Beekeepers Friend

I said that the next post would be about the extraction, but I have reneged. I haven’t had the opportunity to do so. I have been busy with more pressing matters. One of them being getting an observation hive ready to show.

I have had the same bees in the hive for over 6 weeks now. the two frames that was in it became two frames of brood and no place for honey. When the top frame was removed, I accidentally broke the glass and I had to place all the bees in a nuc box while I got another glass panel cut to fit. I took the original bottom frame and placed it back in the bottom section of the observation hive and picked up another frame of partially pulled comb and put it in the top section.  I looked for the original marked queen and concluded that she probably got killed when the glass broke.

I used the observation hive without the queen for 3 more days. I decided that the bees would take to another laying queen real quick and found one in one of the swarm hives that I had stashed in my back yard. She had 4 frames of brood and eggs, so I figured that there were enough new larva that the bees in the swarm nuc could make another queen.

I picked the queen up to mark her and just as I got the paint stick close to her thorax, my thumb holding her twitched and flipped her into some high grass and weeds. I just plain lost the queen and had to show the observation hive once more without a queen. That was Saturday. Now in the morning I will look for another queen in another nuc and try to introduce her into the observation hive one more time. If I succeed, then all will be well. If I don’t then I will have to put the two frames in a nuc and get a frame of brood and larva to place in the nuc to maybe entice the bees to make a new queen.

This is what you will probably face in the future if you work with the bees long enough.  I also have to try to extract tomorrow and if that goes as planned, then I will post the results hopefully in the next post.

Keep on reading books, watching bee videos, and cleaning equipment. Until the next post, just enjoy your bees and honey.

My wife has now advanced in her rehab enough to drive one block to take care of some business for our son, then drive one block back to the house. She told me to go ahead on and take care of my bees.  Thank you, Dearest.

I had a young beekeeper to volunteer to help my pull honey. He has the strength and a good back so naturally I said, “Meet me at my house at 6:00 in the morning.

I had good hopes of pulling at least 10 supers from 12 hives today. Boy was I ever wrong. The first apiary had two strong colonies when I saw them one month ago. Well, let me tell you that I was very disappointed to fine one colony had been slimmed with Small Hive Beetle larva poop. The other one had brood in the honey super, so we just pulled a frame of honey up into the new super, scored the caps to spill honey down to the bees, and placed it on top of the brooded honey super. Letting the honey run down to the bees lets them know there is another level to their hive.

The next apiary had four colonies. Three had brood in the honey supers. Had to place another super with scored honey frame (using hive tool, cut into caps to let honey drip down so the bee will know that there is more room upstairs) on those. The other one was still cross combed. Last Winter, I had put the cross combed super on the bottom and a honey super on the top.  About five months ago, I found brood in the honey super and I proceeded to put the honey super on the bottom and a deep super on the top so the bees could move up. I added a queen excluder to the top of the brood box and placed the cross combed super above that. Today, we found the bees had skipped the brood box and went into the cross comb again. I think that the queen never got out of that super. Anyway, the other three didn’t have capped honey, they had brood in the honey super. Rats! I struck out again. Put empty supers on those.

Apiary number 3 had one colony. Capped honey! Wonderful. Get the smoker quick! OH NO! It started to rain, HARD! We closed up the hive and jumped into the truck and decided that we were through for the day. Bombed out again. Oh well, that is the life of a beekeeper.

We started home. About 25 miles down the road, we hit sunshine. Hey! Maybe we can go to the 4th apiary. When we got there, we were able to pull one super of capped honey. Great! Get the Bee Blower. This is a leaf blower that I use to blow the bees out of the super and from between the frames. I don’t have any trees, so I just renamed it the Bee Blower.

Went to the next apiary and it had one colony and I found that 2 of my five nucs had survived. We added a nuc deep to each and said “Multiply girls”. The colony in the full hive was weak when I left it a month ago. It had a deep brood box and two supers of babies. I have to go back and probably divide it into three colonies. That will be later. No honey, but I am not mad.

The final apiary had four colonies and one of those was slimmed. Now I have three colonies, but I got five supers of capped honey. I am very happy. On the way home, we decided to visit my helper’s apiary. He had a bear visit him and out of the six  colonies, only one was torn into and he lost some honey.

We went through all of his hives and found two that didn’t have queens. We pulled two frames of brood from one of the other hives and placed one in each of the queenless colonies and are hoping the bees will make queen cells. If not, then he will have to purchase a couple of queens real soon. If not able to do so, then he will have to combine those 2 colonies with two queenright ones. That way he will not lose his bees.

We unloaded the honey from my hives into the honey house —-now I will continue the extraction in the next post. Good night.

I had a young man come by yesterday to buy a nuc of bees. He is a novice and is very excited to get started in the bee business. He wants a hobby right now and getting his honey for free doesn’t hurt either. Little does he know that nothing is free. ha ha. He will have to work for it, but it will be pleasant work.

I told him that I sold 20 bees for a buck apiece the day before and he was amazed that I got paid for each bee. I really don’t know if I am high or low on the money, but if a person wants them at the quoted price, then he will pay. Also, the bees will die when they are used to sting the recipient and I lose the honey they could have made. So I think I got a fair price for them.

I also told the young man that you can sale everything in the hive and make money. You just have to read and get to know another beekeeper who is willing to share his knowledge about those things and you can make money.

This young beekeeper had a box made of a material that I am not familiar with. I told him instead of buying two nucs, just experiment with one until we know if the treated material will be accepted by the bees. That way if it dies, he will lose only the price on one colony. If the bees accepts the box, then he can get some more nucs to go in his other boxes made of the same material. I am sure that we will stay in contact and he will be tapping on my experience to further his education.

Today, I had the time to go to a friends house where I had taken some boxes to be cleaned. Together, we cleaned about 14 supers and deeps. Most of the supers had some good comb from last year. Some of the supers had questionable combs. These I will use as an experiment. I will see if the bees will repair and add to the combs and store honey in them. I will know in about a month. I have to have some of the supers to replace the honey supers that I am to pull in two days.

I have a young beekeeper that wants to help me pull honey in exchange for me helping him extract his honey using my extractor. He will also get an education. This will be his first time to extract. I will try to give a more detailed account in a later post.

Right now, I am planning how to visit all my apiaries, pull honey, use powdered sugar to dust each colony, and extract all the honey in one day while I still have a helper. That will still be a long day even with the help.

I will be getting ready to build screened bottom boards in the very near future so that all my hives will be sitting on screen. Then I will be making new top boards to replace the bad ones I am using now. I will also be making screened bottom board for my nucs.

I just learned the other day that we should be using screened tops for the colonies that are being moved to releave some of the stress of colonies that are being transported to an other location. That will be different than when I first learned how to move bees. We just had solid top at that time. Always learning something. Ain’t that good. If we learn something new each day, then we are growing. Otherwise, we get in a rut and stagnate in our tracks.

The first Spring honey flow is over and the specialty honeys are now. More work involved, but it is worth it. The next Florida State Beekeepers Association midyear meeting will be Saturday June 13, 2009 at the Polk County Extension Office in Bartow. For information contact [email protected] or call 863-644-6944. Plan to attend as there will be a lot of information that you just might not have.

I have had some situations to appear in my way to keep me out of the apiary. As my wife has been home from the hospital about two months now and she is getting self sufficient, I am able to go to the grocery store, run errands, and help some beekeepers that I am mentoring.  I am still working on my 08 income tax data. My son and daughter-in-law got a friend’s family to come over and clean 3 1/2 rooms of my house: kitchen, dining room, living room, and foyer. The shop was also rearranged so the honey equipment and tools, that I had parked in the house, could be moved out there. I now cannot find anything of honey nature or kitchen pots and pans, dishes, and food. I will find all that stuff eventually.

For the last two weeks, I have given my “bee talk” three times and have been overseeing the sale of a beekeeper’s equipment. He has given up the life of beekeeping for health reasons. I spent a week over there finding all the equipment in hidden places, meeting with buyers, and getting equipment ready for the burn pile. I have one more day over there and that will be completed.

I have three more appointments to talk bees in the next 10 days. After all that, I can start cleaning some supers so I can pull honey and extract. I am only about three weeks later this year than last year for my first honey run. However, this year, I didn’t go to Tupelo, so I don’t have that extraction to schedule. I might have some Gallberry in the top super on some of my hives. I will let you know after I extract.

I have a friend that volunteered to help me clean my supers. All I have to do is take them to his house. I can do that for the help. It is much more fun when you have someone to talk to while cleaning box after box after box after box.

I have two young men volunteer to help me pull honey and possibly they will stay for the extraction process. One of them hasn’t extracted yet for his first time, and the other doesn’t even have his wooden ware to put together yet. I will get to tell them what to do and show them what I am talking about. That is going to be the Life Of Riley.

As soon as the honey flow is over, you need to check your brood boxes and bottom boards. When the honey has been pulled, that is the time you can change out the bad brood boxes for new ones. Then you can put on an empty super so the bees will have a place to work.

Good luck until next time.

To bring you up to date for this post, you should refresh your memory about my big bees. Now here is the rest of the story.

I was at Dadant and Sons in High Springs, Florida picking up some bee supplies when the Head Lab Technician for the Gainesville University of Florida lab walked in. I asked him why did he need more bees to test? He said that when he got the first report, the only thing he could visualize was that the tech tested some drones instead of workers. After the tech scathingly told him that she knew the difference between drones and workers, he decided that he needed to run his own test. That was the reason for the second batch of test bees.

He told me that these bees were the largest bees to come through the Gainesville lab. I had the record for the largest bees and that they were free of Varroa Mites but they had plenty of Trachea Mites. He wanted to know what I did to the bees to develop such large ones. I have no idea why they developed as large as they did. I do know that I goofed up when I decided to requeen in the fall. I forgot about those bees when I requeened all of the colonies. I should have kept them to see if it was a genetic evolved phenomenon and if I could have grafted from them to make all my bees bigger.

However, as it was I requeened and lost the chance to experiment. When you get something like this that is not detrimental, try to find out why and see if you can expand on it. Maybe my drones are carriers of this condition and will bring it back by way of new vergin queens. Only time will tell.

Did you know there are three main top boards (TB) and numerous other top boards that beekeepers use? You would think that a top board is a top board, but it is not.

The first is the standard Telescoping TB. It is used in conjunction with an inner cover. The reason is, if you used the TB without an inner cover, the bees would use propolus to glue it to the top of the hive. The bees don’t like wind to be blowing and whistling through their hive (Hive = house). The bees glue most openings closed if the openings are 1/4″ or less. If the openings are 3/8″ or more then they will use it as an entryway. If you use an inner cover then the bees will glue that down and not worry about the TB.

The inner cover has a raised band of flat wood about 3/8” around the outside edge so in the Summer, it will be on the bottom side so the board will sit high on the hive. In the Winter, it is flipped over so there would be a dead air space in the winter for added insulation. It usually has an oval hole in the center to accomidate a bee escape and would aid in moving hot moist air out in the atmosphere.

Second type of TB is the migretory board. It has cleats on both ends of the board so when you are moving the colony of bees, it will not slide off the hive. It makes for a tight fit when you place 2 or more hives side by side.

The third type of TB is a pollinating top. It has a cleat on the underside of the front end and a cleat on the topside of the rear end. This allows the beekeeper to flip it upside down and still be the same. That way when the bees propolize the bottom side of the top board, you could flip it and it would be rain proofed. Probably not the correct answer, but an explanation non-the-less.

Then you can just put a piece of plywood on the top of the hive or a piece of rubber or plastic to do the same job. Some beekeepers use a split top, hinged with cloth or rubber innertube so they can work one side of the hive without exposing all of the top at the same time.

Over the last 4 days, I have boxed 3 swarms and brought home 2 of them from one hive that I have in a lady’s garden in her back yard. She has some small dogs so she has fenced the garden to keep them out. I removed 3 frames of brood from some hives and placed one in each of the 3 swarm boxes to take with me. Bee seem to accept a box if it has some babies in it. Since I didn’t have any wax comb, I just used framed foundation and the one frame of brood.

One of the swarms was in a bush across the fence in a neighbor’s yard. The second was on the wire fence surrounding the garden. And the last one in an apple tree in the opposite corner of the garden. The first two were easy and quick to box. On one, I just opened the box directly under the limb of the bush and shook the bees into the box, put the top on and let the bees call the rest to the new home. The second, I just placed the frame with the brood next to the swarm and they immediately transferred to the comb and I put the frame in the box. I then used an empty frame on the inside of the fence for a back stop  and knocked the bees off the fence onto the doorstep of the hive and they started to walk right in, calling the rest as they went.

The last one in the tree was the rough one. I couldn’t get the queen off the limb. It was a trunk limb and I used a pole bucket to try to dislodge the ball. I had bumped the limb about 2o times and got only a handful at a time. Half the bees were knocked into the air and onto the ground. The bees in the bucket were dumped into the receiving brood box and in front of the doorway. The rest just flew back into the tree. I had put a frame of brood (open and capped) in the brood box with the hopes that the bees would decide to stay and cover the brood and call the rest down. However, the bees had other plans.

If I could have gotten the queen, then I think that all would have been fine. But as it was, the bees decided that they wanted to stay with the queen and only a pound or two stayed in the box. I left the bees thinking I would go back that night to pick up a box of bees, but it got cold that night and I decided to wait till the next warm day.

When I got back, 2 days later, the bees were not in the tree and I looked into the box and the brood was dead and nobody at home. I think that if I had someway to place a kleenex of Fletcher’s Bee Quick in the tree, then I might have gotten them to go into the box. Since I did not have that option, I think the  in the tree called the ones in the box back to the tree and then they all left together. Unless — the queen did not swarm with the main cloud and the bees decided to go back to the parent hive that was in the garden where the bee tree was. If that was the case, then I still have all my bees.

I am thinking of getting a pole and a pair of spring actuated needle nose pliers. By  taping them to the pole and making a pulley of some sort with a small diameter rope, I will have just the thing I need to reach up and place a kleenex, napkin, or rag in the tree above the bees to help encourage them to leave the swarm ball area. What do you think? Will it work?

The other  swarms are happily in my back yard working to establish a home and get things in order. I don’t expect to make any honey this year from them. I just hope they can store enough honey for the winter pantry.

I will get my camera ready and take some pictures the next time so you can see the beauty of the swarm balls. They really do look neat.

In the meantime, get your swarm equipment together and when you get ready to go on a swarm call, you just load up all in that pile. It is easier to have all your equipment in one place and not have to worry about leaving something behind.

I am having a really having a rough time juggling all my different jobs trying to do too many things at once. We, my wife and me, finally decided to file for an extension on the April 15th IRS deadline. The first time in the 41 years we have been married. That is one thing out of the way now. Another is we have informational mail that is lost somewhere in the mess on the kitchen table, office desk and floor, and on the coffee table in the living room. I have not been a good house keeper since my wife was incapacitated in December.

I now have two yards at the house that needs grooming. The one in the back of the house has all my extra supers, tops, bottoms, queen excluders and 5 swarms of bees to feed until I can take them to the country. The boxes still need to be cleaned, but I have to cut the weeds down first just so I can get to them. I have someone who is willing to help clean if I can get the boxes to him.

I am also working on a swarm that I couldn’t get out of an apple tree. They just kept flying back up there every time I shook then into my pole bucket and emptied into the  hive box. I feel that I didn’t even shake the queen. I need to invent something that I can use to hang a napkin with Bee Quick up there to drive them off the limb. The weather was cold last night and today so I feel that maybe I will have better luck tomorrow.

I also have several supers of honey to remove from some hives that belong to another beekeeper. I let her use mine until she could get some of her own. Now she has them and I am not ready to pull honey yet, but she needs to get hers on to give the bees a chance to put up winter stores. No rest for the weary.

I also have to go to the store to buy groceries and I am not ready to let my wife stay by herself for too long at a time. It usually takes me 2 – 4 hours to go to the store, shop, stand in line, and drive home.

If you don’t have this kind of juggling act, please let me know your secret. Now I guess that I have ruined your evening, so I will just close and bring you up to date later. Good night.

As some of you know, my wife was in the hospital for over 2 months with Pancreatitus. She had 2 months of hospital food and/or IV’s during which she also underwent 2 surgeries back to back within 24 hours of each other to remove her pancreas and to check to see if all the infection was removed. She has been home for 3 weeks now. Prior to that we spent some time in Orlando, FL with our son when he graduated RN training. So it has been over 3 months since I have seen my bees. All this is said to bring you up to snuff to understand the next few paragraphs.

From the middle of December, I have been predisposed and could not check my bees. I have 7 apiaries – of which 6 have bees in them. December and January is the time to make sure the bees have enough food, both honey and pollen, to carry them into the Spring Flow in February and March. I did get to check them the last of February as my wife was well enough and strong enough to get out of bed and, by using the walker, go to the bathroom by herself. I left snacks, water, and drinks plus her medicines on her bedside table to hold her for the six hours I was gone with a friend to check all my hives. She also had instructions to not get out of bed except to go to the bathroom. I left a cordless telephone in case she needed some help from the neighbor across the street.

We checked the hives by looking in the brood box and checking for eggs, sealed brood, and pollen. Then we  combined all the honey into one super on each of the hives. Some of the hives had 2 supers because of the one full capped super and an empty one for them to put up any nectar they found when they could fly.We then made sure that all the hives had an empty super because of the upcoming Spring honey flow. I now number 12 hives and 3 nucs.

Since then, I have had several teaching engagements at the local schools for prekindergarten classes, Leisure Learning Club (40 years and older), and  I have chaired a workshop for one of the bee associations I belong to. This past Saturday, I got to attend another workshop and I even got to listen to the speakers. I was not on any committee, a speaker, or a volunteer. I enjoyed myself to the fullest.

My wife did not require any outside help and when I called her several times that day, she assured me that she was okay. It was a rest as much as anything for me as I have been with her almost constantly for 3  plus months.

Now that she is doing more for herself, I now can get back into the bee business. Here is a list if what I have to do to get caught up:

Clean wooden ware (supers especially), re foundation using plastic inserts, paint hive bodies, mow grass in my apiaries, clean and use queen excluders until the first super is capped, clean extracting equipment, clean and mow my home yards, clean the swimming pool and get it ready for the warm weather swimming, and get my trailer refitted to place about 16 hives on it to make it a portable apiary for specialty honeys i.e. Gallberry, Tupelo, Palmetto, etc.

Where to start? All of it needs to be done.  When you get behind, this is what it looks like. I hope you never have to be in the shape that I have myself in.

Check the hives to be sure you have enough supers on them. That will be one way to help keep them from swarming. I’ll talk more on swarm prevention in a later post. That’s all for now. I have to fix something for my wife and me to eat.

Now that you have your bees busy gathering nectar and pollen and you have your boxes cleaned and painted, are you thinking about the extraction process? You’re not?!! Well, let me share some thoughts with you.

Is your extractor clean? You did clean it when you finished last year, didn’t you? Whew! For a moment I thought you were going to say no. But let me add that just because it was clean then, doesn’t mean it is still clean. All buildings and especially the honey house will get bugs in there, you will track dirt and sand in when you bring stuff in during the Winter. Even if you have a cover on the extractor, dust will settle in.

Just as the camping equipment, pots and pans, and dishes will gather unwanted stuff between trips, your extracting equipment will also gather stuff. You clean your cooking equipment before you use them for this first camping meal, you need to clean the extracting equipment with at least Hot Water before you start extracting your new honey. The sump tank, pump, and piping should also be cleaned and/or rinsed also. Clean your buckets that have been sitting up for several months. Just as you think you are finished, you might want to think of your bears, pints, quarts, and gallon jugs also.

Remember, you are getting your honey ready to sell to the consumer and you would like to furnish to them, the product in the same condition as you would expect the grocery store to furnish it to you. Rule of Thumb – if you would not eat it in that condition, then don’t offer it to you customers. A selling point: “If I sneeze in my hand, then I wash my hands with soap and water before I pick up another container to be filled.”

If you can eat off your honey house floor, then by all means scrape that spilled honey up and bottle it, then place it on your breakfast table.

Take care of your customers, they are the reason for your honey sales.