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Harvesting Honey

July 9th, 2016

Last week I took off a “super” box that has around 60 pounds of honey in it. This is the most honey I’ve ever pulled from one hive at a time. I have three other hives with the same amount of honey in each, which means I should have over 200 pounds of honey to bottle, if I am lucky.

Unfortunately, Erica and I have had some problems with sick cats. We lost two in the last month. One is sick and the other one is waiting for the results of a biopsy to see if he has cancer. My cats live a long time, but right now that means that all my cats are old and getting sick. I did not get further with the honey than robbing that one box.

I used a bee escape for the first time. This is a little puzzle that the bees can get out of, but not into. I put this under the “super” and the bees go down to the hive, but can’t get back up into the honey.

There were about 5 lazy bees left in the super, but I knocked on the side of the box and they took off back to the hive.

I learned the hard way the the secret to using the bee escape is to not use an inner cover above it. The inner cover has a slit so that the bees can get back in from the top, rendering the escape useless. At first I used an inner cover so that the hive would be ventilated during the recent heat wave. This time I put it under the escape so the bees could cool off, but they could not get back into the honey super.

In the past I have used “bee-gone” (stinky) and “Bitter Almond Oil” (almost as stinky) to force the bees out of the super. They sort of work, but are not really acceptable. I have used a leaf blower to blow the bees off the frames, but it takes a long time and the bees return immediately. I used a brush to gently brush them off, but it takes an hour to do a box, and I am almost guaranteed that some genius bees will find a way to sting me. The escape is the only method to clear the bees that really works, but it takes two days to use it. I have only the one escape. (I have a broken escape that I bought a long time ago. I found it under some leaves in the back and the frame was rotted and fell off. I will try to fix it.)

A few minutes ago I put the bee escape on the next box. It takes 24 hours to 48 hours for the bees to exit the super with the honey, so I’ll look tomorrow to see if they are gone. A group of bees went up my pants leg and let me know that they were unhappy with the situation. If I take my sneaker off I will not be able to get it back on because of the swelling.

I’ll repeat this for each hive until I get all the honey. In the mean time I will be spinning honey and Erica will be bottling it.

I have another hive, a split, that is not really doing well. That one is not storing honey and it does not seem to have much of a population. I guess the queen is not well. I do not have high hopes that it will make it through the Summer, much less the coming Winter.

First Day of Summer Honey

June 21st, 2015

The sign is up. I have a batch of Spring honey ready for you.

Added Honey Supers

April 26th, 2015

Last weekend I put on some honey supers. These are the boxes that go on top of the hive. Bees like to move up the hive when storing honey, so the super is on top and the bees, if they are having a good time foraging, will fill it with honey.

In a “flow” when the flowers are popping and bees are returning with pollen and nectar, the supers can fill up in a couple of weeks.

My hope is that I can harvest some honey a little early this year. The season is late and we are in the middle of a strong “flow”. It will not last long because all the flowers and trees are blooming at once. If I am lucky I can be extracting honey from the supers in a two or three weeks.

The three new hives are doing well. They will not be making any honey for harvest for a month or so. I usually have honey after Memorial Day and July 4th, and then again after Labor day. The new bees might have some honey for July 4th.

I will try splitting some of the strongest hives in a few weeks, so I have more hives going into the winter. This time I will be trying something called a “Cloake” board to aid in the splits. This separates the top and bottom boxes, but keeps the hive together so in total they are stronger. Beekeeping is very complicated. I spend hours each week reading about all the methods that “beeks” have developed over the last 200 years to help their bees survive and flourish.

Checked bees

March 8th, 2015

It went up to 40°F yesterday. Today it might hit 50°.

A month ago I checked the bees when the temperature went up briefly and I saw live bees in 6 of the 8 hives.

Yesterday I saw live bees in 7 of the 8 hives. The clumps are small, but alive. If the queens live, I stand a chance of having 7 good hives to start the Spring.

I dug out the front of the hives and pulled the entrance reducers so the bees could get out and take cleansing runs. I put in front feeders with 60/40 sugar solution. I mixed 10 pounds of sugar so each hive gets over a pound.

So far this morning none of the hives have taken any of the sugar. It is still too cold for them to break their clumps up. The ball of bees around the queen keeps her warm. If it hits 50° today, I might see some activity.

It will be above 40° all week so I am hoping that the hives start moving around and take the sugar. I have 10 more pounds so I can refill the feeders.

In three weeks I will get three packages so I may need to buy a couple of hives. I have one empty hive and the hive where one hive died. It may be that I will lose another hive. If I don’t I’ll need a hive for the new package.

In May I will do splits so I will definitely need some boxes then.

 

February Check – Good news

February 8th, 2015

It’s February 8th and the temperature is 41 degrees. I decide to check on the bees. It has been cold and nasty here. Some the hives were very light.

I checked and was surprised that all but one hive seemed happy and healthy. I can only open the top in this weather and peek in, and a couple of hives had top feeders that were heavily covered with propolis, and in one of these I did not hear any bees. It is a heavy hive so I think it might be OK, but I can’t confirm its health.

The other hives were amazing. They seemed very active. Ward gave me some fondant for the week hives and the ones that had it were working their way through it. They still had extra food left. When I get a day above 50 I will suit up and open the hives and put in more.

I order 3 packages of bees for the Spring figuring that I would lose 4 or 5 hives, but if all 8 hives survive I will have to buy some new hive kits for the new bees.

The new bees are coming in the wee hours of March 28 at the last check. I will waiting at lonely parking lot at 3AM with $360 in my pocket and returning home with about 15,000 new bees for my yard..

We bottled honey this morning.

September 6th, 2014

Erica filled up some bottles. We have a few 12 oz bears, some 16 oz glass jars and a few antique style muth jars with corks.  This will be the last honey until next June.

 

My Bee Book

September 6th, 2014

I have been using this blog as a sort of Bee Book. It is not so easy to use or check as a physical book with pages I can turn.

You have to keep records or you can’t keep bees. I bought a notebook and have been keeping a running record of my bee events and be able to go back quickly.

For instance, over Labor Day I pulled some honey and treated the bees with Apistan for mites. I have to pull the Apistan strips in October, so I wrote down all the dates and I can check it quickly.

 

 

The Honey Sign is out

July 25th, 2014

Erica finished labeling the honey jars. This is Summer honey. It is a deeper amber than than the Spring honey. It is slightly smokey with pollen, but not dark or muddy like the Fall honey. It has a very sweet candy cane taste. The bees picked up nectar from late Spring and Early Summer flowers.
We have 78 jars, which is a little more than last time so it may take a week or so to sell out.

Robbed the bees

June 8th, 2014

I took the whole honey super off of the first hive. This hive has better sun than any other hive and I am starting to think that sun is a big deal with bees. I nearly broke my back carrying it to the deck where I will spin the frames so Erica can bottle it. It weighed about 40 pounds, I think.

Look forward to honey late in the week.

I bought “bitter almond oil” which is used to flavor candy and smells just like almond croissants. The bees hate it so I put some on a “fume board” (a board covered with a towel and raise so it does not touch the frames). The bees leave the top of the hive and soon the the super is bee-less. I just lifted up the super, brushed off the stragglers, and then brought it back. Much easier than using the leaf blower.

I then split the hive. It has been very full of bees and has been acting like it will swarm. I put a half hive next to it and put the top box from the original hive on top of this hive body full of old frames. I then pulled some frames from the edges of this box and pushed the frames apart so there was a two frame gap in the middle. I pulled a frame of bees from the middle of the original bottom box and put it in the gap. I then kept pulling frames until I found one full of brood. I put that in the other open slot on the new hive. The bees will take a few of the newly laid brood and make queens. I put the two edge frames I took out in the spaces where I removed the two frames.

I now have two hives where I had one before. This is called a “walk-away” split and is the easiest way to increase your hives. It works about half of the time. Of the four I’ve done, three worked.

The sign is down

April 27th, 2014

We sold out of honey today. We could have done it earlier – there were people who wanted to buy all that we had. Erica tried to limit the sales to just 3 or 4 bottles per customer.

Watch for the sign to go up at the end of May or early June.

The sign is up!

April 15th, 2014

I harvested about 40 pounds of honey. Erica bottle it up and made the labels. Get it while we still have some left.

Keith

Harvested Honey from Frozen Hives

April 14th, 2014

I lost a couple of hives in the Polar Vortex. They were healthy hives, but were so cold that they could not move to get to the stored honey so they starved to death within inches of food. I pulled the stored honey and used some of it to feed my new bees and yesterday I put the rest in my homemade centrifuge and spun out the honey.

The honey is what they call “core” honey. This is the honey stored near the queen and used for feeding the queen. Usually I harvest the excess honey stored at the top of the hive and leave this for the bees to make it through the winter. Core honey is rare in that it is not normally produced and left with the hive for winter food.

The honey is dark and thick as mud with a wonderful flavor. It has much pollen. I saw various kinds of honey as I uncapped the cells. There was white honey from the early Spring, golden honey from late Spring and Summer, and the thick black honey from the fall. Because it has been stored for a year or more the honey was very heavy and thick. Aging honey like this tends to darken it.

The Spring honey will not be ready until late May or early June. In the mean time this batch will be of interest to allergy sufferers as it contains honey for a whole year, all mixed up.

Chicks

March 8th, 2014

If you are interested in day old chicks, our order arrives Monday or Tuesday. We had to order 15 which is the minimum, but we only need 5 or 6.

If you are interested in a few chicks and know how to keep them warm and feed and water them, then we are selling the extras.

Barred Rock, Buff Orpingtons, Easter Eggers, Buff Stars and Australorps. Mix and match.

Early March Bees

March 8th, 2014

The temperature is supposed to be above 40 for the next few days so I put the feeders in.

This is what the two hives look like:

 

 

Nyack Community Garden and Bees

February 28th, 2014

Nyack has a community garden that I see every day while coming home on the bus. I saw the notice about participating today. I have often wondered if they need bees.

I decide against it. Although it might be fun, there would be risk associated with the hive.

If anyone was stung and had a serious medical issue, I might be liable.

The hive is valuable and it might be stolen or the honey purloined. I think a strong three level hive with honey might be worth a hundred or so dollars in wood and frames, and then another hundred for the bees, and another couple of hundred for the honey. It is too much temptation. If someone steals a tomato, it is no great loss, but steal the hive and it is a big loss to me.

The hive is also a target for vandalism. Some people fear bees to the point where they might want to poison them or damage the hive.

It is natural for bees to swarm, even if you take steps to avoid it. If the swarm starts in the middle of the village it would probably land on somebody’s property and they might not appreciate it.

So I will not be volunteering my bees.

University of Montana Online Beekeeping Course

February 12th, 2014

The University of Montana is offering their Apprentice-Level Beekeeper course online this year. It sounds very interesting. You can even take it for college credit. It runs from April 7-25, 2014. This is about two weeks.

My experience is that these courses require more work than you think. This is not passive sitting in a classroom and absorbing information. They offer you the opportunity to learn but there is less of what you might consider teaching. You get only as much out of them as you put in. Because it is online, it is up to you to make the effort to learn. There tends to be less teaching than you would think, and you have to be aggressive about keeping up on the lessons.

 

 

 

 

Ground Hogs Day Bee Check

February 2nd, 2014

I went out and opened the hives.

Two hives were very dead. They must have frozen in the cold weather, because there was about 80 pounds of honey between them. The bees died inches from the honey, which meant that they were too cold to leave the winter ball of bees to find food. The good news is that I have lots of deep frames of honey to use in starting my bees this Spring.

I was stung for the first time in 2014 when I opened up the other hives. I had to go get a bee veil and gloves to wear. I put a frame of honey from the dead hives in each of the live hives so that they might have some more food for the coming cold days. There were lots of bees spread out over many frames so they must have been all right.

I will start feeding them in about three weeks. As soon as we get a few days where the sugar will not freeze I’ll start putting on front feeders  so they will think that the nectar flow has started and they will start in on making brood. If the nurse bees can keep the eggs and brood warm enough there should be an increase in the number of bees. It takes 21 days to grow a bee from egg to emergence from the comb. If I can have bees coming out near the end of March they will be ready for the early Spring flowers.

At the end of March my 3 packages should arrive. If the hives have strong populations I’ll call up and ask the bee girl to pick me up a couple of queens and I’ll split the two hives. I will try to keep the good strong queens (that lived through the winter) and use a few frames of bees for the new queen in a nearby hive. When you split a hive, the new hive must be right next to the old hive or the bees will all return to the original hive. The hives must be less than three feet or more than three miles apart, otherwise the bees remember their home.

With luck, I will start the year with seven hives.

 

 

 

Ordered my 2014 bees

January 5th, 2014

I just ordered three packages of bees from Hudson Valley Bee Supply for late March delivery.

I have four hives now, but I am pretty sure that one is not going to make it and that one or two of the others will die. The weather here has gone down to below zero and I don’t think the bees will survive.

I could have, with extreme luck, as many as seven hives this summer, but at least I will have three.

 

Splits looks pretty good.

September 1st, 2013

Last July, I made a “walk-away” split on on of the hives. It was very active and had a good supply of reserves so I made two hives of it. I made sure that each hive had newly laid brood so that the box without a queen could make a new one. It has been a month and a half and both hives are doing well. Bees live about 45 days, so if the split had not worked, one of the hives would be empty.

Otherwise the hives are suffering from the lack of flowers in late summer. I see now that they are bringing back lots of pollen, and I guess it is Goldenrod, Queen Anne’s Lace and Ragweed. This is good for the bees. I have been feeding them every week, but not excessively.

I hope that they will make it through the winter.

The last time I harvested honey, it rained so I did not spin the frames. When I came back the next day, the bees had found the frames and robbed back all the honey. The frames were completely stripped of honey. I did not sell any honey this summer.

I will suit up tomorrow and look at the honey supers on the hive and see if they can be harvested. I might do it tomorrow if there is enough. Otherwise I will take off the queen excluders and let the bees have it the honey for the winter.

Robbed the bees

July 24th, 2013

I spent a couple of hours with the bees today. I have needed to open the hives for a few weeks, but the heat makes the wax comb all droopy and you have to be careful about manipulating the hives. I don’t want to kill a queen or disturb any of the carefully constructed bee-works inside the hives.

Today it dropped down into the middle 80s and the humidity was low so I suited up and went to work. I have my eye on a nylon ventilated suite. The one I have is horribly hot. I have to wait until I am working again before I spend any money on bees.

I have been peeking in under the lid at the honey supers and they seemed to be filling up, but when I opened up the hives there was not as much honey as I had hoped. There was lots of pollen, indicating that the bees were finding flowers, but little nectar. I took any frames that had more than about 2/3 honey and left the other partially filled frames for the bees.

In all I got 8 mostly filled frames out of the three hives, which is a good haul and much more than I got the last time.

I split one hive. The smoker was working and the bees were not particularly upset with me, so I took the time. My method of using wet towels to cover the parts of the hive where I am not working seems to keep the bees calm. They don’t like being open so I only leave the space of a frame or two open where I am pulling them out.

I found brood, although I did not find any day old brood. I am guessing that they bees were covering the very young ones. I did not see the queen. I pulled off the top deep and put it on a base just to the right of it, and swapped some brood frames from the bottom box to the former top box. Then I put a new deep on top of each so they would have plenty of room.

With luck one box will have the queen and one box will have a frame of new brood so that the bees can make a queen in the queenless box. This is called a “Walk Away Split” and is the traditional way to increase you bees. It works about half the time.

No stings this time. The smoke kept the bees calm and I used nitrile painting gloves underneath the regular bee gloves. I almost always get a sting through the gloves, so this time I tried the trick of using a thin plastic glove underneath the regular gloves. It seemed to work. The gloves had several bee stingers on them after I finished, but none made it to my hands.

I will spin the frames tonight and filter the honey. Erica will bottle the honey when she finds time. Perhaps Sunday I will put out the honey sign.