Bee Keeping

Both hives are about half full of honey right now. I haven't harvested any honey this year and I would have expected far more honey production by now. There's been some good wax production in recent weeks and the amount of honey in each hive has been going up.

I'm continuing to feed them a mason jar full of sugar water every day and a pollen patty every two weeks. For the last month or so, I've had the mason jar set up on a table about 10 yards in front of the hives. Earlier I was feeding them from mason jars on top of the hives themselves. I now strongly suspect that that was contributing to a significant amount of robbing by other hives. I also added entrance reducers in early fall and I think that is helping with robbing.

I think both hives are reasonably healthy. It's hard to tell though. There are a lot of bees and both hives are still producing brood. They should be getting to the point where they will be dropping numbers for the winter though. I've got a bunch of hive beetles in one of the hives.

The Russian hive seems to be dropping numbers faster, but apparently, that's in keeping with the breed.

I recently read someone liken varroa mite infestations to IV drug users sharing dirty needles. The actions of the mites themselves don't necessarily cripple the colony, but they multiply the effects of ambient diseases.

I'm thinking about covering the hives in foam panels for extra insulation.

This is all fascinating stuff, thank you all for sharing.

In reading all of your posts it seems like bees are never really just healthy and surviving in the modern ecosystem. Could you estimate roughly how much a year you spend on keeping the bees alive? Have you ever calculated the cost / gallon of honey the bees make (not that you do this for profit)?

Skiptron wrote:

Have you ever calculated the cost / gallon of honey the bees make (not that you do this for profit)?

My PhD advisor keeps bees and has calculated this number. I don't recall the figure, but it is not an economical method of getting honey. (A fair warning to the beekeepers who may be curious to calculate it.)

ActualDragon wrote:
Skiptron wrote:

Have you ever calculated the cost / gallon of honey the bees make (not that you do this for profit)?

My PhD advisor keeps bees and has calculated this number. I don't recall the figure, but it is not an economical method of getting honey. (A fair warning to the beekeepers who may be curious to calculate it.)

Actual is right from my viewpoint. Seeing that my first hive died without making any to keep. It is certainly not economical. It's more a pleasure. Like most hobbies. Once they become thriving colonies it becomes different. But you have to get them to that point.

Skiptron wrote:

Could you estimate roughly how much a year you spend on keeping the bees alive? Have you ever calculated the cost / gallon of honey the bees make (not that you do this for profit)?

Aaaahh! No! I don't want to do that!

Seriously, though, I'm probably about $1500 all in on the hobby since I started last year. Most of that is bee boxes, frames and baby colonies.

This year, just on feeding the bees sugar and pollen patties, I've probably spent around $100. Not that much really. Less than we spend on dogs, cats, and chickens.

If I expanded up to eight colonies or so and sold hyperlocal artisanal honey to hipsters at farmers' markets, I could probably turn a small profit. First though, I need to get my colonies to survive the winter.

With respect to your comment about the ecosystem, I don't really think the modern ecosystem itself is so bad. It's just that there is an invasive pest (varroa) that has spread very rapidly, especially with migratory commercial beekeeping practices. And neither the bees nor the beekeeping community really has a handle on how to manage it.

Again, thank you for sharing. I'm not sure if it's because I can't (I'm allergic and my yard is the size of a postage stamp) or what, but the idea of bee keeping is very alluring. Like forbidden fruit or something.

One of these days I'll have land and science will defeat my allergy, then I'll tame my own bees. Until then I'm going to keep reading these updates and living vicariously through all of you.

"Skiptron wrote:

One of these days I'll have land and science will defeat my allergy, then I'll tame my own bees. Until then I'm going to keep reading these updates and living vicariously through all of you.

You'd be surprised how many keepers are allergic. My friend who helped me with the swarm earlier this year had his face swell to a basketball before my very eyes.

Igneus wrote:

You'd be surprised how many keepers are allergic. My friend who helped me with the swarm earlier this year had his face swell to a basketball before my very eyes.

I love honey, I really do, but this seems like a real unnecessary risk. I'm pretty partial to breathing.

Skiptron wrote:
Igneus wrote:

You'd be surprised how many keepers are allergic. My friend who helped me with the swarm earlier this year had his face swell to a basketball before my very eyes.

I love honey, I really do, but this seems like a real unnecessary risk. I'm pretty partial to breathing.

Do you REALLY love honey then, or the passion for bee-keeping? How do you even know it's worthwhile if you don't risk a gruesome death every second?

The fear and adrenaline is what keeps it exciting for you guys right?

I think I'll stick to supporting the apiarist hobby from afar and just buy honey at farmers markets and the like.

I'm not allergic, just irrationally terrified of bees. Mr. Dragon has to remind me of this fact regularly when I start thinking about keeping hives.

ActualDragon wrote:

I'm not allergic, just irrationally terrified of bees. Mr. Dragon has to remind me of this fact regularly when I start thinking about keeping hives. :-D

There's nothing wrong with a healthy survival instinct.

ActualDragon wrote:

I'm not allergic, just irrationally terrified of bees. Mr. Dragon has to remind me of this fact regularly when I start thinking about keeping hives. :-D

Well that's simple, make Mr. Dragon do the work. Also what better way than to get over your fears. If anyone is ever in the Gettysburg/York/Harrisburg PA area I will be more than glad to bring you to the hives.

Quick update: Everything is dead.

So with secondary feeding options in place and this unseasonable warmth in december I checked on my hives. They were already dead. With nothing but pollen in the hives. There was just too much rain this year. People everywhere are loosing hives. I already have new bees on order, two buckfast Nucs. I know I talked about Brother Adam a bit in my famous people of beekeeping. But seriously go read up about him and the buckfast bees. Its amazing the work he did.

The new season I will also house my bees on my property so I can better maintain the hives. I was unable to do so before but now that I have moved to a new house I can.

I'm very sorry. It's so frustrating to invest so much emotional energy in something and just have it wither and fail.

Bummer.

Yep. We had one hive survive (out of five), but it was a terrible year. The Tennessee State Apiarist told me 85% of hives were lost State-wide this year. We're nearly 20 inches above our average rainfall.

How did the rain contribute to the hives dying?

1Dgaf wrote:

How did the rain contribute to the hives dying?

I'm interested in a knowledgeable answer about this too.

1Dgaf wrote:

How did the rain contribute to the hives dying?

Great question!

There are several issues that have arisen due to the abundance of rain. First and foremost are the agricultural issues. While moderate rain is great for plants, the abundance we had caused a lot of plant drowning. So certain natural pollen and nectar sources (alfalfa) just were never around in that phase of plant life. Another issue is for plants that did get to that point their "season" was cut drastically short. They don't get the sunlight they need and all the other junk a botanist was talking about at our meetings and I just couldnt follow. In a normal year you can count on certain nectar flows. One in mid spring when all the flowers are blooming hay fever is in sever pitch and it lasts about 3 weeks of heavy flow. This year our flow lasted maybe one. Mid summer bloom and early fall harvest flowering was very similar.

Another issue is cloud cover. Bees navigate using the sun's rays. Literally the see sun beams! Ok so they see and navigate using natural ultraviolet light. That is why on cloudy days they are easily agitated and you try to not to be in the hive those days, they are half blind.

The last thing I am currently thinking of is the beekeeper saying, "cold doesn't kill bees, moisture does." Bees can handle the cold they ball up and vibrate. What they can't handle is being wet. Plus wet hives breed fungus, pests, and can cause the bees to be wet and freeze.

The last issue isn't as much of a factor till winter actually sets in as a healthy hive will keep things sterile and clean inside the hive. The main issues are summarized in mind to:
1: Rain results in a limited plant production
2: Limited availability to gather what is available.

Others may have some good insight to this as well.

In the case of Mid-Tennessee, it was a mixture of both. From early March through May it was either raining or at/below freezing basically every day. Basically, no forageable days, and perhaps more than anything no good days to take safe mating flights!

I didn't even think of the havoc it would bring to mating flights.

Talked to my keeper friend Jim the other day. He too used the unseasonably warm weather to check his 4 or 5 hives. All dead. Rough bee season indeed.

Thanks for the explanation.

I think mine are doing okay. But, last year's hive didn't finally succumb until a cold snap in late February.

We've had a mild winter so far. Is this easier on the bees or harder? They aren't hibernating. They're actively flying on every sunny day. But, apparently this means that, relative to hibernating bees, they're burning lots of energy in search of food sources that aren't there. Given that, I just decided to start feeding again.

We had a big storm this weekend. This morning, both hives had pushed out a lot of dead bees. The Italian hive, in particular, seems to have gotten rid of a bunch of drones and drone brood. It's kind of hard to tell from the pile of decaying bee matter in front of the hive. But, the two hives managed to drink up a couple of mason jars full of sugar water today.

A couple of weeks ago, seeing as how they were still producing brood and flying, I decided to do another oxalic acid (anti mite) treatment. I was worried that the treatment in conjunction with the cold weather might be especially harmful. Near as I can tell though, they seem to be handling it just fine.

I feel like I need another 10-30 years of experience to know what I'm doing. I just don't have the knowledge of their rhythms of life and behaviors to tell the difference between normal winter activity and distress.

polq37 wrote:

I feel like I need another 10-30 years of experience to know what I'm doing. I just don't have the knowledge of their rhythms of life and behaviors to tell the difference between normal winter activity and distress.

This here is probably the most accurate description of beekeeping in this forum.

Keeping season is around the corner! Who else is excited? I am looking forward to being able to have my hives on my property and being able to get into them in more regular intervals.

Polq, everything looking good?

Igneus wrote:

Keeping season is around the corner! Who else is excited? I am looking forward to being able to have my hives on my property and being able to get into them in more regular intervals.

Polq, everything looking good?

Yeah, amazingly enough, everything is actually looking good! Checked on the hives yesterday and there were plenty of bees in both hives. It was around this time last year that the one hive I had then was in the final stages of its death spiral. I was a little worried about the Italian hive because I had done an oxalic acid treatment in mid winter and it seemed to shut down all brood production for the duration of the treatment. But, it's been 21 days since I pulled the acid towels out of the hive and there was a whole bunch of new brood visible. Meanwhile, the Siberian gene line hive seems to tolerate the acid treatments without changing behavior and has been producing brood all winter.

We're going through a small cold snap here in Northern California, with morning temperatures in the mid to low 30s and wet weather last week and this week. But, there seems to be plenty of bees and brood and supplies in the hives with the promise of an early spring hitting soon.

If things keep going well, I'm thinking of trying to do a split in late March to produce a third hive.

On extra cold wet days, both hives seem to kill and expel a bunch of drones and half formed drone brood.

Bought more boxes and frames. I'm hoping for a good honey harvest in the next few months.

Based on my experience this year, I'm planning on doing an oxalic acid towel treatment for about 1 month out of every four going forward as well as providing supplemental pollen patty feed every 2-3 weeks through winter.

polq how do you force a split from your hive? As I (Not A Beekeeper) understand it the natural process is when they get real full they produce another queen and a bunch of the bees and this second queen fly off and go find another place to live.

How do you stimulate them to make a spare queen and then convince them to move to the new house?

Skiptron wrote:

polq how do you force a split from your hive? As I (Not A Beekeeper) understand it the natural process is when they get real full they produce another queen and a bunch of the bees and this second queen fly off and go find another place to live.

How do you stimulate them to make a spare queen and then convince them to move to the new house?

Well, first of all, I've never done it before and I don't really know what I'm doing.

With my credentials thus established, my plan is do a process called a "walk away split." The standard American agricultural and hobby hive consists of multiple wooden boxes stacked atop each other. These boxes have no tops or bottoms. They're made of thick, strong wood with very strong corner joints - with no structural bracing, they'd easily collapse if they weren't built this way. There's a groove carved into two sides of each box and the frames hang in each box like hanging file folders. The bees build their combs on the frames, which are each around an inch wide. Because of instinct and biology, bees use the lowermost box for raising brood and storing protein (pollen). They use the upper boxes for storing carbohydrate (honey).

So, I'm going to take apart one of the hives to get to the bottom box. Then, I'm going to take about half the frames (5) in that box and I'm going to put them in a new box. These frames will have a bunch of brood and will be covered in hundreds of bees. Then, I'm going to fill up the empty spaces in each box with empty frames (or maybe honey filled frames, I'm not sure about that point). Then, I'll seal up both boxes so that the bees have ventilation but can't get out. One of these boxes will have a queen and one won't. Given my success at spotting queens, I won't have any idea which new hive will have the queen.

Now, what's supposed to happen is that the bees in the sealed queenless box should, after a few days, pheremonally reorient themselves into an independent hive that's missing a queen. They'll use the available brood to raise a new queen. I'll unseal the hives. The new queen will go on her mating flight, come back, and start laying eggs. And voila, one hive becomes two.

I will, of course, read a bunch of beekeeping blogs before hand, each of which will give different variations and recommendations on this procedure.