07-10-2012: Triple Disaster Strikes

After having pretty decent success for a first time beekeeper, I have finally run into problems.  Lots of problems.  Maybe even major problems.  Ugh.

Top Bar Hive:

My friend Keith and I opened up the Top Bar Hive (TBH) and noticed that the bees really hadn't built up any more comb in almost four weeks.  From the outside they seemed fine but on the inside was a different story.  After looking at the first few combs things seemed good.  There were honey and pollen stores and the bees moved calmly over the combs.  Then I started noticing this (see the red circles)

Lots of dead larva.  Black larva.  Very spotty brood.  Lots of empty cells that appeared to have no eggs in them.  Perforated cell cappings.  Not good.  Well, maybe since it has been VERY hot lately, it has caused a lot of the brood to die and the workers are still in the process of clearing the dead out??  Lets look at the next frame

More of the same.  A few healthy looking larva here and there but more of the same evidence as before.  I am a little familiar with some of the brood diseases but now I really need to know what is going on.  American Foulbrood?  European Foulbrood?  Sacbrood?  Or just me overreacting?  Crud.  Anyone have any experience with this?

The last sign of bad news on this hive was when I checked top bar #1, the one closest to the entrance.  Notice anything?

Count the number of drones on this comb.  Holy smokes you almost can't see any workers!!!  Is that because most of the drones like to hang our near the entrance?  By the way, we did spot the queen on comb #2, so maybe they just like to be near her too?  Sure seems like a TON of drones.  So if having some brood disease wasn't enough, now I have a drone laying queen or even a laying worker???  Awesome.

White Hive:

This hive has been running behind Green Hive for a while now.  But as of late, it has appeared that the population was catching up (at least from the outside).  So, upon opening the hive I was happy to see many bees covering all the frames

As I mentioned, I had been worried about the progress of this hive since it seemed way behind the Green hive and during the last inspection I had found the last four frames completely empty.  Thankfully this was not the case this time.  I inspected each frame finding nice stores of pollen, honey and nectar.

I was not expecting this monster frame of almost SOLID honey!  I should have known just from the weight of the frame and I pulled it out.  You wouldn't think it would be so heavy but when you are trying to lift it by the two small tabs at the end and trying not to squish any bees, these frames can really pack on the pounds!  Now that the bees were covering all the frames, I added the second box.  I took two frames of brood from the lower box and moved them up into the new box and replaced those frames with new foundationless frames.  Of course this wouldn't be a "Triple Disaster" if I didn't find another problem!  There was a bit of brood comb built onto the bottom of these frames and to make them fit into the new box I had to remove the comb.  It was a bit gross as I scraped it off with my hive tool and a whitish liquid ran out (sorry baby bees).  Since I now had a piece of comb where all the brood would die, I decided to open the comb to see what was in there (in the name of science of course).  Well, this is what I found

If you look closely, I have circled in red two small brownish red dots.  Those are the now infamous Varroa mites.   GRRRRRR!  I have heard that "everyone" now has Varroa mites in their hives but I held the false hope that mine would not be among them!  Now I have to track down my recent issue of "American Bee Journal" and re-read the article about doing powdered sugar shakes on the bees.  This is a technique that does two things: The powdered sugar loosens the mite's grip on the bees causing them to fall off and in the process of the mite falling off, you can count them to see how bad the infestation is.  Guess I'll be planning on doing that in the near future.  LAME!

Green Hive:

If two issues weren't bad enough, here comes number three!

Two weeks ago I was excited to add the second box to this hive.  It was bursting with bees and there was always a lot of activity at the entrance.  Last time I checked, there was no new comb built on the empty frames.  I was kicking myself for not bringing up a few existing brood frames into the new box to encourage the bees to expand there.  Well, two more weeks have gone bone and now it looks like they are making some progress.  You can see the comb, right?  The dripping honey from the ruptured cells is just one of the casualties of an inspection.  One frame out, lets check the rest...

What the heck is this?!?!?  Holy smokes they decided the build the comb PERPENDICULAR to the frames!!!  No!  You can see in this photo there are two frames side by side and the comb is bridging from one over to the next.  Nicely wrapped around my support wires of course.  AHHH!  Seriously, what am I suppose to do with this now?  To my surprise, the bees have almost filled the entire box in two weeks!  Should I go in like King Kong and just destroy all the comb simply so I can have straight comb??  I guess this is one of the dangers of using foundationless frames.

Well, at least there is one frame in here that is "mostly" straight.  Good grief.  After my hands were running with honey and being flustered after my findings in the other two hives, I just gave up and decided to just close up the box.  At this point the bees were just going nuts from all the honey being all over the place.  Funny thing is that in the mad rush of pulling these frames and putting them back in, I don't recall seeing any brood in these frames.  I think they were solid nectar/honey.  So, would you just let me "bee" and just chalk it up to experience?  Or would you rip it all out, brush the bees off and make them start all over again?

Sigh.  Anyway, with so much honey in this box and the bees having built on almost all the new frames, I decided to put a honey super on.  Thankfully it has FOUNDATION in the frames!

Thanks again for reading and please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about the issues I'm having!

Second Hive Inspection: 05-22-2012

B+33 Days and counting...


Weather Report:
65 degrees, sunny with a slight breeze

As the hives are now well past the 21 days it takes for a newly laid egg to develop into a new bee, I am expecting to see quite a bit of population build up during this inspection.  Up until recently, the population would have been slowly decreasing as the original bees that came in the packages were dying off, either of old age or other causes.  Assuming that my queens are laying a lot of eggs, I hope to see more worker bees.

Inspection Report:
White Hive:

I popped open the lid of the white hive after giving it a few puffs of smoke and I noticed that I really needed to pry the lid up.  The bees have been collecting propolis and applying it liberally!  Propolis is a resinous substance that bees collect from the sap of various types of trees.  They typically use it as a type of "bee glue".  If they find a crack anywhere in the hive they can seal it up with propolis.  It also has antibacterial properties and helps to keep the inside of the hive sterile.  In some cases, the bees can even use it to cage up unwanted pests in the hive.  If you look around the outside edges of the hive box, you can see the yellowish, waxy, sticky propolis.

As I began to inspect the frames, I also had to make more of an effort to pry them apart as they had also been stuck together.  The bees are currently covering about four out of ten frames.  I spotted lots of capped honey, pollen and brood.  I was hoping to see more bees in this hive and more capped brood but maybe the queen is still a bit skeptical laying eggs in these plastic frames.

Speaking of the queen, I spotted her!  After no luck seeing her during the last inspection, here she is in all her glory!  Can you spot her in this picture?  She has a long golden abdomen in the upper third of this photo and slightly to the left of center.  It can be a bit of a challenge spotting her (especially since she is not marked).  I'm guessing it will be even more difficult in the future as more and more bees are added to the hive.


Having seen everything I wanted to, I closed up the hive and removed the empty feeder jar.  I think at this point there should be enough natural nectar sources that they no longer need any supplemental feeding.

Green Hive:
This hive is coming along nicely and the bees have built up partial combs on six of the ten frames.

 I'm pleased with their progress and I am especially happy that there appears to be a much more uniform brood pattern on these frames.  As you can see in this photo, they have drawn out about 60% of the frame and it is almost entirely covered in sealed brood.  There are only a few open cells, either where the support wire is or where a bee has already hatched.  Even in the hatched cells the queen has already laid a new egg there!

In this photo you can really see the difference in the area where the bees have already hatched. 

The comb is a darker amber color instead of the golden color of new wax.  The comb will actually continue to darken over time as more and more generations of bees are raised inside those cells.  With each new bee born, it leaves behind a microscopic layer of the cocoon it spun while inside the cell.  The remaining capped brood near the hatched cells will no doubt be hatching in the next few days.

Continuing the inspection, I found two frames that had been connected by comb the bees decided to build between the two frames.

 As I pried them apart, the comb was torn open exposing all the honey that had been stored there.  The bees rapidly formed up along the new trough of honey and began gobbling it up!  They certainly wasted no time in recovering what they had worked so hard to store up!  Thankfully, I noticed this right away and I didn't flip this frame upside down.  Otherwise I would have been covered in honey and the bees would have been all over me  =)

Inspecting the last few frames I was treated to another gift.......the Green Queen has been spotted!

A bit easier to see her in this photo since I am pointing her out.  Looks like she has her head buried into an empty cell to see if she can lay an egg in there.  You can also see in many of the surrounding cells, some mature larva that look like they will be capped any day now.  My gut feeling is that the Green Queen is doing much better than the Black Queen.  The next few weeks should really be telling, especially if the population of Green Hive explodes while the White Hive only slowly increases or stays the same.

As with the White Hive, I completed the inspection and removed the empty feeder jar.

In closing, I was very happy to have spotted both queens.  Both hives appear to be doing well and as I often tell people, "I haven't managed to kill them all yet".

Thanks again for reading, and I'll leave you with this AWESOME picture that my wife took from one of the frames in Green Hive.  It has already become the desktop background on my computer.  I don't know how she captured the light and geometry so perfectly, but she really did a great job.  You can also witness a new bee chewing her way out of her cell here (just to the right of the center of the photo).  This photo really shows the miracle of God's creation!

First Hive Inspection: 05-08-2012

Weather Report:
High 60's, mostly cloudy and breezy

Finally the weather has cooperated and we were able to do our first inspection.  I swear every time I saw a decent weather forecast and planned on the inspection, the weather would turn to crap hours before!  Grrrrr.

So, why do an inspection anyway?  Well, we are looking for the general health and well being of the colony.  We want to see that the bees are gathering food (nectar and pollen).  We also want to see if they are raising baby bees (eggs, uncapped and capped larva).  The typical stages of a worker bee can be expressed by this simple formula (start at three and double the number): 3 + 6 + 12.  Three days as an egg, six days as a larva (the cell is capped over at nine days) and twelve days as a pupa before the baby bee emerges.  A total of twenty one days from the day the egg is laid until the new bee come out.  We are also checking for any pests, diseases or other problems that may arise.  What did we find?

Inspection Report:
White Hive:
After lighting the smoker and blowing a few puffs of smoke into the front entrance, I cracked open the lid and found that the feeder jar was empty.  I brought the little remaining sugar syrup that I had left and filled it about half way.  Time to make up some more syrup!  I removed the top box holding the feeder jar and blew some more smoke into the hole in the inner cover.  After waiting for a bit for the smoke to take effect, I removed the inner cover which the bees had lightly glued down.  It was a bit sticky but I was able to lift it without using the hive tool to pry it off.  What I found was a bunch of burr comb hanging down!

Looks like they have been busy!  Don't they know they aren't suppose to build comb like that?  =)  Basically bees work within "bee space" or about 3/8 of an inch.  It was discovered that when given more space than 3/8" the bees will fill it with wax comb.  If given less space than 3/8" they will fill in the gap with "bee glue" or otherwise called propolis.  For more information about this interesting phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive

After scraping this offending comb off of the inner cover, I started pulling the frames and taking a look.  The first five frames were mostly empty with only a few bees hanging out there.

On frame number six I found some stored pollen and nectar!  The nectar looks like glossy pools of water in the cells.  The cells filled with yellow and orange are pollen from different types of flowers.  Very cool!  It is interesting to see how they have outlined the rim of the plastic cells with a small bead of light yellow wax comb.  I am very happy to see this because I have read that sometimes bees will have trouble accepting fully drawn out plastic frames like this.  Glad to see that will not be a problem!

Frame number seven seemed to be more of the same but I'd really like to see some evidence that the queen has started laying eggs.  Frame number eight is looking the same too isn't it?

Can you spot the different kinds of bees in this close up photo?  There are three different kinds of bees.  The queen who lays all the eggs in the hive.  The workers who are all female and make up 90% or more of the total bees in the hive.  And finally the male bees, the drones.  I describe them as unemployed guys who sit on the couch all day drinking beer, yelling at the girls to bring him a sandwich and checking out the hot chicks all day long!  =)  The drones do no work, the female worker bees feed and clean them and the drone serves one purpose.......to mate with a virgin queen.  If the drone is successful, he dies as his insides are ripped out (I'm being polite when I say "insides").  If a drone fails to mate, and survives into the fall, he is eventually kicked out of the hive by his sisters to starve, freeze to death or get eaten by another critter.  Bummer.

On to frame nine....finally there they are!  Larva in the cells!  They look like shiny little grubs shaped like the letter "C" right in the middle of the frame.  I also see what might be drone brood.  Since a drone is physically larger than a worker bee, the cell that they are raised in has an enlarged, dome shaped cap on it that protrudes from the frame.  Because of this they are sometimes called "bullet brood".  Spot any drones yet?  The key is the eyes.  Since the drone depends on his eyesight to spot a flying queen, his eyes cover almost his entire head.

Finally, frame number ten.  Wow, they sure built some weird looking comb on this frame.  A large section of comb protruding with tunnels underneath it!  After looking at this frame and the one next to it, I can see that this frame is warped away from the neighboring frame causing extra space there.  And bees fill extra space with comb!  I might have thought about removing this comb but I see lots of eggs in it and I really don't want to loose all those baby bees.  They really have everything in this weird comb!  Brightly colored pollen, glistening nectar, larva, capped larva (pupa) and if you really zoom in,

you can see tiny things that look like grains of rice.  Those are eggs the queen has laid.  Since we know that an egg changes after three days into a larva, we know that the queen was at this spot sometime in the last few days.  It would be nice to spot the queen, but this is the next best thing.  I'm wondering if the bees were in the process of capping a few of those cells of larva, or if I somehow tore them open by accident.  The edges of the cells look a bit ragged and I'm not quite experienced enough to be able to distinguish some of these subtle differences.

I find it really beautiful all the many different colors of pollen they have stored on the left hand side of this frame.  Orange, yellow and almost a white color.  Which flowers are providing all this color?!

Green Hive:
Sadly the camera battery died just as we were closing up the white hive, so have no pictures of the inspection on green hive!  =(  The top feeder was empty when I opened it up but I counted almost thirty dead (drowned) bees in the feeder and mold had started to grown on the floats.  I am not happy with this feeder.  I decided it is coming off and I will replace it with an inverted jar feeder just like on the white hive.  The inverted jar is much easier to maintain and doesn't drown any bees.  I have the foundationless frames on this hive and the bees had comb drawn on four of the ten frames.  About 3/4, 1/2, 1/2, and 1/4 of those four frames were filled with comb.  I found it very difficult to see what was in the cells of those frames.  I did spot lots of nectar but there were so many bees covering the comb that I couldn't tell for sure if I saw capped honey or capped brood.  How do you other beekeepers get your bees to move out of the way so you can see this stuff?  Do you brush them off or use your fingers to move them aside?

All in all I was very happy to see that the bees were drawing out comb, storing pollen and nectar and making more bees!  I would have liked to have spotted the queens but I was happy spotting eggs in the white hive.  I'm hoping that in my next inspection that I will have a better technique and a camera with a fully charged battery!

Until next time, thanks for reading.

B-Day Has Arrived!

I received the call around 10:30 AM on Thursday, April 19th.....the bees will be ready for pickup at 2 PM!!  I left work right after lunch and headed home to pick up my wife for the short journey to St. Charles.  I placed two empty deep hive bodies in the bed of the truck strapped in with a bungee cord to house the packages and help shield them from the wind.  The weather was cool and there were signs of impending rain in the sky.  The 20+ minute drive seemed interminable and my nervousness and excitement continued to build the entire way there.  Finally, the GPS directed us onto Wahl road where T M Klein & Sons Honey was located.  We turned onto the gravel road and I began to wonder if my GPS had lead me astray when I saw a "Local Honey For Sale" sign.  That must be it!  We turned in and my fears were quickly abated as I saw row upon row of beehives sitting on the lot.  My wife and I hopped out of the truck and after waiting a short time for another person to pick up their packages of bees, we were directed into a large shed to get our bees.  Wow, I have never seen a package of bees in person before, let along hundreds of them stacked four feet high!!  A few straggler bees flew aimlessly around our heads as Mr. Klein picked up our two packages and carefully brushed off a few "cling on" bees.  They were loaded into the boxes in the back of the truck and off we went.

The journey home was uneventful.  Well, besides me being constantly worried if the day's cool temperatures (low 50's) and if the now lightly falling rain was giving "the girls" a deathly chill.  I know, it is a bit pathetic isn't it?  =)

We arrived home and promptly placed our two new packages of bees in the pole barn.  This is where they would recover from their journey as I made the final preparations to install the packages. 

First step, prepare the sugar syrup feed.  Since a package of bees has no resources stored up to feed themselves and with the weather poor and flowers few, it is a good idea to give them some artificial feed until they can feed themselves.  In the Spring time, a ratio of 1 pound of sugar to 1 pound of water is recommended.  So, I weighed out 5 pounds of water to match my 5 pounds of sugar and commenced boiling.  When the water reached a boil I shut off the heat and stirred in the sugar which quickly dissolved into the hot water.  I transferred the hot syrup to a 5 gallon bucket to allow it to cool.  Second step, wait for the syrup to cool and obsessively review in my mind over and over how I will install the packages.  Did I mention
waiting for the syrup to cool?  Come on! 

At this point, my wife and I were both getting fidgety and the time was approaching 6:30 PM.  It's go time!  Let's do this thing!  We suited up in our bee suits and grabbed the bucket of syrup and headed out to the pole barn.  I put some of the sugar syrup into a spray bottle, some into a mason jar with holes poked into the lid for the white hive and the rest of the syrup was destined for the top feeder in green hive.  Now we double check that we had all the tools we would need.  Hive tool, bee brush, spray bottle, bucket with syrup, a small nail to put a hole in the queen cage's candy plug and.......the bees!  We walked boldly out to the hives with our equipment and the first package of bees wondering if any of the neighbors were watching the "weirdos" in the white suits next door.  =)

I have watched many videos and read many methods to installing a package of bees and I decided that I would lightly spray the bees with sugar syrup, spray the frames with sugar syrup and do a slow release of the queen by poking a small hole in the exposed candy plug that would allow the worker bees to gradually eat through it over the next few days, thus freeing the queen.  Thank the good Lord that both installations went very smoothly with only one or two minor hiccups.  I started with green hive and removed the top cover, the top feeder and inner cover.  Then I removed about half of the frames and set them aside.

I sprayed the frames and then sprayed the bees lightly with the syrup (making them slightly sticky, less apt to fly and occupied with cleaning the sugar off of themselves).  I then used my hive tool to pry the staples out of the small piece of wood covering the top of the package.  The staples were in there really well and it took quite some time to dig them all out. 

We decided that it might be a good idea to have a pair of pliers around when we did the second package.  With the piece of wood removed, the can of feed within the package is now exposed and I pried it out.

 
I quickly replaced the piece of wood over the circular opening left by the can of syrup and set the can down on its side so I would not squish all the bees clinging to the underside.  I then pried up the staple holding the strap connected to the queen cage, lifted the wooden cover while holding the strap, and removed the queen cage.  You couldn't even see the cage with so many bees clinging to it!

I moved the queen cage over to the hive and gave it one quick shake, knocking the clinging bees off and quickly checked the cage to make sure the queen was alive.  Check!

 
Using my hive tool, I then pried out the small bit of cork in the candy end of the queen cage.  Then, fumbling around in my pocket I got ahold of the small nail I brought and cautiously poked a small hole in the now exposed candy plug, making sure not to skewer the queen inside! I then placed the queen cage between two frames near the side and tried pushing them together to hold the cage in place.  Of course, all the bees wanted to sit right between the two frames.  After some cajoling, I was able to move the bees and hang the queen cage where I wanted it.  I hooked the strap over an adjacent frame and called it good.  Back to the package of bees, I gave them a few more spritzes and readied myself for the "fireworks". I removed the wood cover and slammed the package onto the ground, knocking the bees into a cluster on the bottom.  I then upended the package, dumping them vigorously into the empty area of the hive body where I had removed the frames earlier.  The last few remaining bees I dumped directly on top of the queen cage.

I set the mostly empty package in front of the hive entrance and carefully placed the inner cover onto the hive.  After a few attempts with bees being in danger of getting squashed, I was finally able to lay the inner cover down.

 
The hive top feeder then went on and I filled each reservoir with sugar syrup.  The top cover went on and I was done!!  All of this in just over 5 minutes!  My wife bravely recorded the entire event with only a
jacket and veil.  She had bees landing on her hands during the process and she only freaked out a few times!  =)  For the second package installation, she nicely asked for a pair of gloves and that I close up her pant legs with some duct tape.  I think this made her much less nervous  =)  We then proceeded to march back to the pole barn and retrieve the second package of bees with the addition of a pair of pliers and the mason jar feeder that we had filled previously. 

The installation into the white hive went just as smoothly.  There was a bit of a surprise when I pried off the wooden cover to find that there was a large hole cut into the box that was then exposed!  I just placed the cover over that hole and continued the installation.  I have the black Honey Super Cell (HSC) frames in the white hive and that made it a bit easier to place the queen cage as opposed to the foundationless frames in the green hive.  I flipped the mason jar feeder upside down to let the initial squirt of syrup out and as the dripping stopped, I placed it upon two wooden shims I had made and then placed the top cover on.  Done!

All in all the installation went very well and the bees were very calm despite all the rough treatment.  We received zero stings and to my knowledge, did not squash any bees.  Our clean white bee suits were dotted with a few yellowish/orange spots so our biggest calamity during the installation was
getting hit with a bit of bee poo!  =)  In hindsight, with the temperatures as cool as it was, I may not have needed to spray them at all with the syrup before installing them.  Also, I didn't take notice if the candy plug was facing up or down when I hung the queen cages.  Looking back at the photos we took, I can see that the candy end was on the opposite side as the strap, so it would be facing down.  I've heard people say that it should be facing up so that if any of the attendants inside the cage die, they would then fall to the bottom of the cage allowing the queen an unblocked exit.  Not sure it really matters but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

My next task is to check the amount of syrup left in the feeders and check to see if the queens have been released.  I am currently targeting Tuesday for these tasks which means they will have been in the hive for about five full days.  I'm not sure if they will have gone through all that syrup in that amount of time but hopefully the queens will be release and laying eggs into some newly constructed wax comb.  The next update will be coming soon!  Thanks for reading.

Hives Deployed

After hours of meticulous painting and another few hours of artistic detail painting from my wife, the hives are complete!  I put a coat of primer and then two coats of paint on the outside of all the boxes, the bottom board and the telescoping cover.

My wife bought some stencils and put the flower and bee outlines on, filled them in with some color and finished it off with some dotted line bee trails.  I think she did a great job and the bees will have the best looking house in the neighborhood!!  Donchathink?

Before "empurtyment"

After

With the advice we received from our fellow beeks, we wanted to get the hives out early and empty.  The idea being that if any neighbor would react negatively they would probably do so as soon as they saw the hives.  It wouldn't prevent any issues but at least we might get an early warning of who might have concerns.  Well, we were hoping to have them out about a month early but I guess a week early is going to have to work.  I cut a strip of pine to exactly fit the entrance of each hive so no mice or other critters will get in before the bees arrive.

Speaking of bees arriving.......t minus 6 days and counting!!  April 19th is the day!  I still have a lot of work to do before they get here. 

Some of my tasks include:
  * Rototill the bee garden
  * build a bunch more frames
  * put starter strips in the remaining deep frames
  * melt the beeswax and paint it on the starter strips as well as the plastic Honey Super Cell frames
  * find a glass jar to use for a hive feeder (I have a top feeder for one hive but not the other)
  * buy some sugar so I can make some 1:1 syrup to feed the bees when they arrive

Construction and Education

It has been a busy winter as I ramp up to prepare for my new arrivals on April 18th!  I have continued to build the components to my second hive and I am almost finished.  I have completed the construction of a deep and two medium hive bodies,

Boxes Galore

forty deep frames (wired with the help of a wiring spool setup that I cobbled together)

Wiring Spool

as well as a screened bottom board and a top cover.

Screened Bottom Board

Top Cover

I still need to construct an inner cover, another medium hive body and forty medium frames.  Once that is finished, let the painting begin!

With the winter so unusually mild for Michigan and today's temperatures in the 70's it seems as though I should have started the bees about a week ago!  I still have to wait for an entire month yet!  Grrrrrr........  In the mean time, I have begun to get involved with the wider beekeeping community.  My wife and I attended our first meeting of the Saginaw Beekeepers Association (http://saginawbees.org/) on March 6th.  It was good to get in touch with other beekeepers from our area and to hear of how well most of the bees have overwintered.  One of the members gave a talk on drone laying queens and also brought in a frame that had American Foulbrood on it so we could all smell it.  I would almost compare the smell to wet dog but it was very distinct and I hope I don't smell it again!  After the meeting was over we also had the chance to meet a number of other beekeepers that lived only a mile or so from us.  I guess we aren't the only ones after all!  I'm sure all the members there will be a great resource in the future.  My wife is a social butterfly and she easily connected with a lot of the people there.  Another benefit of the meeting is that I think my wife now has been "bitten by the bug" and she is excited to become involved in beekeeping with me!  Bonus!

When it rains, it pours you know, so of course the Michigan Beekeepers Association's (http://www.michiganbees.org) Spring Conference was on the Saturday of the same week.  My friend Keith and I had attended last year and we went again this year.  The opening talk by Dr. Jim Tew (http://www.onetew.com) was about laying workers, how to identify and deal with that situation.  He is an excellent speaker and his presentation was very interesting as well as funny. 

Vendor Area

The break out sessions we attended were on Top Bar Beekeeping, Beekeeping and Insurance, and the final class was on Pests and Disease.  All in all a very worthwhile trip and to top it all off, my friend Keith (who hadn't really planned on being a beekeeper anytime soon) won a door prize.........a package of bees!!!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH! 

We have a winner!

I'm still laughing at the whole thing  =)

Bee Garden

So, if I'm going to be responsible for taking about 20,000 honeybees from their nice snug home, have them rudely and violently shaken into a small cage and stick them with some high and mighty Queen that they don't even know, then I suppose I should make a nice place for them to live, right?  The hive body itself is one thing, their surroundings is something else.  Thus, my latest hairbrained idea.......the bee garden. 

Now, I know the actual benefit from planting a bunch of bee-friendly flowers around the hives is probably about nil.  Since it takes about *two million flowers to make one pound of honey and I'm only guessing that the amount of pollen collected from these same flowers might be only slightly better.  The actual number of flowers I'll be planting isn't quite in the million range =)  Despite this, I'm hoping to at least have a visually pleasing place for the bees to live.  And I suppose at the very least, my wife should love the flowers.  I am no landscape architect to be sure but here is my concept:

I wanted to put the garden and hives in the back corner of my property so a triangle shape seemed fitting.  I plan on lining the edges with some cheap brick (about 150+ of them by my estimate) and on the two opposite corners I am going to stack the bricks up two or three levels to create a raised bed for some herbs.  Splitting the triangle in two will be a walking path.  Not sure if I will mulch it with some bark or maybe even some gravel.  At the right-angle corner will be a wider area where the hives will go.  The entrance of each hive will be facing generally South, so they should point to the back corner.  This should make it easy to approach the hives as well as enjoying the flowers without being directly in the flight path of the bees.  Originally I thought to have a bird bath in between the two hives but my wife had read that the bees like to "cleanse" as they leave the hive so it isn't a good idea to put their water source right in their flight path (or poo-path as the case may be).  So, as you can see in the drawing, I think I will put the bird bath in the middle of the walking path instead.  The edges of the path around the bird bath are shown as straight but I'm planning on bowing them outward a bit to follow a semi-circle around the bird bath. 

Planning on the general layout of the garden was the easy part.  Selecting the flowers, determining the area they would take up, the season in which they would bloom and how tall they would be was much more difficult.  A lot of research went into this and I bet the final result won't look quite like the drawing.  I was hoping to save some money by growing most of the flowers from seed.  Sadly, in the course of my studies, I found that the majority of flowers I selected were perennials that would not bloom the first year if I chose to grow them from seed.  The Coneflower and Zinnia are the ones I am going to try growing from seed.  Hopefully the color comibinations of the various flowers won't end up looking like someone scattered a random selection of paint cans in the back yard!  My wife will be the ultimate judge.

With all the planning done, I had to start the actual work.  I had read that the best time to start a new garden bed was in the late fall.  One method is to turn over all the grass/sod so the roots are facing the sky.  This is suppose to kill all the grass over the winter and come Spring you can till all the now dead grass into the soil and provide a nice infusion of decaying organic matter for the soil.  With my luck, I will end up with grass growing between every brick and under both hives!  All I can say is that I REALLY underestimated the amount of manual labor involved in turning a 30' x 30' area.  I thought I was in pretty good shape since I attend kung fu classes and play in volleyball leagues on a regular basis.  Well, it won't be the last time I was wrong about something. 

All in all it took me around 8 - 10 hours over the course of about a month.  I would work for an hour or so here and there when I got the chance.  I started at the long end and thankfully each row I turned over got shorter and shorter as I worked toward the narrow end.

At least I finished before the snow hit!  Well, one more thing off the bee checklist.  Next?  Order my packages of bees right after New Year's day!

*http://www.honey.com/nhb/about-honey/honey-and-bees/