January 6, 2015 Brrrrrrrrrr

I just came in to warm up after having my bare ear frozen against the frigid side of a hive box while listening for the honeybee's "humming" inside.  I place my ear all over the outside of the box seeing if I can locate where the cluster is.  I do this after dark of course, so the neighbors can't see me. Tonight, it is 6 degrees F. with a wind chill just below 0 degrees.  I was able to walk back towards the house through a foot of snow with a big grin, all three hives are still alive.
I am starting to think about ordering more boxes, frames and the like.  Ordering now and building more boxes in February or March sounds like a good plan.....but, what if the bees don't make it? A fellow beekeeper and friend told me to be optimistic, so I'm going to think positive  and make plans for more bees.  I've been making a few sugar bricks every week, so come February, March I'll be able to get them to the bees if they need it. I love the smell of the lemongrass and spearmint essential oils in them, hope the bees do too. 

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.