Preparing for Winter

As I was preparing my bee colonies for winter I realized that I am doing the same things around my home that they are doing at their hives.

1.  Feeding and Food Storage.  I have been putting a 2:1 sugar water drink on the hives for the bees to eat and store for winter.  I have also been making tomato sauce from our garden tomatoes and preparing swiss chard and collard greens for the freezer.

2. Weather-proofing.  I have been covering our windows with plastic to keep out the drafts and keep our gas bill down.  The bees in the white, Langstroth hive have been filling in the gaps between their boxes with propolis (bee glue), which they make from tree sap.  I had planned on plugging up most of the entrance holes on the front of the green top-bar hive with corks for the winter.  The bees beat me to it!  They have already sealed up most of the holes with propolis and are now cozy and ready for winter.

3.  Last Minute Harvesting.  On any day exceeding 60 degrees Fahrenheit the bees have been out flying around looking for late season pollen and nectar to harvest.  Likewise, I harvested the last of the blooms from my wildflower patch before the recent frosty nights.  It is nice to enjoy one last bouquet before the snow flies.  Pictured below with rainbow swiss chard.

Harvesting Honey and a Giveaway!

It has been about a month and a half since I processed the honey from our hive.  Things have been a little busy so I'm just now posting pictures about the event.

These are the honey supers with 12 frames of capped honey ready to go.  I removed the frames from the deep freezer 2 days before they were to be processed so that they would thaw.

This is a serrated, decapping knife for slicing off the wax caps with which the bees seal the honey.  The blade has a heating element to aid with cutting.  Nothing like a hot knife through wax!

Once the frames are decapped, they are loaded, three at a time, into the extractor.  This extractor is a hand-crank version rather than electric.  It spins the frames and the centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the frames.

The honey is then drained from an outlet at the bottom of the extractor.  It is filtered through a piece of cheesecloth to remove little bits of wax.  The honey is ready for use once it is filtered.  Honey is naturally antimicrobial and has too high of a sugar content to ferment without first being diluted.  It needs no further processing or heat treatment (pasteurization) to preserve it or make it ready for consumption.

The twelve frames of honeycomb produced about two and a half gallons of honey.  I will be doing a drawing on Halloween for one lucky reader to receive an 8 oz jar of honey.  In order to get your name in the drawing, leave a comment on this post!  The winner will be announced on this site on November 1st.  Good luck!

Robbing the Bees

If I ever had the illusion that taking honey from my bees was anything but thievery, they have changed my mind.  Early yesterday evening, R and I gathered our tools, suited up, lit the smoker and cracked open the established hive in search of honey.

It has been a couple of years since there has been any honey to harvest.  My original colony, the one we robbed yesterday, produced nearly three gallons of honey its first year.  Then the winter of 2010-2011 came with months of cold, harsh weather.  The colony was quite weak entering the spring and it took all summer for the bees to build up.  By fall, they were looking great, but there was no time for them to make surplus honey for me.

Fortunately for the bees, last winter was mild and they came into this spring as strong as they had been the previous fall.  Maybe too strong for their own liking.  In May, the colony sent off a swarm into a dead tree on the property line.  Luckily, R spotted it and with his help, a 6 foot ladder, and a large plastic tote, we capured the swarm. About a week later, the hive sent off another, smaller swarm called an after-swarm.  We captured this swarm as well, but must not have got the queen because the bees disapperared from their new hive without any signs of swarming.  My assumption is that some went back to their old home and some joined the first swarm that was getting established in a single, Langstroth hive body nearby.

All that to say that the original colony has been very active and the queen has been laying new baby bees like a champ!

This spring I placed two shallow honey supers on the hive in anticipation of the May/June nectar flow.   By mid-June the bees had filled up the lower super with honey, but nothing in the top.  Last night, we smoked the bees in an attempt to drive them down into the lower hive bodies so we could take the top boxes with a minimum amount bees.  It did not go according to plan.  The bees would not leave.   We then removed the supers and carried them across the yard to blow out the bees using an air compressor hose.  This resulted in a lot of bees, now angry and disoriented, wildly flying around us.  It rapidly became apparent that we were not going to be able to remove enough bees to place the supers, complete with frames, in garbage bags as planned.  R then suggested that we clean off the bees a frame or two at a time and then place the frames in the deep freeze to kill off any remaining bees.  The frames could then be removed in a couple of days, placed back in the boxes and then into garbage bags where they could thaw before extraction on Saturday.

This worked better than anything thus far.  As R removed frames, I gave them a quick shot of air from the hose and hustled them into the garage freezer.  R observed that all the insanity with thousands of flying insects was almost as good an adrenaline rush as go-kart racing. That may have been the beestings talking.

To my surprise, after we finished cleaning up the mess, R wanted to move on to the top bar hive to see what the newer colony had been doing.  It was a good thing that we did.  The bees had been very busy making, what I consider to be, quite a mess.  In the 100 degree heat of July, I had propped open the lid of the hive to allow for better circulation.  The bees had designs for what to do with the newfound "attic space." They filled it wth burr comb and honey!  Though I hated to do it, the comb had to be removed, otherwise the lid could not be closed for the winter.  We layed out a plastic garbage bag in front of the hive and then placed all the cut comb on it.   As temping as it was to take this honey for ourselves, the colony is just getting started and will need all the honey it can store to get through its first winter.

The bees are busy today at both hives cleaning out comb and frames and should have all the excess honey back in their hives in a few days.  The empty honeycomb will be added to my "wax bucket" for future lip balm and candles.  Honey extraction will take place at my mentor's garage on Saturday.  I should be able to get better pictures without angry bees attacking me.  I will never fool myself into believing that I am just "harvesting" honey again.  I am definitely stealing it.

The Mystery of the Thirsty Honeybees: Solved

Where my honeybees have been obtaining water for the past 3 years has been a mystery.  Well, not a complete mystery.  I have seen them drinking out of the interior of my son's sandbox tire after a rain.  They have also been known to frequent the backyard water spigot when the hose has been in use.  But where they haven't been drinking are their "designated watering holes."  Designated by myself, of course, their "all-knowing" and "ever-wise" beekeeper! 

The first watering holes that I provided were 5 gallon buckets filled with water.  Into each of the buckets I draped a length of burlap for the bees to climb down on so they wouldn't drowned.  I don't think that I ever saw any bees using the buckets, even during the drought last summer.

In addition to the buckets, I added a nice birdbath to the backyard to encourage hydration.  I had always figured the bees were heading to a drainage ditch in the middle of the field that border our property, but with the lack of rainfall it didn't seem likely to be holding any water.  Still, no drinking bees.

Then, by complete chance, I discovered their secret.  I was told by our neighbor to the south about an old concrete garden pond on the extra lot to the south of their house.  Thinking that this would be a great place to take my son, Evan, to find tadpoles we headed over their yesterday, Mason jar in hand.  We did not find any tadpoles.  What we found instead was a steady stream of honeybees flying on and off of the pond's edge!  

I knew they had to be mine as the only other colonies that I am aware of are about 2 miles away.  This was confirmed by the "bee-line" that they were making across my neighbor's backyard toward their hive.  They seem to be like most animals and prefer the icky water that they hunt out themselves rather than the fresh, clean bowl that it placed out for them.  Mystery solved!  Now onto the next mystery: which of my hens is laying the double-yolked eggs?