Bee Keeping

Asterith wrote:

My daughter says "wow, that is awesome!"

That makes me happy. Thank you, and your daughter.

I have 2 daughters, 2yr &1yr. Neither of them are afraid of the bees and come right up to the hive as I'm working. Now my 4yr old boy won't go near them.

All the latest photo posts have made me really happy, Igneus. Keep those up and dropping knowledge bombs.

How do you extract the honey if the brood and the honey aren't segregated?

BushPilot wrote:

How do you extract the honey if the brood and the honey aren't segregated?

My understanding is that bees naturally segregate brood and honey. Brood is at the center of the living space. Honey is stored more toward the periphery. There will usually be a couple inch gap between brood cells and honey cells.

With Langstroth hives, some keepers use a mesh screen called a queen excluder to segregate the brood boxes from the honey production boxes.

I checked on my hive yesterday and saw lots of good comb formation in the center frames and some capped brood cells. Capped brood should mean that the queen has been successfully laying eggs, that the workers have raised them past the larval stage, and that the larvae are now in their hexagonal 'cocoons', transitioning into adult bees. In 10 days or so, the first young bees should be emerging from their cells. By then, I think more and more of the bees from the original package will be closing in on the end of their lifespans.

I'm a little worried that I'm screwing up 'bee space' and that I've left over large gaps between some of the frames, which the bees are filling up with excess comb. I didn't want to start messing with the core of the hive, so I left it alone.

Polq is right. Now my queen hasn't hit a good brood pattern yet mostly because they haven't been building fast enough. As the season gets near it's end the last few come will all be honey as he said, naturally.

So summer is in full swing as far as my schedule goes. Means I haven't gotten the chance to take pictures and update. Well I was able to get into the hive quickly a few times the last couple weeks. Once was over Memorial weekend. Where in about 30 seconds I was stung on my left hand right on my thumb knuckle. Let me tell you, that is an awful place to get stung. I had more swelling then normal for a sting, and I couldn't grab anything with my left hand for 3 days.

While I was in the Hive I noticed something odd, queen cups. Now I am worried my hive is going to swarm, as they shouldn't because they are not established. Maybe they want to replace the queen. I really dont know or understand exactly what is happening, but time will tell.

Got into the hive last Friday and found a huge patch of empty cells in the central frame, where two weeks earlier there had been a small patch of capped brood. I interpreted this to mean that the first generation of bees had hatched and that there were now hundreds of new bees in the hive. I think this means that the colony is now viably self sustaining!

The frames to either side of the center frame were completely full of capped brood. The central frames are very heavy with wax and brood, but the colony still hasn't drawn wax on the outermost frames.

The colony continues to suck down huge amounts of sugar water.

Still haven't gotten stung yet.

This sounds like a Civ game!

Any updates? I'd love to hear how the hives are progressing.

After about six weeks of heavy feeding with sugar water, I had a lot of bees. There was a huge beard in front of the hive on hot evenings. A couple of weeks later, I was able to confirm that the bees had filled out all of their comb. So, I went out and bought a queen excluder (a mesh grate that prevents the queen from moving through it, but allows worker bees) and a medium sized langstroth box for them to fill with honey. A week ago in part two of this story, I found out that the bees have not produced any wax or honey in the honey box. I think they really didn't like the queen excluder.

So, a week ago, I'm driving home and I see a large crowd of insects buzzing around a bush by a neighbor's mailbox. I check on it and find a softball sized cluster of honey bees. When hives get too crowded, bees swarm; a portion of the hive and a queen leave the hive to go try to find a new home. Swarms are usually quite gentle, but they can be alarming to people who don't know about bees. My guess is that my hive, which I think has an unusually productive queen, has swarmed. I put on my bee suit, got some clippers, clipped the branches holding the swarm, and carried the swarm home. I pulled the honey super off the first hive, fashioned a top and bottom cover out of some scrap lumber, and set the whole thing up on a couple of cinder blocks. Then I shook the swarm into the new hive, put the feeder on top, and closed it up.

Now, I'm just hoping that the second hive takes hold. Apparently, July swarms don't usually survive, but I think that there may be a young and very productive queen in there. I'm worried that I might have injured her in the transfer. It was all kind of an extemporaneous, seat-of-the-pants kind of thing. In a couple of weeks, I should be able to see if the new hive is producing brood.

Note to those who are considering this as a hobby and looking at standard starter kits: seriously think about medium or smaller langstroth hive boxes instead of deeps. I read a lot of recommendations against deeps and I didn't take them very seriously. I consider myself reasonably physically capable, but the first time I tried to move a fully laden deep I realized just how awkward and really heavy it was. I could move it, but I didn't have any confidence that I could move it smoothly and without smashing a bazillion bees.

So cool!!!

polq37 wrote:

Note to those who are considering this as a hobby and looking at standard starter kits: seriously think about medium or smaller langstroth hive boxes instead of deeps. I read a lot of recommendations against deeps and I didn't take them very seriously. I consider myself reasonably physically capable, but the first time I tried to move a fully laden deep I realized just how awkward and really heavy it was. I could move it, but I didn't have any confidence that I could move it smoothly and without smashing a bazillion bees.

I worked as grunt labour at a honey farm for a couple of years out of high school, and my job was at least 80% moving Langstroth boxes full of honey. It remains the hardest, most exhausting work I've ever done in my life. After moving a few thousand of them you get the technique and it gets fluid (but never quite easy), but the first few weeks were pretty rough and I angered a good many bees.

We would also routinely destroy unhatched swarm cells when we found them, though it didn't seem to be that common unless we got behind and the colonies were overflowing with honey.

I loved collecting swarms and bringing them in. They're usually in someone's yard who thinks you're a superhero for shaking them out of a tree. There's also rarely an opportunity to observe such a calm ball of bees.

Great update. I haven't updated in a while as there wasn't to much to say. Heat of the summer is kinda rough on the bees unless you constantly feed. It is generally referred to as a dearth.

Oh boy was I in the middle of it. No new nectar coming in. My hive ate everything they had stored and the Queen stopped laying. So my full hive of bees dwindled to just the front 6-10 combs. I have all these beautiful combs just lying fallow. I was in it yesterday and the queen is laying again. Just not as abundantly I am hoping the late summer/early fall nectar production really helps them. Good news is with the lack of bees it was a lot easier to find my queen so I do know she is still there.

Future products is to simulate a nectar flow by remote feeding. When you feed bees in the hive, its just food and they eat/store it. The hive doesn't really change what they are doing. If you set up feeders 20-40 feet away the hive goes into production like there are some beautiful flowers coming in.

polq37 wrote:

Note to those who are considering this as a hobby and looking at standard starter kits: seriously think about medium or smaller langstroth hive boxes instead of deeps. I read a lot of recommendations against deeps and I didn't take them very seriously. I consider myself reasonably physically capable, but the first time I tried to move a fully laden deep I realized just how awkward and really heavy it was. I could move it, but I didn't have any confidence that I could move it smoothly and without smashing a bazillion bees.

Good luck with the new hive. That concern of it being really heavy is a reason I didn't do a langstroth, and went with the top bar. But now I wished I just had a foundation-less medium hive.

*Bee Keeping terms -
Foundation is the plastic/wax base bees build their combs on in most hives. You can have it removed and let the bees build their own comb like in a Top Bar.
Medium/deep - different sizes of a langstroth hive referring to how many frames a hive style have

Well lookee here, this is a fun thread.

We're on our 2nd full year of beekeeping. It's mostly my wife's gig (made more EXTREEEEME by the fact that she carries an epipen for bee allergies), but we've both enjoyed learning a lot more about it.

The nectar flow has been strong this year, and we'll likely eclipse 200 pounds of harvested honey from 3-ish hives (split down to 5 in the spring, gave two away, one of the remaining three was a baby hive). The super-producing hive is a captured swarm, and they really are the best hives on the planet if you can ever capture one. The process is a lot of fun, too.

Catching up on some of the threads, we keep the bottom box as deeps (we never harvest these boxes, they're kept as brood frames) and then stack mediums and the occasional shallow on top.

I've not gone through the whole thread so I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but please don't harvest honey made from feeding the bees sugar water. It's...gross. Really gross. Hopefully you only have to feed after the nectar flow has dried up, usually around this time of year but depends on your exact climate and the exact year. That'll get 'em through the winter. (We also shrink the boxes down so they have less space to defend and keep warm.)

Minarchist wrote:

I've not gone through the whole thread so I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but please don't harvest honey made from feeding the bees sugar water. It's...gross. Really gross. Hopefully you only have to feed after the nectar flow has dried up, usually around this time of year but depends on your exact climate and the exact year. That'll get 'em through the winter. (We also shrink the boxes down so they have less space to defend and keep warm.)

Yay another voice. Yeah sugar water is only for getting your colony going, not for harvesting. Since this is my first year I wont be harvesting anything out of the hives till the spring of the year.

Was listening to Talking Simpsons today which was about this episode.

That joke is so funny.

The makeshift second hive didn't make it. But, I did manage to breed a truly impressive colony of big, fat black widows.

Anyway, I learned a few things.

I harvested my first two frames of honey last week. I should have harvested some frames earlier - I think the bees are much more content when they have space to build. I had avoided harvesting (or robbing, in a certain parlance) because I wanted the bees to have plenty of food for the winter. But, letting the hive sit with honey literally dripping out of the frames and no room to expand was not doing it any favors either.

I harvested two end frames, neither of which had been filled when I last fed the hive sugar water about three months ago.

Crushing and straining a frame of honey comb was an impressively gross and messy process, and it yielded far more honey than I was expecting and far less wax. For the next frame I harvest, I'm going to buy an actual honey straining sieve. I can see that even one strong hive will easily produce more honey than I can eat in a year. The late summer honey has a very strong and maybe rather musky flavor. I find it a little challenging, but most friends and family seem to really like it. It works well in tea. I'm hoping that next Spring's harvest will be lighter and crisper.

The bees managed to almost completely rebuild the wax comb on the harvested frame in about a week.

I've now managed to buy enough boxes and equipment for an actual second hive. Come Spring, I'll try doing a split.

Its great to hear how things are going for you. I wish I could say I was having the same. My hive is failing, its just a matter of time.

The Summer Dearth was really hard on my bees. They look to of used all of their stores or were robbed blind. A lot of keepers in this area have been complaining about the amount of robbing. I reduced my combs and have been feeding heavy. Now I am getting ready for the winter. I am going to make a sugar block. and keep the amount of combs low to see if they will survive the winter. We will see.

I'm really sorry to hear that. It's tough watching them slowly decline. I went through that with the makeshift second hive.

I kept on expecting for there to be more of a summer dearth, but the bees seemed to keep right on producing. I don't yet have any sense of the rhythms of production in our climate nor any real sense for how much food is available at any time during the year. I'm in the middle of a hot, dry, but well-watered northern Californian suburb. I may have the only hive for a mile or two around. My suspicion is that there are massive food stocks in the area, but I'm still worried about those stocks suddenly vanishing as we hit early fall - I see a similar pattern with our chickens suddenly starting to consume a lot more feed in late summer.

I did see a few small hive beetles when I harvested the first frame. There are some truly gross videos on Youtube about what these pests can do to a hive. I had a bit of a freakout about them, but the local bee guys say that they just aren't really a problem in our climate. I put a few traps in the hive though.

A major reason for the collapse of the second hive was the massive spider invasion. There weren't enough bees to defend the entrance to the hive or force out predators. With the strong hive, I noticed that there was a massive beard of bees physically blocking the hive entrance through most of summer. Now that the weather has cooled and I've expanded their living space, that beard of bees isn't there any more and the hive entrance is more open. I'm thinking of blocking the entrance with an entry reducer (basically, a small wedged plank of wood) so that their is less open space for them to defend.

Small hive beetles are gross, but nothing compares to wax moths!

...seriously, they're awful.

You'll always see a few small hive beetles, at least in most parts of the country. Just squash 'em when you find 'em and move on. The concern is when you start to see a lot of them, and the bees spend too much time dragging them out. At that point it's good to start looking into solutions like the oil-holding bottom board, where the larvae hatch and fall into the oil and drown.

Even if my hive completely fails, I have learned a lot this year. I am really happy to of started this, and I can't wait for next years try.

So, I'm super alergic to bees, but LOVE honey, especially different varieties from different areas of the country.

Are any of you interested in selling some of your delicious harvest?

Its the time of year to be prepping for the next season. It is all but confirmed that my hive has collapsed over the winter. On a warm spot I was able to see about their food, Its untouched. So in preparation I have ordered 2 bee packages. Now I am looking at another hive.

Anyone starting the year with bees?

Not sure if my hive is viable or not. They looked super strong going into the winter. Then, I discovered in late fall that I had a pretty significant varroa infestation. Now, I understand with modern beekeeping, it's not so much a matter of whether you have varroa, but how much varroa and how the colony is tolerating it. I don't have the experience as a beekeeper to adequately evaluate those last two questions. I tried a treatment in late fall and got what I thought was a lot of varroa falling out of the hive for a couple of weeks afterwards. (BTW, varroa mites look a little bit like small reddish sesame seeds - for comparison, imagine walking around all day with one or more dungeness crabs stuck to your body.)

Anyway, over winter the hive size dropped to a small core of maybe a few thousand bees. Subjectively, it seems like fewer bees than in the initial package. Now, they are supposed to drop in numbers and go mostly dormant over the winter, so I don't know if what I'm seeing is normal or not. Even more worrying, I didn't see any brood at all in December. Some sources indicate that there isn't any brood in deep winter, others suggest that there should always be some small amount of brood. With no brood at all, I'm worried that I've lost the queen. However, a small number of foragers have been flying every day through December.

According to one source I read, the colony should start ramping up brood production in mid January. I'll do a full inspection late next week. If I still don't see any brood, I'll probably have to order another package.

This year, I'm going to try to go into winter with two colonies.

polq37 wrote:

Not sure if my hive is viable or not. They looked super strong going into the winter. Then, I discovered in late fall that I had a pretty significant varroa infestation. Now, I understand with modern beekeeping, it's not so much a matter of whether you have varroa, but how much varroa and how the colony is tolerating it. I don't have the experience as a beekeeper to adequately evaluate those last two questions. I tried a treatment in late fall and got what I thought was a lot of varroa falling out of the hive for a couple of weeks afterwards. (BTW, varroa mites look a little bit like small reddish sesame seeds - for comparison, imagine walking around all day with one or more dungeness crabs stuck to your body.)

My area association is swearing by the Varroa Easycheck. You use some rubbing alcohol solution or windshield fluid. Its supposed to work extremely well, and give an accurate count.

I am currently working on my list of things I need for my new year of apiology.

1. New Hive - I will be getting a new Langstroth Hive, finding good price is hard but I think this looks good. If you've followed along so far you know I am currently using a Top Bar Hive (TBH). If your new, don't use it, the TBH, would be my first bit of starting advice. If you want reasons why, I'll share it, but this isn't the post for it.

2. Hive Components - Things not coming in the kit posted above: in hive feeder, frames, Frame spacer, queen excluder.

3. Build a LEVEL hive stand

4. Figure out a good bee water source (preference is something I do not have to fill up every day. I am fairly confident this was a reason my bees had some trouble. Certainly not all of the trouble, but some. I am thinking of getting a cheap cat feeder/waterer and putting a bunch of stones/marbles in the bottom (for the bees to stand on) and calling it good.

5. Site Prep - I need to do some brush clearing and the like before I actually set up a new hive.

6. Get Bees - I have ordered 2 packages of bees. I would prefer a Nuc, but my local sources are out of pre-orders.

Right now I think thats it, but I will adjust as needed.

If your starting, let us know.

1. That's a really good price for those hive boxes, even unassembled.

2. Bought a queen excluder. All of the bees refused to move past it. Even without the excluder, the queen confined brood activities to the bottom box.

3. I'm using about 4 cinderblocks. It's pretty level, but I think it may have gotten out of true over the last six months. New plan is to get a surplus shipping pallet and to set it up as a low table for two hives.

4. We set up water sources about 15 feet away, right in the hive's flight path. The bees never touched them. Nor did I ever see any bees at the water source near the house that we use for our chickens. We live about a quarter mile away from a river and every other house in the neighborhood has a pool. We thought hydration was going to be a problem with the long dry California summer, but it never seemed to be an issue. Our climates and environments are different, though.

5. My current site is probably not right. I chose a shady spot next to some privet that kept much of the sun off of the hive for much of the day. This was pretty good in summer and I think it has been terrible for them in winter - much too cool and damp.

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There are at least a couple of Egyptian apiaries in Assassin's Creed: Origins. It looks like they used some sort of top bar type hive, but made from earthen or terra cotta tubes.

polq37 wrote:

1. That's a really good price for those hive boxes, even unassembled.

Yeah thats what I thought. Most hives are more than that for 2 or three boxes. This one has pretty much all the boxes you will need for one hive with a good production. Just no frames. I am getting some pre-made frames with a wax over plastic. I am also getting blank frames with the intention of spacing them every other in the first box. Using the pre-made to encourage straight combs on the blank.

polq37 wrote:

There are at least a couple of Egyptian apiaries in Assassin's Creed: Origins. It looks like they used some sort of top bar type hive, but made from earthen or terra cotta tubes.

It's amazing to think how long people have been intentionally farming bees. They were probably a variation of a trough design. But it took till relative modern times to do it in a way that didn't destroy the hive. The earthen shell would be destroyed so they could get to the comb inside. They relied pretty heavily on being able to get the splits/swarms to move into a new shell earlier in the year.

When you hear buzz around the beehive, you know they're making honey in there. Terrence Howard

Bee Time Fun Time

So this thread is 5 pages. Which is 4 Pages to long for me to go back through and see what I've already talked about for learning something new about bees. This BTFT will be about hives, and will be continued in a future post as well.

Old Hives: So from what we can tell most ancient societies that farmed bees did so in hives where the harvest of honey destroyed the hive/colony. We even have records dating back from 650BC to the keeping of bees, RECORDED HISTORY of this. Isn't that amazing?

Egypt - Tomb of Pabasa - Depictions clearly showing a type of apiary. The Cylinders would of mostly been made of clay. They would destroy these hives to collect the honey. Tradition has it they would wait till after hives superseded. That way insuring the self propagation nature of bees.

Israel - Has a dig site that is dated to be even older. With evidence of Earthen hives with a removable back for access to the hive. Basically of form of sustainable industrialized beekeeping.

Skeps - Traditionally a organic plant fiber based hive that is woven. Numerous cultures made some variation of these. Once again bee colonies were destroyed in the harvest of honey.

Log/Gum/Barc - Probably the absolute oldest way to keep bees. Its a log, hollowed sometimes with a cap on the end. Guess how they would of harvested the honey. You see the theme.

Tune into the next Bee Time Fun Time for Modern Hives!