November 18, 2014. And so, it has come to this.

This is November 18 in West Michigan, our first winter storm of the season. Luckily about two weeks ago, I winterized the hives.  I placed a queen excluder over the top box.  I did this so I can put sugar bricks on later in the winter if needed. Mel Disselkoen's book OTS Queen Rearing has a great recipe with instructions for making the sugar bricks. I have an empty shell on top of the excluder with an upper entrance. The lower entrance is still available, although if this snow keeps up I will be going out often to clear the snow from lower entrances.  I also wrapped each hive with tar paper. Only thirteen days ago there were bees flying and even bringing in pollen.  I have no idea where they were getting pollen from on November 5. For now, I have to be content with putting my ear up to the side of the boxes and listening for the faint hum of the cluster inside.



October 2014, taken a month before the picture above.

September 28 Where did all the flowers go?

Honeybee on Autumn Joy Sedum in my yard early September 2014.

Summer has flown away with the birds and butterflies.  The pumpkins were harvested from the garden today and mouse guards were put  on the hives.  I can't believe how fast my first summer with the honeybees went!  They, thankfully, have not left me.  I find them on my asters, sedum and the few remaining zinnias and cosmos in the garden.  They found me at my kitchen window yesterday morning. I looked up from the sink and noticed four to five honeybees right outside the window. I looked closer and counted approximately thirty honeybees in the pampas grasses  next to the house. They were gathering pollen from the tips of grasses where the plume was about to flower?    I would not have expected that, but they were very busy little acrobats scrambling up and down the tips gathering large amounts of pollen. I don't know how some of them were able to fly back to they hive as large as their pollen loads were!
Three of my hives are very strong and stocked with ample amounts of honey going into winter. One of the hives is not.  It was the hive that was queenless in August. I gave them of frame of brood with which to raise a new queen and they were acting as if they had a queen. They were not aggressive when I checked them, so I gave them more time thinking they may have a virgin queen in the hive.  Unfortunately, this hive developed a working layer. That fact, combined with dwindling numbers and obvious queenlessness, made it a very weak hive. I can't combine it with a stronger hive because of the working layer.  I saved the comb from this hive and distributed it to two of my other hives.

The Honeybee on  my grasses doing acrobatics to gather the pollen. This is her underside. It was a nice warm September morning and there were 30-40 bees in this thatch of grasses scrambling up and down the soon to be plumes collecting pollen.

Honeybee on grasses gathering pollen.

Had to smile when I realized my hives were surrounded by Goldenrod.  I did not realize this in May when I chose the location.

Honeybee on Goldenrod.

So busy!  I just sat in a patch of Goldenrod and marveled at all the bees working.  We had a lot of rain before the Goldenrod bloomed, hope this helped with the nectar flow. It seemed to end too quickly though.



 Honeybee alighting onto Goldenrod bloom. September 2014.

Honeybees on Autumn Joy Sedum. The bees seemed to enjoy this only for a week or so when it first started to bloom. From what I could see, they were only taking nectar.

Remember my friends with the top-bar hive that planted buckwheat? They gave me a bag of  Buckwheat seeds which I planted in the middle of August. I planted about a 40 square foot area.  It popped up five days later and was blooming with my honeybees all over it by the middle of September!  It bloomed for a couple of weeks, but has now turned brown. I may try to harvest it and enjoy some buckwheat pancakes.  It was great forage for the bees. Wish I could have planted more. Maybe next year.

Honeybee on Cosmos in my garden. One of the few flowers still blooming. Today is October 2 and there were still a few honeybees on it.

Honeybee on Aster.

Zinnias still blooming! Honeybee enjoying a warm autumn day.

Honeybee on Aster.

My bees coming and going from the hive late September 2014.  I will miss this sight. I've enjoyed sitting out there a few minutes (OK, more than a few minutes) or so everyday just observing them.  They are relaxing, kind of like people watching fish in a tank? Anyway, I love it and I will miss them this winter.

Beekeepers warned me that Goldenrod stinks up the apiary.  I would agree that it does have a very distinct smell, but it didn't smell horrid or make me want to gag like some smells do.  My kids would get a whiff of it in the yard on occasion and say, "What is that weird smell"  Others say it smells like sweaty gym socks.  I try to avoid smelling people's socks, so I can't compare.







 

August 28 Bummer

I currently have four hives. I did have five, but sold one to a friend in July.  This friend was pollinating her own garden with Q-tips!   She NEEDED HONEYBEES!  How could I say no when I had a beautiful little nucleus hive she could have.  Last I heard this hive was doing excellent and she was no longer running around her yard with Q-tips. 
My bummer news has to do with one of my hives. I had noticed over the past week that they were not as active compared to my other hives. I had checked this hive on August 15 and found larvae in various stages, but saw no eggs. The brood pattern was spotty. Well when I checked it today, there was only a scant scattering of sealed brood, no eggs, no larva.  BUMMER!  No queen  laying in that hive. Most likely, no queen at all. I found two queen cells open on the bottom of a frame, so perhaps they have already replaced her and she just isn't mated and laying yet.  I took a frame of brood from another hive and notched it where there was 36 hour larva on both sides. I then placed that frame in the supposed queenless hive. If they have no queen,  this will give them opportunity to raise a new one.  If they have a virgin queen, they won't raise a new queen. I will have to check in 7-10 days for queen cells on that frame.  It is a good learning experience. Every time something doesn't go how it is "supposed to" with the bees, I am able to learn from it. So I guess a queenless hive is not a total bummer.

August 22 Ghost bee mystery solved!

For the last week or two I observed bees entering and exiting the hive with a white spot or sometimes stripe on their thorax.  Because they always fly in and out so fast I wondered at first if I was imagining it. Early on it seemed to be bees in just one hive, but as I watched day after day, it was all the hives and I was not imagining it. I did however start imagining what awful thing it might be that had caused this. A weird parasite attached to their thorax? Were my queens laying mutant bees? Had all their "fur" rubbed off and this was what was underneath??  (remember, I am a newbee. Been beekeeping for the big three months now!) So, I did some internet research and thanks to Honey Bee Suite (an excellent beekeeping site/blog), I found an answer for my little mysterious "ghost" bees.   On his blog they had a great picture identifying exactly what I was seeing on my bees, pollen. The Jewelweed flower is where it was coming from.  Within an eighth of a mile behind my hives is a pond and a muck field with ditches all around it. I took a small trek and found massive amounts of Jewelweed with honey bees, bumbles and even hummingbirds darting in and out throughout their flowers.  When the honey bee enters the flower, pollen is rubbed across her head and thorax.  When she grooms herself she cannot reach the pollen on her thorax, leaving the white stripe or hourglass figure that I was seeing.

Jewelweed flower, also known as Touch Me Not

The Mother Load of Jewelweed

Honeybee entering Jewelweed flower. See how the stamen will rub pollen right along the bee's head and thorax? The bees have to go quite deep into the flower to get the nectar.

Going in.

Check out the honey bee in the center of the picture.  See the white on it's head and thorax?  I was laughing watching them fly in and out of the flowers, it was quite comical to see them come out with white all over their head and back.  I was also relieved to know this white stripe was a good thing. Just bees being bees.

Honey bee entering Jewelweed flower.

August 10 Housing

I had the pleasure of visiting friends who keep honeybees in a Top Bar Hive.  They were without bees this spring as the harsh winter had taken it's toll.  However, over Memorial day weekend, they were blessed with free bees!  Free bees you say? How do I get some of those? A lure and a ready home! He had placed a lure in his Top Bar Hive and a large swarm found this new home met all their requirements and moved right in.  Our friends also planted a large amount of Buckwheat for their honey bees.  While we were there, we had the enjoyment of watching the bees forage on the flowers.

Top Bar Hive. Love the viewing window!  Our friend built this hive himself.

A new top bar is added as the bees build a full comb on the previous one. He  has added almost 17 bars that the bees have drawn full combs on  since they've moved in! 

This is the entrance at the bottom of the hive.

Field of Buckwheat

Honey bee on Buckwheat flower.

Honeybee on Buckwheat flower.  Notice the color contrast of these two honey bees? This one to the one in picture above.

 

 

 

August 7 To Feed or not to Feed

What is blooming for the bees this time of year? Not a whole lot. A "Dearth" for the bees is when nectar levels are low.  The weather is also usually drier during this season causing what nectar there is available to be diminished.  Behind my hives, there is a field of beautiful red clover. I thought, "Yes, this will be great for my bees"  Unfortunately though, I've heard from another beekeeper that honeybee's tongues are too short to be able to get nectar from the red clover. The two types of clover blooming now that the bees can feed on are Ledino and Alsike clover.  Because two of my hives are July starts I decided to feed them 1:1 sugar syrup. They are still building up, still drawing out new comb and have lots of new brood to feed.  I don't want them starting to go through their honey stores. I want them to save that for winter. So on the 7th  of August I started placing a quart of syrup in each hive. They have been drinking down a quart in less than 48 hours for over a week now. I'm looking for sales on sugar!  Waiting for Goldenrod and Aster to start blooming!

Honey bee on Purple Cone Flower in July. The Bee Balm or Monarda in the background was only visited by Bumblebees, not the Honeybees as I had hoped.

August 4 I deserved it!

Because the first honey we took from the bees was so delightful, we decided to take two frames from my largest hive.  This is the hive that has had a queen laying since June 11. They have stores of plenty and I really wanted a few more quarts for my cupboard. This hive has three boxes and I wanted to take a frame from the top and middle box.  A bit trickier than only taking one frame, brushing bees and throwing the cover back on.  I enlisted the assistance of another beekeeper. The evening was warm and muggy, a perfect night for sweating in a bee suit!  We had a plan; remove the top box off the middle, grab a frame from the top, brush bees off and place frame in nearby empty box.  Then go to middle box and take second frame, brush bees off and place in empty waiting box. Quickly place 50 pound box back on top of middle box, pop cover on and simply walk away with our two frames of honey.  It sounded like a good idea. Brushing off bees tends to make bees angry, especially if the frame you are taking has honey and brood. (only 20 or so cells of brood).  While attempting to get the second frame, the bees we had brushed off from the first frame were quite agitated. Flying into my veil at extremely high speeds and buzzing with a ferocity that began to sound like a roar, I knew this wasn't going as planned.  Handing the second frame to my helper, I bent to hoist the heavy top box back onto the middle and as I did I felt a red hot poker piercing my knee. My sympathetic nervous system registered, PAIN!, while the rest of my brain screamed, "don't drop the box!" with 20,000 to 30,000 bees in it. I voiced, "I think I just got stung." My beekeeper friend says, "Really?".  I quickly eased the box down and placed the top cover on the hive and that was that, my first sting.  I, with all honesty, can say I deserved it. 
Later I brought the frames into the house to harvest the honey from them. My nine year old daughter, who was watching said, "Look Momma,  a baby bee is coming out"  Sure enough, I had forgotten about the 20 or so cells of brood at the bottom of the one frame.  She excitedly asked if we could watch the new bee emerge from it's cell. What kind of mother would I be if I denied her? I didn't realize it would take 20 minutes. I had hoped to get the frames back into the hive that evening (evening being around 8:30pm and it was getting darker).  Finally around 9pm, the bee emerged and began walking daintily around the frame.  She was cute. This is in my kitchen, in the house.  My daughter says, "Aren't you going to put her back with her family?"  It was basically dark now.  All the beekeeping books I've read, reiterate over and over  not to mess with the bees at night.  Why? Because everybody is at home and they are cranky after a hard day's work and want to be left alone!  I knew I shouldn't, but I did. An ominous sound came from within the hive when I lifted the inner cover. At lightning speed, I pushed the frame back down into the open space, whipped the covers back on and ran.  I remembered thinking to myself as I read what NOT TO DO in beekeeping, that I would never do the what Not To Do when I kept bees.  Never say never.

July- Honeybees in my sweet corn tassles. I do not think honeybees pollinate corn. I have to research that.

Honey bee in my sweet corn gathering pollen.

Honeybee on my Sunflowers

July 22 Robbing the Bees

Today was a sweet day!  Hives A and E both have laying queens. Eggs and larva were in both hives and I was able to find the queen in hive E, she is incredible. I think the queens really do look like royalty, especially OTS queens.  With these new queens, all the hives in my apiary have  had the mite cycle broken which will subsequently decrease the Varroa mite population and with post solstice queens, the honeybee population will soar high above the mites. I have not seen any mites in my hives or on my bees. I have seen the occasional hive beetle.  
For excitement, my sixteen year old son and I robbed a frame of honey from the bees today. We literally took out the frame, brushed the surprised bees off and ran!  This is not the simplest way to remove honey from a hive, but for only one frame of honey this worked well. When you have supers on you can use fume boards or a bee escape board. Both of these methods will evacuate the bees in your honey supers so you have an easier time of taking it from them.  Because I went for making more bees instead of running for honey, I do not have a lot of surplus honey to remove. However, we wanted to at least sample the fruits of our honeybee's labor so we found a frame that was at least 3/4 capped on both sides and removed the honey along with the wax. The wax was freshly drawn, so it was thin, white and edible.  The honey was a light yellow as you can see in the pictures and it was oh so sweet!

Heather holding the frame of honey, heavy!

Scraping off wax and honey to the foundation. The other side of frame was almost completely capped.  You want to make sure your honey is capped as this indicates the bees have dehydrated it down to 18% water. If it isn't capped, it could ferment or spoil.

Isn't comb honey amazing! The bees astound me with their abilities to draw out perfect comb and produce the honey.  I read that one honey bee produces only about 1/12  of a teaspoon of honey in it's lifetime.  The contents of this pan from just one frame of honey was about seven POUNDS!

Stored in Mason jars

I wanted you to see the detail of the wax comb. This comb is fresh, produced by the bees less than a month ago. They secrete it from glands in their abdomen. It comes out in paper thin mini sheets.  From that they form the comb. The hexagon they form is perfect. This shape is the strongest and most efficient to store the honey in than any other shape in creation. God's incredible design of the honeybee never ceases to amaze me!

Empty wax cells, the black on the bottom is the foundation of a frame.

Honey comb, love it and love your honeybees!

New OTS Queen

I know I wasn't going to check in on the hives till July 24th, but I was anxious to see what was going on, so I did. In hive C, I found a beautiful OTS Queen already laying eggs! OTS stands for On The Spot Queen rearing by Mel Disselkoen. If you are interested in learning more about this, visit Mel's website at www.mdasplitter.com  Sorry there are no pictures of the queen, she was too shy and nervous. Found frames with eggs, no larva, so she just started laying.  Hive A and E had no evidence of a laying queen yet, so I did not look for them. I will check them next week.  Hive B and D, both OTS queens are laying well with a nice brood pattern, both of these hives were ready for supers. Each of these had all the frames almost completely drawn out, so a 2nd deep was placed with new waxed frames and a frame taken from the bottom box and placed in the middle.

Hive C is facing you, this is the one with new OTS queen, just started laying. Hive B is to the right (has dark medium super on bottom, part of the original hive I bought back in May), the entrance is on the opposite side. Hive A is behind Hive C and will need to be checked next week for a laying queen.

Hive D with OTS queen. Placed 2nd deep on tonight. The top box is Hive E above a Snelgrove board. This hive  is able to gather warmth from the lower hive, but the Snelgrove board is double screened so they are unable to interact. The Snelgrove board is unique in that it has an entrance on each side that you can keep open or closed. Currently on hive E all the entrances are closed except for the back one.  I will check Hive E next week for laying queen.

July 12

Aaaaahhh, Summer!  After this past winter, I am so thankful for the warmth of summer, for flip flops and tank tops! I'm especially thankful for the bees.  They have been going crazy this week in my garden, mainly in the squash and pumpkin patch. The shrubs in my backyard that they pollinated in May are loaded with berries to the point that the branches are so weighed down they are breaking off.  This has not occurred before, so I'm thinking it has something to do with the bees!  They have also discovered the Zinnia flowers that started blooming this week.  I keep checking the bee balm (Monarda) as it is now blooming, but alas, no honey bees yet.  We peeked in on the hives this week, all is well. Honey stores are building up.  The new queens in the splits should be laying by the 24th of July.  I'm looking forward to learning the extraction process.

Honeybee on Zinnia

Worker inspecting Zinnia.

Try another, this one isn't quite ready for you yet.

See the pollen on her hind legs?  This is commonly called a pollen basket, anatomical term is corbicula.  As the worker is visiting flowers she pauses here and there to "brush" pollen into the basket.  She moistens her front legs with her tongue (proboscis), then brushes the pollen grains that have collected on her head, forelegs and body to her hind legs where the basket is.  When full, she carries it back to the hive to be unloaded. So cool!  I've watched them bring in pollen, it varies in color (white, yellow, orange, tan) depending on the source they collect it from.

 

If you look closely, you can see this worker's tongue working to sip up some nectar. Her tongue is similar to a straw within a straw. The smaller tube, for taking in nectar and the larger for ingesting honey.

 

 

July 1 Outstanding Productivity!

Queen cells and more queen cells found tonight. Needed to check hive C tonight for queen cells and break down all but two of them. This is the hive that I dispatched the queen from last week. The picture below shows the queen cells right where we notched. I will check this hive again around July 23 for a laying queen. She needs time to emerge, take her mating flights, return to hive and start laying.
I am enjoying the bees immensely. I scout out my yard each day, looking for them in the garden or among my flowers.  Today they found the lavender and my buttercup squash.

Queen cells in middle of frame. They look like peanuts hanging off the frame. Love it!



Honey bee on Coreopsis



Loving the Lavender



Honeybee coming in for a landing on Lavender flower.



Honey bee down in flower of Buttercup Squash plant.

On her way out. She zipped across the yard back to the hive to alert the others to her find.