New Beeginnings: 2015-04-30

B-Day has finally arrived!! 

Over the last week I had been cleaning out the hive that had died over the winter so that it would be ready for the new bees.  The lucky new arrivals would be taking advantage of the hard work of the bees from the previous year.  I'm sure the new bees would be happy to see the frames of honey, pollen and bee bread waiting for them instead of a bunch of empty frames.

My friend Keith was getting a package of bees this year so we made the quick run to pick up the new packages of bees.  The packages looked really nice and had very few dead bees on the bottom.  The package seller even slammed the packages on the ground to knock the bees down so we could make sure the queen was alive in her cage.  I went over to Keith's house and helped him install his package into his Top Bar hive.  It went very quickly and I was soon home and ready to install my two packages.

White Hive:

This hive has the Honey Supercell frames in it.  These are the fully formed, small-cell, plastic frames.  So after removing some frames to make room, I popped open the package, pulled the queen cage, put it between the frames, slammed the package on the ground and dumped the bees in.  I've stopped worrying about spraying them with sugar water or putting the lid back on the package after I've pulled the can of sugar syrup out or which end of the queen cage should be up or down.  A lot of wasted effort I think.

Green Hive:

This hive has mostly foundationless frames.  A majority of them have drawn comb with lots of honey.  The problem with these frames is that the honey was put into large bulges of comb that extended well past the width of the frame.  So after I removed the frames and dumped the bees in, I used my uncapping knife to saw the comb even with the frame.  Of course this made honey ooze out all over the place but I figured the bees would be eager to clean it up.

Beware of Attack Bee

Queen Release:

After three days I went out to make sure the queens had been released from their cages.  When I pulled the cages the sugar plugs were almost completely eaten away!  After I removed the queen cages I also had to remove all the comb that the bees had built in the extra space that the queen cage was occupying.

A few swipes with the hive tool and the excess comb was removed.  Before adding the frames back in, I took a look for the queen and spotted her quickly.

Can you see the queen in the middle of this picture?

Everything looked great and I closed up White Hive.

Green Hive went very smoothly as well.  Move the frames apart, pull the queen cage, check some frames for the queen (no luck spotting her this time) and push the frames back together.  Done.

Plastic tab attached to the queen cage

 Everything is now good to go for the 2015 bee season!

Next inspection in about a week so that I can make sure the queens are laying eggs.  Until then, thanks for reading!

Honey Harvest 2014: 2014-09-30

Fall sure is flying by fast headlong into Winter.  I can't believe it was a month ago that I actually harvested my honey for the year.  The only good thing about not getting much honey is that it doesn't take too long to process!  I will say that I did get a bit more honey this year than I did last year.  I believe the total ended up being about 1.5 gallons.

My friend Keith was helping me out and it always makes things easier with an extra set of hands!  We start by using a long serrated knife to uncap the frames.

I have a plastic tub underneath to catch the cappings and all the dripping honey.

Once the frames are uncapped, we put them in a home made two frame extractor that is powered by a hand drill.  We spin the frames for a minute and then flip them over and spin them again.  It works pretty well and sure beats paying 300-400 dollars for a motorized stainless steel extractor!  Maybe I would change my mind if I was extracting 20 boxes of honey each with 10 frames.  But extracting one partially filled box of honey isn't so bad.

The raw honey and bits of wax collect in the bottom of the sanitized food grade plastic garbage can I use for this purpose.

We then pour it into a coarse filter that sits on top of the bottling bucket.

At this point I leave it sit for a few days and the honey slowly drips through the filter leaving behind the wax.  I usually rinse the remaining wax with water and then melt it down for later use.

Once the honey has settled and most of the air bubbles are out of it, it is time to bottle.

I really love the 12 oz. (by honey weight) hex jars.  They look really classy!

I also decided to redesign the label this year.  What do you think?

Not much left to do for the hive this year.  Here is a list of my remaining tasks to complete before Winter:

• Put pine shavings in the ventilation board
• Put on the mouse guard
• Put on the winter wrap

Hopefully I'll get one more post on the blog before Winter sets in.  Until then, thanks for reading!

Bee Blog Slacker: 2014-09-20

Well a lot has happened in the bee world since my last post in June.  I guess things get crazy here in Michigan during the summer time when it seems so short but that is no excuse!  Thank you to my lovely daughter for reminding me that people are worried about the bees and they are left in suspense if I don't write these posts.....heheheheh  =)

Here is a quick summary of what has happened since:

Green Hive:  

Doing OK but not strong.  Had some queen drama where I found no brood in the hive during an inspection on 7/24 and found capped queen cells in White Hive.  I transferred the capped queen cells to the Green Hive and after looking through the photos I took during the inspection I spotted that there was a queen in Green Hive after all!!!  So either the queen in Green Hive was a virgin or not laying eggs for some other reason.

White Hive:  

Strong compared to Green Hive for sure.  This hive may have swarmed since I spotted all the capped and uncapped queen cells.  Usually they build swarm cells along the bottom of the comb so this does follow that pattern.  If they did swarm then about half of this colony is hopefully living in a cozy tree somewhere!

Lots of capped Drone brood and a few queen cells

So now fast forward from then end of July and into the end of September (that sounds really depressing actually).  I just did a full top to bottom inspection of Green Hive and I checked the honey super on White Hive to see if it was ready to come off.

Green Hive: 

The top box had about 4 totally empty frames.  It is too late in the year now for the bees to have enough incoming nectar to make wax.  So they will stay empty for the rest of this year.  There was one frame of solid honey and the rest of the frames had a mixture of honey, nectar and bee bread.

What the heck is bee bread you ask?  When bees bring the pollen back to the hive, another worker bee packs the pollen into a cell and adds some honey or nectar and enzymes to it.  This causes some fermentation to occur and breaks the pollen down into a more consumable form for the bees.

Lots of maroon colored bee bread on this frame

Compare the color of the bee bread to the color of the fresh yellow pollen on the back of this bees leg in this photo:

This bee bread is the primary source of food for developing brood.  Since this hive doesn't have any brood, they have a lot of bee bread stored.

The bottom box has only two empty frames and most of the remaining frames are packed full of bee bread or honey with very few empty cells.

Solid frame of honey

The bottom line for Green Hive is that they appear hopelessly queenless.  This late in the year there is really no possibility of buying a replacement queen.  I did check around online and every place I looked is sold out (and probably were sold out months ago).  Also, there is no hope of the bees having enough time to raise their own queen if I donated some eggs from White Hive.  It would take at least 16 days for a new queen to hatch.  By then it would be the middle of October and there would be no drones for her to mate with.  Matter of fact, during my inspection, I witnessed numerous drones being dragged out of the hive by their loving sisters.  I think the only option I have now is to combine this hive with White Hive (Newspaper Combine).  After I do that my remaining hive will go into Winter with FOUR deeps of food and bees.  No matter how bad the upcoming Winter is, that should be plenty to get them through it.

White Hive:

Even with the possibility that this hive swarmed earlier, it is still a strong hive.  They have managed to fill about half of a honey super.  Not great but better than nothing.  I plan to take this honey off when I combine Green Hive with this one.  I might be able to get 1 gallon of honey from this box.

What's Next:

I'm planning on doing the combine, removing the honey and doing a mite sampling tonight.  If I have enough time I'll extract the honey this weekend.  The next blog post will be up shortly!

As always, thanks for reading!

Honey Harvest: 09-21-2013

Well, despite having only one hive this year and having that hive loose its queen sometime in early June, I managed to get a modest harvest this year.  I think most of the honey was carry over from the previous year or honey they had stored up in early Spring.  Most of the cappings were darker (the bees had walked over the cappings for a longer time and they were older).  Newer cappings of fresh wax are a brighter white color.  There were also a number of pollen cells intermixed with the honey which makes the honey a slightly darker golden color and not transparent like last year's honey was.

White Cappings

Dark Cappings

My friend Keith's hand made extractor worked like a charm again this year.  Until I am extracting 60+ frames I probably will not have a need for a commercial extractor.

Once extracted, a course filter is all I use.

I let the honey settle for a few days and bottled.

All in all it looks like I have approximately 1/3 of what I extracted last year.  I would say just over 1 gallon in total.  Not too bad and the honey tastes fantastic!!

I did find one thing I have not seen yet in my hives.......a small hive beetle. 

I saw a total of two of them.  This one was trotting over an undrawn frame.  And here I thought since I was this far North in Michigan I didn't have to worry about these pests.  I know they are a huge problem in most of the Southern states.  One more thing I get to worry about!

Once I was done extracting, I put the wet super back on the hive above the inner cover.  The bees should clean them up pretty quickly.  Next inspection I'll be focusing in on Winter prep.  Checking for more hive beetles and seeing how much honey they have stored in the deeps.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Post Action Assessment: 07-30-2013

Task number one during this inspection was to check the split hive and hopefully find evidence of a laying queen or at least find the (hopefully) non-virgin queen.  Task number two was to check White Hive to see if the queen cells spotted last time were completed or destroyed and if I actually have a laying or virgin queen in that hive as well.

Split Hive:

The population in this hive is still very low.  I had put the extra box of honey on the hive to make sure they had enough but I think I have given them too much space for too few bees.  There are lots of ants roaming around unchallenged eating honey.  They don't bother the bees but in a strong hive they wouldn't be in there at all.  The low population does make it much easier to inspect the hive and spot a queen though!  I quickly went through the box of honey and found a few bees but no queen (nor did I expect to find her there).  Going through the brood box I found some honey and nectar and a tiny bit of pollen but I found no evidence of a queen (virgin or otherwise) and no evidence of eggs, or larvae.  Based on the "bee math" I provided a link to in the last blog post, it could still be a bit early for the hatched queen to have flown out, mated and returned to lay eggs.  I'm really hoping that we did not scare her off during our last inspection and she did not come back!  At this point, I will give it one more week before I take some other action.  It is pretty late in the season, so the only practical option may be to just recombine this hive back into White Hive.

White Hive:

One of my goals this year was to keep better records.  But I am finding that I just don't have enough hands to record things on paper, plus take pictures, all while trying to manipulate frames and smoke, etc.  So this time I tried to just take a photo of each side of every frame.  It was still very clumsy but I made it happen.  Photos are great because you can often spot things that you did not see while inspecting the frames.

Inspecting the top box, it was mostly filled with honey along with a few frames of foundation that the bees have barely touched.  Having a filled frame next to an empty one just makes the bees want to draw out the filled frame even more, so I have some giant frames of honey in there!  I'll pull those for sure this fall.

The bottom box also had a lot of honey and the pollen stores seemed much larger this time.  Possibly this is because there are no larvae to feed the pollen to! 

Honey and Pollen on frame 2

I kept moving through the frames hoping to find the hatched queen or the queen cups I had spotted last time.  I hit frame number four and there was the queen!

Queen Spotting can be challenging!

Can you see her?  It always gives me a jolt when I finally spot her. 

She is in the middle of the frame a few inches down from the top.  Here she is a bit closer:

I spotted the queen, but is she the old queen or the new queen?  And what about those queen cups I saw last time?  To answer these questions I need to see if this queen is laying eggs and if the bees destroyed the queen cups.  Onward!

I continued to find patches of brood that have not hatched yet as well and large open areas with nothing in them.  Some pollen and honey on almost every frame though.  On frame 7 I hit a small patch of drone brood and this is the frame I spotted the queen cups on.

This picture wasn't as good as the one from last time, but you can see they are still open and have not been capped and turned into full queen cells.  It looks to me like the bees removed the two larvae that were in these cups.  I assume they realized they had a queen and no longer needed to raise a new one.  This is a good sign!  My main goals accomplished, I finished inspecting the remaining frames and closed up the hive.  I looked very closely at each frame and I could not find any eggs or larvae for sure.  On the photos for frame 6, if I zoom in very closely, I can see what MIGHT be a few eggs but I'm not sure.  I guess I will know which frame to look on during the next inspection to see if those phantoms have turned into larvae!

Possible eggs in the empty area to the right of the capped brood?

All in all I was pretty happy to "bee" back on track with at least one hive!  We shall see what the next inspection reveals!

On a side note, I planted some Borage this year in my garden because I had read that bees really like it.  I'd never even heard of the plant before, but as you can see in the photo, they like it!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Mistakes Were Made: 07-21-2013

Sunday was a great day to work the bees for a number of reasons.  First off, my son-in-law Chris and my daughter are visiting from California and he wanted to dive into the hives with me!  Second, the weather was just perfect.  Temps in the 70s, clear and sunny.  If any of you other beekeepers out there are anything like me (and I'm sure you are), then you love teaching others about bees.  This was a great opportunity, even though I didn't expect to be able to show Chris any stages of brood development (see the last two posts).  As you are about to read, this was not the case!!

Since the split and insertion of the two queen cells during my last inspection, my plan was to get in and first check to see if they have hatched.  Hopefully I could spot a virgin queen running around in the process.  I already know that the split hive has significantly less bees in it, as there is very little activity at the hive entrance.  Because of this, I also planned on either moving a frame of bees into the split hive or just shaking them off the frames and into the split hive.  With plan in place, Chris and I suited up, lit the smoker and headed out to the split hive.

Split Hive:

This was going to be a good training and teaching hive because there were not going to be a lot of bees and it would be much easier to point things out.  Plus, not having a bunch of bees flying around your head is a bit less intimidating for someone's first time.  We opened the hive and I was able to go through the honey super pretty quickly.  There were only a few bees there and solid honey frames all look the same after seeing  a few.  I removed that box and started digging through the brood box, eager to get to the frame with the queen cell on it!  After prying back the fourth frame, I could see the bottom of the queen cell was opened so the queen was out somewhere!  We removed the queen cell and started in on the next frame and BAM there was the hatched virgin queen!  I pointed her out to Chris and in the 10 seconds it took to get the camera out to grab of picture of her........she as gone.  I flipped the frame over and back again a few times and she was no longer there.  She must have gotten spooked and flew off.  Camera shy I guess.  We went through the rest of the frames and we found a bunch more honey, but I was concerned that I didn't find any stored pollen.  That might be OK for the moment, but if the virgin queen does fly out and mate, comes back and starts laying eggs, there had better be some pollen in there to feed the baby bees!  We put the honey super back on the hive and put the inner cover back on.  I left the telescoping cover off at this point in case the queen came back she could get back in the hive a bit easier.  On to White Hive.

White Hive:


We opened up this hive and there were a lot more bees here as expected.  After a bit more smoke into the hive (Chris was my head smoker and picture taker) we dove in and quickly went through the honey super and set it to the side.  After a bit of coaxing I was able to get the first frame out and begin the inspection.  With the first few frames inspected, I was really pleased to see some pollen and "bee bread" packed into the cells.

After inspecting the next few frames, we came across a frame that had a bunch of drones and a queen cup on it.

I love spotting drones, especially when I am trying to teach someone about bees.  They are easy to distinguish because their large size and big eyes stand out so much.  Can you spot the drones in this picture?  There is a hole close to the middle of the frame with two drones above it and a queen cup to the right. 

I checked inside the queen cup just to make sure there was nothing in it, and there was nothing in there.  I continued on and began checking the next frame in line.  I slowed down a bit since the closer I was to the frame with the queen cell, the higher the probability that I would be able to spot the emerged virgin queen (if she was there at all).  I pulled the frame with the queen cell and sure enough, she had hatched.  The bottom of the cell was open and hopefully she was running around inside the hive.  I proceeded to move the frame out of the way and pulled the next frame out and I find..........BROOD?!?!?!  What??

At first I thought it must be all drone brood and perhaps I had laying workers but after seeing this on the next two frames and spotting a few actual drone cells, this must be worker brood.  How is this possible?  Well, the answer is that I screwed up.  I must have missed the eggs and larvae in these frames during my last few inspections and/or I simply didn't pull the frames that had the brood on them, so I never spotted it.  So now what?  I would think that if there is a laying queen in this hive, that she would have instantly killed the virgin queen inside the queen cell.  This wasn't the case because the virgin hatched out and was not dead inside the cell.  Perhaps the laying queen didn't spot the queen cell until after the virgin hatched and they eventually found each other and fought to the death?  Which one survived?  By this time I am scrutinizing every inch of each frame trying to find either queen.  I pull the next frame and I spot this....

If you look closely, not only are there two queen cups here, but this time they are full of royal jelly and I can spot a larvae in one of them (no doubt there is a larvae in the other one as well).  What the heck is going on?  If there is an existing laying queen, why were the bees trying to create a new queen?  If there are larvae in these queen cups, then that means they are somewhere between 4 and 8 days old (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm) right around the time I placed the queen cell in this hive.  Coincidence?  I think I need to give Sherlock Holmes a call because I can't quite sequence the timing and all the possibilities together to form a rock solid answer to what is going on.  Usually, queen cells built in the center of the frame like this are considered Supercedure cells.  This means the bees have decided that the old queen is beginning to fail and they have determined to replace her.  Maybe that is what was going on and my timing was just really bad?  Who knows?

We finished inspecting the remaining frames and failed to spot either the old queen or the virgin queen.  At this point there wasn't much left to do but close up the hive.  I did take two of the frames out and after closely inspecting them (and not finding any queens), I took them over to the split hive and shook the bees into it.  Hopefully that will give them a few more bees to supplement their numbers until the virgin queen mates and starts laying eggs to make new bees!

Hopefully, I will open the hive in another week and what I find will give more answers to the mystery.  All in all it was a very educational inspection, not only for "newbee" Chris but for me as well!! 

Thanks again for reading

Chris and Mark about to embark on an adventure!

Hive Inspection: 06-04-2013

It is always fun for me to be able to share my beekeeping experiences with people.  During this inspection I had a friend of mine along to help.  I also enjoy teaching "newbees" all about the different miracles in the hive.  This inspection allowed me a lot of opportunities to do so!

We saw pollen, nectar, capped honey, open brood, capped brood, drone brood, hatching baby bees, queen cups and the queen!  I'm not sure what else there would be in a hive that I would even want to show someone.  It is really hard to see eggs and I don't care to show someone Varroa mites!

I've come to realize that people judge the strength of their hive by how many frames the bees are actually covering.  So I made sure to take note of this.  As of last inspection, I knew the queen was in the top honey super after the long, cold winter and there was plenty of brood there.  I was hoping all the brood had hatched out (new egg to hatching = 21 days) and the queen had moved down into the bottom two brood boxes.  Well, I had half of it correct.  She has moved down and been laying in the bottom boxes but she must have also laid a few more eggs in the honey super as well.  Here is a really weird brood pattern because of this:

Not only is there uncapped nectar and pollen scattered around, but there are little pockets of brood here and there and a few drone cells along the bottom edge toward the right.  I was hoping all the brood would be out of there so I can use these frames for honey later in the year.  I could use this frame as a part of the split I plan to do in the next week or so.

One of the greatest things in the hive to witness is a new bee being "born" or emerging from its cell for the first time.  Watching them poke out and move their antennae around is amazing!  Look right in the center patch of capped brood and you can see two little heads poking through and looking around!

 The bees were only covering about 5 / 10 frames in the top box and most of the empty frames hadn't really been built out much.  So, onto the next box!

It took me a while to figure out how to get the first frame out without squashing a bunch of bees, but with a little smoke and hive tool manipulation, I was able to get it started.  On this frame I was very pleased to see a SOLID patch of open brood.  You can see right along the center of the photo a whole bunch of pearly white glistening larvae!  Nice!

I would suspect the queen is probably actively laying eggs somewhere in this box.  I was really hoping to spot her too so that I could show my friend the queen in all her glory.  On the very next frame I pulled out, there she was!

Can you spot her?  No?

How about now?

I know, they all look like "bees", right?  Well, if you still can't spot her, she is just slightly above dead center in the photo.  Her abdomen is darker brown and less striped looking.  Also, her abdomen sticks out way past her wings.  Hopefully you spotted her!

At this point in the inspection I decided not to go through every frame in the box.  And I decided not to go into the very bottom box either.  I had seen and shown all the really important things and the inspections always take longer than you'd like to think.  The bees were probably covering 8 / 10 hives so that box was pretty strong.  I closed the hive up and called it a day. 

I was happy to see that the queen was strongly laying in the lower box and that there were a few drone cells dotting the bottom of some frames.  I did not see any drones walking around but I'm sure they will be out within a few days for sure.  This is important because I intend to split the hive and have them raise their own queen.  A new virgin queen will need drones and if there aren't any around then she isn't going to be properly mated.  Not that she would mate with her own drones, but if you have drones in your own hive, then there are probably drones out in the wild too!

Next post I hope to be showing you my new split.  Until then, thanks for reading!

Hive Inspection: 01-12-2013

With another veritable heat wave (just above 50 degrees) here in Michigan back on January 12, I had to go and see how "my girls" were doing!  Doing an inspection would also give me a chance to try out my new "J-Hook" hive tool that I received as a Christmas gift.  Exciting stuff for a beekeeper that just sits around the house in the Winter wondering how cold his bees are  =)

Flash back to previous hive status reports and you'll see that Green Hive was going strong with plenty of stores (honey) and White Hive had much fewer bees and no stores other than the sugar feed I had placed in the hive and what I had stolen from Green Hive (1 frame of honey).  What I found when I opened the hives was not what I was expecting.

Green Hive:
I opened the lid and did not see any bees in the honey super.  Still lots of honey there with almost every frame full of capped honey or nectar.  Removed that box and proceeded to look at the top box.  Strange, no bees moving around and none flying.

Top Box with new hive tool

I pried the box off with my new hive tool and after cracking through a lot of propolis (I haven't removed this box is quite some time), I removed the top box and began to look at the bottom box.  Sitting on top of the frames was a small cluster of dead bees around some areas of dark "stuff".  After brushing off the dead bees and removing some burr comb, this is what it looked like.

I believe this is a sign of bee dysentery.  One possible cause of this is too much liquid in the bees diet when they don't have the ability (because of cold temps) to fly outside and "relieve" themselves.  Another possibility is a disease called Nosema.  During warmer temps you usually see signs of this by seeing brownish streaks on the outside front of the hive.  The bees have runny stools and aren't as in control as they normally would be.  I'm sure you all are fascinated by this talk of bee poo, but I guess it is an important symptom to pay attention to!

Anyway, I pried apart a number of these frames to find another small cluster of dead bees (golf ball size).  This is nothing to really be concerned about as you do expect to loose some bees during the Winter.  The next thing that concerned me was looking through the frames to find this:

I had no idea what these little white granules were sitting inside these honey cells.  Weird.  At first I thought maybe they were some sort of insect larvae (yuck).  Upon closer inspection I quickly dismissed that possibility.  Since they all appeared to be wet with nectar, I was hoping that perhaps it was just crystalized honey.  I posted this picture on some bee blogs and everyone was in agreement that this was just crystalized honey.  Whew!  I guess everything unexpected is enough to freak out a new beekeeper!

At this point I decided to put the box back together and right off this hive as a Winter kill for some unknown reason.  I put the heavy bottom box back on the stand (there is still a lot of stores in the boxes!), and I reached for the second box just in time to see that I was being observed...

A small cluster of bees with their heads peeking up at me!  Hmm, looks like they aren't dead after all.  Sadly, this cluster is still very small and at this point I do not hold out much hope that they will survive the Winter, despite all the honey still in the hive!  Since I did not break apart the frames in this box, I can hope that there were a lot more bees that just did not want to come up and say Hi.

White Hive:
As I opened this hive, I was expecting to see very little activity since this has been the weaker hive all season.  Upon removing the lid, I was met with two annoyed bees.  They loudly buzzed around my veil and continued to fly around me.  They were probably trying to tell me to shut the lid because it was still pretty flippin' cold out!  =)  I removed the inner cover to check on the top honey super that is holding four empty frames, one frame of honey and an empty space where I put down a bunch of sugar feed.  Here it is:

 

To my happy surprise there were a handful of bees merrily crawling over the pile of sugar.  Now that's good eats!  Looking down past the sugar into the box below, it looks like there is still some stored honey there as well.

 

Although I would like to have seen a bigger cluster of bees for this hive, I am pleased to see the amount of activity that this hive is showing.  As a little extra insurance policy, I decided to take a few of the honey frames from Green Hive and move them over into White Hive.  It is possible that I moved Green Hive's problem into White Hive by doing this but if White Hive starved to death from lack of honey, they would be equally as dead, so I decided to risk it.

All in all, it looks like I might still get one hive through the Winter.  At least another two months to go before we are close to Spring, so keep your fingers crossed!

As always, thanks for reading!

Honey Harvest 2012!! 09-16-2012

I wasn't sure this day was going to come (at least not this year) but we did have a honey harvest this year!!  Green Hive produced enough of a surplus that I felt comfortable stealing it from the bees.  The reason bees make honey is so they have something to eat during the long cold Winter months.  This gives them the energy they need to flex their wing muscles and generate enough heat to keep warm.  Bees do not hibernate, rather they huddle together to keep warm waiting for the first sources of food to emerge in the Spring.  Typically their first sources of food are Dandelions for nectar and Maple and Willow trees for pollen.  So don't kill those Dandelions in your yard!!  =)

Here is what is typically involved in getting the honey:

Solid Honey

Step One: Remove The Bees
Hey bees!  Look at those flowers over there! <<steals honey before they notice>>  Since my ninja
suit is at the cleaners, I decided to try a different method.  First I removed a honey frame and checked to make sure it was 80-90% capped. 

That's a good one!

Nectar becomes honey only after the bees have reduced the moisture content of the nectar to below 18%.  Then they seal the cell with a thin wax cap to
prevent the honey from absorbing any additional moisture.  If you take uncapped honey, you run the risk of elevating the moisture level in the honey to the point where it can actually ferment.  Not good eats!  Next I held a solid grip on the frame and then jerked it quickly downward.  This dislodged most of the bees clinging to the frame.  I then followed up with the bee brush to remove the remaining bees.  Lastly, I brought the frame to an empty hive body, placed it inside and then covered it with a bed sheet to prevent the bees from going back onto the honey frames (which they really want to do). 

Not ready yet

 With my friend Keith helping, we quickly got into a rhythm.  He would pry apart the frames.  I would pick them up, shake and brush the bees off them and hand the frame off.  Keith would walk the frame over to the empty box and cover it up.  Rinse and repeat 10 times!  As you can see, this is a bit labor intensive because you have to touch each frame in the box.  Since I had only one box, it was no big deal.  If you had 10 boxes.......

Here are a few other methods I have read about:
Fume Board - You put a special felt lined board soaked in "bee repellent" on top of your hive.  The smell drives the bees down into the hive and out of the honey supers.  Wait five minutes and remove the now empty honey super.  Seems like this would work well but I didn't want to risk having the chemicals in my hive (even briefly). 

Escape Board - This is a special box that has a one-way wire mesh maze built into it.  When the bees navigate their way out, they cannot find their way back in.  You put this underneath your honey super and after a few days there are no more bees in the honey super.  I might buy some of these and give them a try next year. 

Bees shaken off the frames onto this box

Leaf Blower - Just like it sounds.  You take the honey super off the hive, set it on it's side and then blast it with the leaf blower expelling the bees from the box.  Seems like this would really piss the bees off and maybe injure a number of them as well.  Not to mention, I don't think I have a long enough extension cord to reach my hives!



Step Two: Uncap the honey frames
I bought a special "cold knife" made to cut the wax cappings off.  It is a long serrated blade that you lay onto the frame and saw back and forth removing the caps.  They also make a "hot knife" which is the same blade but with a heating element in it.  It melts and cuts at the same time and also costs $100.  Did I mention I'm cheap??  The cold knife worked fine but as the knife became more and more sticky with honey and wax, it became more tedious since you needed to clean the knife every few minutes.  Again, with only one box of frames it wasn't that big of a deal but if I have a few more boxes to do next year, I may have to spring for the hot knife. By the way, there is no way short of a biohazard suit that you can do this job without being covered in honey!!  It is hard not to get a taste of honey when your hands are covered in it!

Cutting the caps

One side done

Step Three: Extract the honey
If you spin the frames fast enough, the honey flies right out of them.  My friend Keith is a world renowned master tinkerer, so he decided to try his hands at building an extractor.  With some slight sizing adjustments, it worked perfectly!  Using a hand drill, we spun each set of frames for a few minutes, flipped them over spun them again and they were done.  I'm still very impressed at how nicely and easily it worked.  AND I didn't have to pay $300-$400+ for a commercial extractor!

Spin!  Spin!

Step Four: Bottle the honey
With all the honey removed from the frames, we poured the honey through a 600 micron filter that sits on the top of the bottling bucket.  The bucket has a special honey gate built into the bottom so that it is easy to start and stop the honey flow as you fill the bottles.  We let the honey filter and settle over night and began bottling the next day.  I controlled the honey gate and my wife told me when to start and stop.  We had our 12 oz jars processed lickety split.

Into the filter

Step Five: Labeling and packaging
My wife and I worked on designing a label and I think it turned out very well.  She really likes the name of the blog so we decided to call the honey "Martin's BEEginnings".  I also wanted some text on the label about how to reliquefy honey if it crystalizes and some text about not feeding honey to infants under one year of age.  Finally, we put the net weight, year and a scripture on the label.  Proverbs 16:24 - Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.  To finish off the jars, I bought some labels from Dadant that you put on the lid.  They say "How do you know if it is real honey if you don't know the beekeeper?".  No Chinese funny honey here folks!  My wife added her finishing touch with a ribbon and a little bee charm.  Ain't they purty?!?!

Followup and Winter Prep:
After the extraction was complete, I placed the "wet" frames back on the hive for the bees to clean up.  They eagerly licked up any residual honey that was not extracted and moved it back into their hive.  Since I only extracted 9 out of the 10 frames in the box (the last one was only partially capped) I had to decide what to do with frame #10.  Green Hive has another super almost filled with honey, so I'm not too worried about them.  So, I checked White Hive and I was horrified to see that the honey super I placed there had not been touched.  The bees have drawn no wax and stored no honey in it!  In a Northern climate it is recommended to have two deep boxes PLUS a super of honey to make it through the Winter.  These bees have no super and I have no idea how much is stored up in the deep boxes.  So, I took the unextracted frame from Green Hive and swapped it with an empty frame in White Hive.  Hopefully they will take the honey.  If they haven't removed it within a week or so, I think I will place it above the inner cover and maybe scratch open the cells.  This should provoke the bees to remove the honey.  At this point in the year I don't think they have a chance of filling the empty honey super so I think I will just remove that empty box and hope they can survive with the stores they currently have.

As a final bit of Winter prep, I placed mouse guards on the hives.  When it gets cold mice like to move into the heated apartment in the yard called a beehive.  The mouse guard is a strip of metal that has holes large enough for the bees to get through, but a mouse can't get through or chew through.

Mouse Guard

As always, thanks for reading and questions are always welcome!