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!

Winter Activites: 2013-01-29

Since winter time activities for beekeepers usually involve sitting around and worrying about their bees freezing, it is a good idea to find something else to do for the bees.  Well, I've been busy with three different bee related projects for this upcoming season!

Nuc Building:

A "nuc" is a nucleus hive.  It is a smaller version of a standard hive.  They have many uses such as swarm capture boxes, bait boxes, hive split boxes, etc.  So it is a good idea to have some on hand if necessary.  Using the plans by D Coates, I built four nuc boxes out of a sheet of 1/2" plywood.  With a few minor mistakes here and there and two days out in the pole barn, I have them complete!  It was also an excuse to use the new air compressor and staple gun I received for Christmas this year!

Four waiting to be painted

Yes, Frames do fit!

All I need to do now is paint them and drill an entrance hole.  Nice!

Wax Processing:


The second project I accomplished was to take the beeswax I had collected and melt it down into a manageable form.  I have two different wax molds (another Christmas gift), a 1 oz. and a 1 pound.  After using both, I decided I didn't really have enough wax to use the 1 pound mold, so I re-melted that one down and made it all into 1 oz. bars.

I'll be using the wax for making lip balm and coating any plastic foundation I have.  I don't think it is enough to make candles out of.  It seems like that would really take a lot of wax.

Smart Hive/Arduino Development:

Thanks to another Christmas gift (do you see a theme yet?), I have a plan to build a "Smart Hive".  Basically a hive that I can attach an electronic monitoring station to.  I would like it to measure temperature, humidity and hive weight throughout the year.  I could then collect the data and see some nice trends as the bee population increases and when the main nectar flows are in my area by watching weight spikes.  All of this is possible through a little device called Arduino.  An Arduino is an open source electronic board that you can attach various sensors to.  From the reading I have done it seems like the temperature and humidity sensors will be easy to configure.  The weight sensors seem to be a bigger issue.  Most electronic weight measurements are affected by temperature changes.  In an outdoor environment, the temperature will obvious change quite a bit.  Hopefully I'll be able to post more as my progress on the Smart Hive continues!

Arduino

Until next time, thanks for reading!