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Music: Gaia Consort

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A sizable swarm in a tree

One of my hives threw this swarm on a warm saturday afternoon. I eventually managed to hive it up, but I missed the queen the first time around.

On my second attempt, I managed to locate the queen and put her in a screend box. Knowing they won’t abandon the queen, I left them to their own devices and came back later that night to pick up the cluster. Easy peasy.

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Music: Baba Brinkman
Call the Pollin Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Cosmic Connexion

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Music: Natalie Germann, Vicki Larnach
Call the Pollin Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Brooks 1
The last time I checked on this one, I thought it was a goner. No queen, and tons of drones. Multiple eggs sloppily laid – all pointed to a laying worker. To my astonishment, I opened the box this morning to find the number of workers increasing and a working queen laying out a pretty solid egg pattern. How that happened, I have no idea. None. I’m grateful, but perplexed. Added 1/2 a megabee patty and 1/2 gallon of syrup.

Brooks 2
Still a dead out.

Brooks 3
Brood in various stages, but didn’t see queen. Added 1/2 patty megabee and 1/2 gallon of syrup. I’d like to see this one put more stores on.

Brooks 4
Pretty good and perfectly staged for the fall honey flow. The top deep is full end to end with perfectly drawn, empty comb. Same regiment as the others with megabee and syrup. Saw some eggs in the top super, but nothing significant. Most of the action seems to be down below.

Brooks 5
One of the strongest hives. I saw several bees still working honey in the honey super I left on from the spring. Didn’t see a need to add any supplements at this time.

Nuc 1
Pretty much the same as last time. 3 strong frames of bees. I split the brood nest with a frame of freshly drawn comb from Brooks 4 in hopes that the queen would expand her laying. Same addition of megabee and syrup.

Brooks 6
Looks really good. Chuck full of bees and honey. Didn’t add any syrup, but they did get 1/2 a megabee patty.

Brooks 7 and 8
These are doing okay, but are going to need to beef up before winter. Each had 4-5 frames of bees and mediocre stores. Added syrup and megabee. These two may get combined – possibly with the Nuc thrown in too. Wintering Nucs can be challenging.

We’ve managed the mite levels pretty well this year, but I’m going to try using one of the essential oil based varroa treatments this fall to knock the mites down more than just using a powdered sugar program. Probably looking at apilife var.

Some background:

The Peachtree City yard is no more. There was only one hive there, and while it was pretty robust in terms of overall health, it was not productive at all – nothing in the super in the spring. I suspect that was largely due to another sizable bee yard being less than a mile away. So I moved it to the Brooks yard, which is actually at my house. I’m thinking that and the Woolsey yard will be the only ones going forward for the foreseeable future.

So without further delay –

Hive updates –
Brooks 1
Popped this one open and there were tons of drones – which generally means one of two things – a laying worker or a drone laying queen. I didn’t see the queen, but I did see eggs sloppily laid. I believe it to be a laying worker – indicating that the hive has been queenless for a while. In either case, the hive is doomed unless it’s requeened. Unfortunately, requeening a hive with a laying worker is difficult. There were two queen cells – one of which was capped, but under the premise of a laying worker and the time it takes a queen to hatch out, there is very little chance that those cells have fertilized eggs in them. My intention is to do a shook swarm and requeen it. The idea behind a shook swarm is that you take all the bees out to field a few hundred yards away and shake them off the field. The idea is that the laying worker is too heavy to fly back and she gets left out in the field. When the rest of the hive returns, a new queen cage is in there and hopefully they take to her.

Brooks 2
Dead out. This hive is toast and filled with wax moths. This was a hive that deaded out before and I restarted with a few frames from a nuc. It concerns me that it’s croaked twice so I suspect some kind of contamination in the wax or hardware. I don’t have enough bees to restart it right now and time is running out to get a new hive going and prepped for the fall. We’ll see. If I do get it going again, it will be on all new hardware and foundation – and will probably used only to combine with another smaller hive.

Brooks 3
Looks ok, but should be in much better shape. Found the queen, but she was very small and gimpy looking. Gonna requeen this one.

Brooks 4
This one looks good – solid brood nest with a good egg pattern. It’s a single deep, and it starting to get some honey in the super. Probably wouldn’t hurt to requeen this one before the fall honey flow to beef up production going into the fall. This one may be a candidate to combine with Brooks 3 later on.

Brooks 5
Solid colony – probably the best looking of the bunch. There were ants in the jar super which I moved out.

Brooks 6
This is the former PTC hive, and is doing better already – showing alot of honey storage in the 2nd deep and even some storage in the honey super. The only problem is that the foundation strips in the honey super have gotten all wonky since the spring so they were building comb all over the place. I pulled the super and am going to redo the foundation on the frames before putting it back on there.

Brooks 7
This one looks pretty good for a single deep started in late summer. There were about 5 solid frames of bees and a large consistently laid broodnest. With a little feeding, this one should beef up by the fall.

Brooks 8
Just about the same as Brooks 7, but with fewer bees. Gonna start feeding these to get them beefed up for the winter.

Nuc 1
This was a split from a colony that was requeened, and was later used (unsuccessfully) to bolster the population of Brooks 2. It’s presently got three frames of bees with a 2 frame broodnest so I think it’s recovering well.

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The second in a series of honey bee pathogens. Today we talk about mites and beetles.

BeetleJail.com – Innovative ideas for SHB control that I saw demo’d at this year’s beekeeping institute

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Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Burning AFB Infected Hives

Join me on my way down to Baxley to pick up some bees. The first in a series of shows where we focus entirely on bees and beekeeping. We go over some interesting breaking developments in beekeeping amd discuss some of the microbial pathogens that our bees have to deal with.

Gardener’s Apiary
Baxley, Georgia

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Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Salvaged Comb

A really disjointed podcast this week as I try to cram in some content between trips to the bee yard. We talk about swarms and how to get geared up to be on the local swarm list or even to do a small cutout.

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Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Garden Harvest

Laura and I take some feedback, pontificate spring preps, talk about gardening, beekeeping, and other springtime activities. Laura would like to apologize for mistakenly referring to the Brandywine Tomato as a “Rutgers”.

Links from the show:

Roy’s Alaskan Homestead Blog
Ison’s Nursery
Murray McMurray Hatchery

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Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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I’ll also be putting honey supers on these hives. It takes a while for the bees to “get” that their hive has changed sizes and move up into the super. We’ve already got a light nectar flow going, which will quickly pick up in the next few weeks, so I want them up in there drawing comb ahead of the game.

My supers have top entrances too. I’m a big fan of top entrances for two reasons. They provide additional ventilation, but the air isn’t pulled up directly through the broodnest, and it gives the foragers a direct route to the honey stores – meaning they don’t have to walk all the way up the inside of the colony to get where they’re going.

http://www.draperbee.com/webcam/beecam.htm

Honey Harvest

This one goes out to our beekeeping friends. A full hour on springtime beekeeping practices and even a small taste of swarm management.

Links
Alaska Urban Farmstead
Increase Essentials by Dr. Larry Connor
Northern Kentucky Beekeeper
Beekeeper Linda’s Excellent Blog
Gardener Apiaries

Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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PTC Hive
This hive is in awesome shape. It had been a month since I last visited this hive and the bees had hardly touched the Megabee patty or the sugar syrup. This is good because it tells me that they have a viable food source. Indeed they were storing honey on both sides of the brood nest. The only thing blooming right now is Red Maple, so I’m assuming that there is ample forage available.
The brood nest was good sized spanning 6 frames with brood in all stages of development. Brood pattern was pretty solid as well. Forager traffic was high considering the temperature (low 50s).
I removed one of the division board feeders and changed the syrup in the other one. I also added another megabee patty.

Woolsey Hive
This hive is also in great shape. Both feeders were empty, and the megabee patty was completely consumed. Broodnest was a good size (spanning 5 frames to the depth of the super) with numerous eggs and larve in solid patterns across both sides of three frames. There were also new honey stores over the brood nest, indicating that this hive had also found early forage.
I removed one of the feeders and added another megabee patty.
Spotted 8 small hive beetles in this one. I’ll be adding a beetle trap on the next visit.

Note: Many beekeepers would question the approach of adding pollen and syrup while the bees have available forage, but it is not unusual (especially during the spring build up) for a hive to completely consume its stores over a few days of bad weather trying to feed the expanding brood nest. We still have nights in the 20s so I look at taking these steps as insurance. If they don’t need it, they’ll just leave it alone in favor of available forage. But if they do need it and it’s not there, the hive could suffer.

Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.

Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.

Legal wording currently is confusing and leaves room for abuse of privilege, city officials have said. But bee and chicken raisers say the proposed changes could create unintended ill-effects.

The hearing is the public’s chance to offer input, said Joanna Doven, spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

“We support urban farms and groups like Burgh Bees,” she said, “but we have to make sure we are balancing their interests with the safety needs and concerns of other residents.

“There has been a disconnect between what is and isn’t allowed, so we need an ordinance that clearly outlines how we should proceed.”

Under current law, residents must get a variance to raise chickens on properties of less than 5 acres or if their lots don’t allow 200 feet between the coop and a property line, but it’s vague as to whether a five-animal limit means pets are included. In addition, enforcement is driven by complaints.

A proposed 15-foot setback from any property line and 2,500-square-foot minimum per hive would in effect ban beekeeping in many of the city’s dense neighborhoods, “where our members have been safely keeping bees for years,” said Meredith Grelli, founder and director of Burgh Bees.

Full Article – http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10039/1034293-53.stm

Brooks 1 – Bit the dust. The pollin patty was about 90% intact, and there was still syrup in the feeder. The (now dead) cluster was down to the size of a fist so I can only imagine that they never warmed up enough to break cluster and get some grub. Pisser.

Brooks 2 – Looks really good. Patty was completely consumed and feeders were empty. Cluster spanned 5 frames and was the depth of the super (bees were active all the way to the bottom of the frame). Brood pattern was very good, with larve in all stages of development. Added 2nd deep using drawn comb from the now deceased Brooks 1. Put 2 patties between hive bodies and topped off feeders with 2:1 syrup.

Brooks 3 – In good shape. Patty was completely consumed. Both feeders were empty. Cluster was large – spanning 6 frames. Brood pattern looked good with brood in all stages of development.
Maintenence Needed: The top deep super is rotting out on the left side and needs to be replaced.

Brooks 4 – Still Dead.

Brooks 5 – Similar to Brooks 3. Patty was consumed and both feeders were empty. Topped off both feeders with 2:1 syrup. Cluster was large and busy spanning 6 frames. Lots of brood. Added another patty on top bars.
Maintenence Needed:Screened bottom board and bottom deep need to be replaced.

I’ve read over on Linda’s Beekeeping blog that the Red Maple is already blooming. We have some red maples and I can’t report that, but they look darn close. Time to get the honey supers ready – fingers crossed.

All in all the hives looked pretty healthy. The cluster was a pretty good size and they seemed pretty defensive when I opened the top ( I guess I would be too!). But that’s a good sign. I didn’t want to linger with it being so cold out, but it looked like all the hives still had what looked like plenty of capped stores. It’s too early to say of course, but I’m hoping that I can come out in the spring without any losses. (fingers, toes, and elbows crossed!)

Honey Run Apiaries has some good reading on how to make pollen patties in case you’re curious.

till next time…

Making hot while it's cold.

We take some feedback, talk about the bee-koozies, giggle a little about mustache wax, and discuss the perils, pitfalls, problems and preparations to do with shopping for your hobby farm.

Some Links to get You Started

Rural Property
Farm Seller
Land and Farm
United Real Estate
Farm and Ranch

Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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JERUSALEM, July 21 (UPI) — An Israeli company says it has developed a vaccine that protects honey bees from a virus associated with the widespread collapse of bee colonies worldwide.
Beelogics says its Remembee drug has proven effective in helping bees overcome Israel acute paralysis virus, Haaretz reported Tuesday. The virus is named for the country where it was first identified.

The drug has completed successful clinical trials on millions of bees in North America, the company said. The drug also helps the bees live longer and produce more honey, the company said.

“It’s really a tug of war between the virus and the host,” said Nitzan Paldi of Beeologics. “We are helping the bee tug the rope more strongly and beat the virus. We take advantage of an immune system that the bees elicit for viral disease. But we are really using naturally occurring phenomenon. It’s not a pesticide and it’s not toxic.”

Beeologics is pursing U.S. government approval for the drug, Haaretz said.