New Hobby: Bee Keeping

[shilala]

Oh, the new queen thing, also temperature induced in most cases. Or in all.
A young queen can take the stress. The old one can't.
Temperature causes the slowing egg production, too.

[massphatness]

Appreciate all the great info - guys: thanks!

Was able to observe the hive a great deal this weekend while spreading what seemed like a metric ton of bark mulch in the yard.

It was pretty cool to see the bees coming back to the hive carrying pollen balls. They actually have an area on their hind legs called a pollen basket, and as they collect pollen during their foraging, they roll it together in a ball and carry it in the pollen basket. Was reading they can carry their weight in pollen, and an average colony will collect 100 pounds of it during the course of a season.


And here's one of the girls working a basket of hanging flowers I put near the hive. You can see she is carrying a pollen ball too.

[massphatness]

We opened up the hive tonight to remove the feeder frame and replace it with a regular frame.

The bees had been building some comb in the open space between the inner cover and the tops of the frames. That's because I was using a one-inch spacer board to allow the bees access to the pollen patty. I removed that as well -- they seem to be gathering sufficient resources and the patty is no longer needed. With the spacer board gone, the inner cover will sit just above the frames, and there won't be sufficient space for the bees to build excess comb. Now they fully concentrate on building the frames.



Took my first sting tonight while chiseling the comb off the inner cover. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. My fault for wearing shorts. Got me just below the knee. Felt barley more than a mosquito bite though.

Saving all the comb for future use (lots of uses for beeswax, but you need A LOT of it).

[jonumberone]

Originally Posted by massphatness

My fault for wearing shorts.

No. it's your fault for placing a swarm of bees on your lawn.

[BigAsh]

Originally Posted by massphatness

Took my first sting tonight while chiseling the comb off the inner cover. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. My fault for wearing shorts. Got me just below the knee. Felt barley more than a mosquito bite though.

I've seen those legs...that's a lot of "dermis"...surprised you felt it at all!

[AdamJoshua]

Awesome pics and information. Love at First Sting- great Scorpions album btw.

Tom, remember wear shirts with sleeves and no shorts, you might wanna invest in actual shoes as well.

[icehog3]

Sleeves. Check.
Jeans. Check.
Shoes. Check.
Pollen balls. Ch....wait, what?

[markem]

Nice, Vin, transitioning to a fully functional setup!

I find that honey bee stings are easily ignored. Bumble bee stings less so and hornets are just asking for a MADD (Mutually Assured Destruction) response.

[IBQTEE1]

Wow, I didn't realize there is so much prep when it comes to this.

I am learning a ton.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by IBQTEE1

Wow, I didn't realize there is so much prep when it comes to this.

It's enough to keep someone "beezy"

[shade]

Freaking awesome, Vin. Looks like you and Grace are well on your way to parenting 60,000 or so young girls.

Originally Posted by OLS

I almost think that you should just let them keep all their honey, at least to the point where you end up with more
than one hive. Then maybe start taking some for daddy. I don't know if anyone really knows just how to keep the
bees around forever when they can't figure out what's really going on yet. In any case, you are a guy that goes over-
board to be kind, I am sure it will work out.

Agree. Conditions almost have to be perfect weather wise, to be able to 'rob' honey from a first year hive. A lot depends on how you want to manage your hive(s). You can take honey from your girls, but you'll most assuredly have to supplement their stores in late summer with a sugar solution. Personally I'm not a fan of this, but lots of beekeepers do this with great success. I would take one frame of honey though to reward all your hard work, Vin.

Originally Posted by CigarNut

Do bees do ok with cigar smoke?

There are some theories out there that say if you add a cigar leaf or two to your smoker, the natural insecticide in tobacco will help keep the varroa destructors (parasitic mites) at bay. Doubtful at best. I've done hive inspections without any protection other than a good Cuban cigar. Works sometimes.

Originally Posted by icehog3

I wish I was a bee.

You are beeutiful Tom, or a beeut as it were.

Originally Posted by massphatness

Nope -- in fact, I wasn't shaking hard enough. They really just want to get into the hive and start doing bee stuff. Honey bees are pretty docile. It usually takes quite a bit for them to get aggressive.

Spring and Summer inspections are 'easy'. Just wait until they are defending their honey.

[icehog3]

Originally Posted by shade

Spring and Summer inspections are 'easy'. Just wait until they are defending their honey.

Hopefully they don't defend until August or later, Mark?

[massphatness]

Did a hive inspection this past weekend. (There's some video, but I need to edit it down so my Flickr account to accept it.)

The bees have drawn out about 50% of the frames, and new bees are starting to emerge from the brood comb.

Will be checking again later this week because once they've drawn out 80% of the frames in the current box, I need to add a second box.

Grace took a couple bee stings for the team. No video of that, unfortunately.

Will try to get the video up in the next day or so because there's some cool activity going on in the hive.

[BigAsh]

Is a second box considered a "new hive"?...Will the first box get jealous and angry if caught playing with the second box?...

[massphatness]

Second box creates a larger hive. A strong, healthy hive generally has two boxes of 10 frames each and approximately 50-60,000 honey bees. (All of which are programmed to swarm on July 15.)

[BigAsh]

that's a LOT of bees!....do errant bean bags agitate the masses and can we smear honey on anyone traveling from CT??

[Tio Gato]

Originally Posted by massphatness

Second box creates a larger hive. A strong, healthy hive generally has two boxes of 10 frames each and approximately 50-60,000 honey bees. (All of which are programmed to swarm on July 15.)

Now we'll learn just how fast Tom can run.

[massphatness]

No honey yet. Or at least know honey that I can use. All the honey that's being produced right now is for the bees themselves.
Posted via Mobile Device

[icehog3]

I like Keith's CT idea.

[massphatness]

Clicking on the photo above should bring you to the hive inspection video from this past Saturday. A few things to note:

* My dopey dog tries to eat a bee right at the beginning of the video. Fortunately, she fails.

* The camera work is a little shaky. Grace got me a GoPro for Christmas, and this was our first time using it. Will need to have a steadier and slower hand in the future. Tried to cut out as much of the nausea-inducing scenes as possible.

* You really get a sense for how the bees don't give a sh!t about us poking around. Some of them are buzzing about, of course, but for the most part they're just focused on doing their bee thing.

* Need to figure out how to capture individuals images from the video because there's some good shots of brood cells and honey cells, but the video progresses too quickly to see them clearly.