. And believe it or not, even with all the pulling and prying, he said they were pretty laid back. And get this, he also said that this wasn't the first colony that had inhabited this small corner space before; they found old comb there that indicated that prior squatters had checked in before. And the old comb had signs that a mouse had been there. Maybe the old comb is what attracted the bees to the spot this week.

Using the homemade bee-vac, Jared and Greg were able to vacuum up the girls from the floor space and later put them into the 8-frame boxes that Jared prefers to use. They also cleaned up what old and new comb was there and then all that would be left to do would be to take them to their new location which is near the Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston Salem (named after the son of tobacco magnate, R.J. Reynolds). Jared said that while the bees were laid back while being evicted, their mood changed and they were a tad testy once they got to their new home. Well you do have to admit, they had been through a rough day with being sucked into a vacuum cleaner and eventually evicted from their nice apartment complex. But maybe once they settle down they'll like their new home in the country better. Besides they'll never have to catch a cab to get to the airport.

To keep future bees from moving in the space again, Dave the maintenance guy filled in the opening with expanding spray foam. As you can see, a few of the returning foragers found their entrance blocked off...and I'm sure they were totally confused by it all. I mean, you leave during the morning and when you come home, this white foam is blocking you out. I am sure it was a "what the heck" moment.

While I was there on Wednesday, I praised Dave and the staff at the apartment complex for calling a beekeeper and not killing the colony. Come to find out, Dave's uncle is a beekeeper in the county whom I've met before and is a really nice guy, so he knows the value of helping the honey bees. And Tammy, the manager, once had three honey bee hives herself! So good job to Dave and Tammy and the staff at West End Plaza Apartments. And great job to Jared and Greg for taking the time to catch a wayward swarm and giving them a new home.

And an extra thanks to Jared for sharing his pictures so I could tell the tale!

Getting ready for spring! My new building and painting hives...

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. The last couple of weeks have been really busy and I'm trying to get ready for the new beekeeping season, so that means I've had my hands full. So here's an update on my building and getting ready for spring.

My storage building is finally finished! After a month of delays, mostly weather related, the crew came to my house and had it up in a week. They actually had the four walls and roof up in three days, but with the windows and doors and the shingles and paint, it took a full week. But I'm not complaining. It looks great and I'm already putting stuff in there. All of my beekeeping supplies are there along with my yard tools, and I still have plenty of room for other goodies too. To be honest, I'm a little afraid that with all of that new space available, my storage building could end up like my garage...no room for anything. But I've made a pact with myself that I'll keep it neat and orderly...and we'll see how long that will last.

I did an inspection last last week and found my hive alive and doing very well. The sugar I poured on the wax paper and placed on top of the frames was halfway gone, the girls had eaten through the bottom and made a large hole in the sugar and had taken over half of it away. I really wasn't expecting that but its good to see that the method works and I won't hesitate to use it again next winter if needed. 

The top and bottom deeps were really active with a lot of bees. To be honest, it was a nice surprise. It took a few minutes but I finally pried one of the end frames out to see that the girls had seriously used up their winter store of honey. I also found three frames that still had honey, but all the other frames were completely empty and the cells cleaned up. As I pulled up some of the frames, I found where the queen had laid eggs in the burr comb. In that burr comb, I found larvae in all stages...so she's already busy at work getting ready for the spring. I figured she would be working since the daytime temperatures here are now in the 60s and those bees out foraging have been bringing in a lot of pollen. They're even storing the pollen all through the frames, its a yellow-greenish pollen they've put in cell after cell. One frame was completely covered on one side, and they were seriously working on the other side.

So after taking the top and bottom boxes apart and cleaning up all the burr comb (and there was a LOT of it) I put some 1:1 syrup in the feeder to get them through the next few weeks. Since there's no nectar sources available now and they can still starve, I decided to give them some thin syrup. After I put the feed bag on, I closed up shop. I'll go back at the end of this week to make sure they're doing okay with the syrup and that things look okay under the hood.

In preparation for splitting this hive, which I plan to do when the weather stays calm and I can get my hands on another queen, I've already painted the second hive. As you can see, its a very bright yellow. I figure that since my two hives will sit side-by-side, I'm hoping that the color difference will make it easy for my bees to differentiate their own home hive. And as soon as I get a third hive set up, I plan to paint it lime green -- then take the current two hive bodies (now in use) and keep it as a swarm hive...probably as the standard white. I realize that painting my hives probably makes them stick out more, but they're protected where they sit. Plus I believe we all need a little color in this sometimes drab world. I'm really looking forward to put the new colored hives to work. Next up...names for my colonies. I'm not sure what names I'll annoint them with, but I'm giving it serious consideration right now. It will be a lot better than yellow hive, lime green hive, white hive, etc. Stay tuned.

More later. Until then, I hope you're all doing well and planning for another banner year in this wonderful world of beekeeping!

Bee good!

Introducing a hive that may be more practical than a Langstroth..

I was looking at some articles on bee hive construction when I happened to run across a hive that caught my eye and I wanted to share it with you. It is called the People's Hive, named after a minister - Abbé Émile Warré (War-ray). It is a simple little hive and the design is quite old. Here is more about the hive thanks to thebeespace.net. 

The Warré Hive (also known as the People’s Hive) was developed in France by Emile Warré (1876?-1951). Warré developed the People’s Hive after experimenting with over 350 hives of various designs and types. It was his goal to find a hive system that was simple, natural, economical, and bee-friendly. The result was the People’s Hive. He outlined the construction and operation of the hive in his book “Beekeeping for All.” 

In 1783, a German beekeeper named Johann Ludwig Christ developed a beekeeping system almost identical to that of Warré. And in Japan, many beekeepers still employ a similar system of beekeeping that has been in constant use since the Edo period of Japanese history (A.D.1586 to A.D.1911).

A Warre hive is a vertical top bar hive that is simple to build and easy to use. The cost is about one-third to one-fourth the cost of one standard ten frame Langstroth hive. A Warre hive is simple to manage and maintain. Also known as tiered or supered supered top bar hives, a vertical top bar hive is such as the Warre hive is friendly to the bees since they are allowed to draw out their own comb, thereby ensuring a hive environment that is healthier and better suited to their own needs.

Warre hives have a simple hive box with no frames. The bees draw down their own comb from top bars affixed to each box. The quilt provides a layer of insulation to the hive. It sits under the roof on top of the uppermost box. Warre hives are also easy to build from materials available at your building supply shop. The Warre hive is designed so that it will not take enormous amounts of time out of your busy schedule. In short, the Warre Hive is a good solution for those who are interested in keeping bees simply, naturally and wholesomely without harsh chemicals or medications.

The Warre Hive comprises tiers of identical boxes fitted with top-bars, but no frames. Its essential design and usage features can be summarised as follows:



■hive-body box internal dimensions 300 x 300 x 210 mm, with projecting handles
■eight 36mm centred 24mm wide top-bars resting in rebates in each box (NO FRAMES)
■wax starter strips under each top bar (NO FOUNDATION)
■flat floor, notched with a 120mm wide entrance, alighting board
■coarse weave cloth covering the top-bars of the top box
■100 mm high ‘quilt’ boxed with wood, filled with straw, sawdust, wood shavings etc., retained with cloth
■gabled roof containing a ventilated ‘loft’ and separated from the quilt by a mouse-proof board
■the bees build natural comb in the first (top) box and extend downwards into further boxes
■new boxes are added at the bottom
■one or more boxes of honey are harvested from the top after the main flow
■the bees winter on two boxes of comb containing a minimum of 12 kg stores (France)
■honey is harvested by draining, or by centrifuging combs in baskets
■at the spring visit, the hive is expanded by one or more boxes, containing with starter strips or comb
 
Here's a video of the bees in a Warre hive as they come and go. Notice the odd entrance, unlike the standard Langstroth hive -- and I admit I like it. 
 

 
If anyone builds one of these hive, let me know how it works for you. I would love to have one and who knows, maybe one of these days I'll build one myself! 

BREAKING NEWS: MY QUEEN GOES ON STRIKE!

So it looks like my queen is on strike. Yes, that's right, on strike. While the rest of her children are working like...well, bees...it looks like she has shut down production.

On Friday, I decided to swap out hive-top feeders. I have two feeders, and I wanted to put a clean one on top of the hive since I had dead fire ants in the old one and they were glued by the sugar syrup to the bottom. And while I was in there, I decided to see how things are going in the hive, an inspection since installing the second deep brood box a week ago. So I fired up the smoker and went to work.

The girls were already drawing comb in the second brood box, and what they had made so far was filled with clear nectar. So after picking out a few frames, I took the top box off and got down into the lower brood box and started from the end. The end frame, or the wall frame, was new -- I swapped that one and another from the new top deep hive which had no drawn comb. I did that so the girls would have something already drawn to work with in the top box and maybe work a little faster upstairs.

In the bottom deep body, as I went frame by frame, I found honey near the tops of the frames, some nectar in other cells, pollen, and something that perplexed me. I found clean cells, lots of open and clean cells, but no eggs. I looked and looked, went through the frames carefully, but still saw no eggs. I had no clue what was going on, but I looked carefully and was even wearing my reading glasses, but still no little white eggs. And no queen either, she was nowhere to be found. I was interested in finding her, but the more I manipulated the frames, the testier the girls got, so I closed up and said I would try to figure something out.

I had a hard time sleeping on Friday night. I just knew something was amiss, and that the queen was possibly dead -- but just what was wrong, I didn't know. So I decided to go back into the hive and see if I could check for eggs again and look for the queen to see if she was there. I must have missed some things.

So Saturday afternoon, I fired up the smoker again and took the top deep completely off because I had decided to just concentrate on the lower box. So I started with the wall frame, no eggs. Second frame, comb with nectar and some honey, no eggs. Third, fourth and fifth frames, I found comb, some honey and nectar -- but no eggs at all.

But as I pulled the sixth frame out and was looking at all of the clean cells, BINGO, I saw her, the queen! The little green dot on her majesty's back was showing as she scurried across the frame, then under it, and then on the back side of it. I watched her carefully. She looked fine. Wings were fine, she was moving fast so her legs must be okay too. She had no visible signs of injury, at least from the outside. So I figured that it must be something internal. Did she become infertile for some reason? Did the foragers bring something like a poison into the hive to cause her to shut down? Or is it...dare I say it...something going on in her head? I guess the possibilities are endless and I'm no bee expert.

After posting the delimma on the Bee Source forums, I got all sorts of theories from beekeepers as to the situation. No one really had a definitive answer, but several said that I need a new queen as soon as possible. And I agreed, if she's shutting down in mid-August, the colony will die out before winter, and I'll have to restart the whole process in the spring. After babying this colony along since June, that's the last thing I want to happen. I just hope that they won't swarm anytime soon. I know that the queen shuts down before they swarm, but for the life of me, I don't know why they would swarm now. But what I hope and what they do are two different things.

I called Jack Tapp, the owner of Busy Bee Apiaries in Carrboro (and a super nice guy) and I asked him if I needed a new queen. After describing what was happening, he told me to hold off on requeening -- and to call the state's apiary inspection service to have an inspector drop by. Jack told me the inspector would do a thorough inspection, possibly diagnose any problems, and check for varroa mites too while he was there.

So then I made the call and spoke to Donald Hopkins, the inspection supervisor for North Carolina Apiary Services -- a division of the state's agriculture and consumer division -- and he's coming up on Wednesday to inspect my hive. He was really nice on the phone and said he will be glad to check it all out. That will be a huge help to me since I don't have the luxury of a "mentor" in my beekeeping, its just me and my books and what I learn from the Internet and advice from others. I'm thankful he can make the trip here to see what is going on in this hive.

Other than her majesty going on strike, everything else looked great. Unfortunately, a few girls got in the way of me putting frames back in place and...I guess you could say...flew off to that great hive in the sky. As careful as I try to be, sometimes there are casualties where the girls got in the way. Before I closed up the hive, mortician bees were already taking the bodies and throwing them out of the front of the hive. They do like to keep a clean and tidy house.

I'll keep you posted on what happens with the inspection. Wish us all luck! And thanks to everyone that's emailed me or posted on my blog. You ROCK!

BEE good everybody!