May 9, 2014. Nice to meet you

Time to take off the cover and see how weak or strong this hive is. This was again a very warm day.  Upon opening, the bees welled up over the top bars of the frames, a good sign!  We pulled the frames to inspect and found many frames of sealed brood, pollen and honey. We notched one of the frames of brood where we could find a 36 hour or younger larvae.  We would have notched 2 frames, but were unable to find the right aged larvae. We are using the OTS Queen Rearing method by Mel Disselkoen.  This procedure can be found on page 32 of his book, OTS Queen Rearing, A Survival Guide For Beekeepers Worldwide.  We put the deep box on the bottom board and also located the queen.  We wanted to be sure she was in the deep. We then placed a queen excluder between the deep and the medium we placed over it. The notched brood frame was placed 5th frame in, in the medium box.  Hopefully one week later we will find a queen cell where we notched and be able to place the medium box on it's own bottom board, already splitting the hive into two. We placed a new frame of foundation in the deep as there was room after removing the old frame feeder.  We also scratched one frame of honey as feed in the deep.  Because of predicted cold temperatures,  I also placed a quart of sugar syrup (a 1:1 ratio of water and sugar) above the hive in an empty deep box, as extra feed.

A frame of sealed brood

Bees welling up over the top bars, the light colored wood is the frame of new foundation we placed.

The white are uncapped larvae, orange is pollen, reflective open cells are honey and rest is sealed brood. 

May 8, 2014 The Big Day!

Wow! It was 88 degrees F., muggy, and the warmest day of  Spring 2014. We excitedly headed off to Grandville, MI to pick up our hive of bees from Al Haarsma Apiaries.  There were hundreds of hives at the yard, a bit intimidating, my heartbeat increased by a good 30 beats a minute!  Upon arrival we saw a small group of people also waiting to pick up hives. We had our bee suits in the truck, but no one else had them on so we carefully sauntered up without the suits. There was a low constant humming and a light cloud of bees over the hills side.  Smokers were scattered about  sitting on the tops of hives with white smoke wisping out of them. It was HOT and MUGGY for 8 p.m. at night. We were told to pick out a hive in the front at the bottom of a hill.  We quickly and thankfully donned our suits, as others were beginning to, and spied a hive with bees spread out on the front of it whose hardware looked solid.  I would hate to pick one up that had a rotting bottom board! We smoked the front of the hive and the bees moved like a wave into the entrance. We stopped up the entrance with a piece of cloth.  I was a little worried that it would dislodge and bees would escape, but it stayed.  We used ratchet straps to secure the deep and medium hive bodies together and Wayne (my husband) and I hoisted it on to the back of the pick up truck. We were advised to line the box so frames are parallel to the road in case of a sudden stop, frames would be more stable this way. We had an uneventful ride home, laughing at ourselves because we looked like a haz-mat team going to clean a spill.   Only one confused honey bee had made it into the truck cab with us.  Once home we gently set the bees onto their waiting pallet and removed the cloth from the entrance. Immediately, bees crawled out of the entrance and onto the front and began fanning furiously. They will quickly orient to their new home.

Hives on the opposite side of the hill where we picked up our hive.  

Bees quickly emerge from entrance, fanning and using their nasonov gland which emits an attraction pheromone communicating, "This is home!" My daughter says, "They''re sticking their little butts in the air."

Safely Home!

Waiting, April 2014

The last time I wrote, snow was covering the field out my front windows.  Today I see calves romping across new green grass. The window is open and I can hear various birds calling back and forth. I observed honey bees on my crocuses yesterday. Spring has finally arrived!  In three to five weeks the bees I ordered will arrive.  I have put together my hive bodies.  Some I purchased new unassembled and others I borrowed from a friend. I had to do a lot of scraping (propolis is sticky stuff) and then put a torch to the insides of the boxes to decrease the risk of pest or disease transmission to the new bees. All the hive bodies, new or used, received a fresh coat of white paint (on the outside only!!).  I almost went for some colored hives, but there is time for that later. My beekeeping suits, gloves, tools and frames with foundation arrived yesterday.  The frames we purchased assembled. I ordered 100 frames (40 deeps and 60  medium supers).  Ten frames fit in each hive body/box. I felt it was worth the extra penny to have these already set to go!  Sorry, I do not have a picture of the frames.

Hive bodies ready to be painted. A fellow beekeeper let me borrow some and the two unpainted are new.




THE hives all ready to go. Top small box is a nucleus box.