Soon....a new year and a new season

A few days before Christmas, 2016, I'm thinking forward to spring and the bees that have been ordered.  Next year, I will have two hives.  I ordered two Nucs so that I'm sure I'll have two.  I tried to increase the number of hives for a few years and lost the hives for one reason or another.

Once I have two hives, I do hope it helps me to fix problems before they are too large to be fixed.  If one hive becomes weak, and the other strong, I can move bees from one to the other to help strengthen the hive, as one example.  It just is good to have at least one other hive to compare.

I have the equipment for two hives  and some extra frames.  I'm looking forward to a new year.

Bear visits early Nov. 2016

Ok, I've had enough of this!

Last week, a bear broke into my shed where I had some honey frames waiting to go to the dump.  My shed door has one of those 1/2" steel pins that goes into the floor to keep the door in place.  The bear bent it sideways and got in.  He scattered all the frames over my vegetable garden until he was done, knocking over anything in his way.  The garden fence was flattened as he made what looks to be his exit.

He also got into my compost bin on the other side of the yard.  He had to dig deep to find the household compost stuff...I had it all covered with  mowed leaves.

He came back at some point and went through the garden looking for frames he left behind but we had since taken them to the dump. He lifted a fake rock that goes over my propane tank cover, tossed it aside, looking for goodies under there.

Then yesterday at about 5PM, he sauntered into  my yard, rested on my front lawn and generally acted like he'd been here before.  In fact, he acted like he owned the place.

I took these shots and a video.

Here he was about 20 feet from the front porch. Then he came to the tree and lied down for a bit.  That's when I shut the door loudly so he'd take off.

This morning, I see he's been back and has broken into the greenhouse.  He broke into it last year around this time as well, but I have nothing stored in there anymore, other than empty flower pots.  Looks like he never made it inside but he tore off one of the panels to get in ...a potting bench that runs the length of the greenhouse was in his way however.

Then I happened to look outside at my pond.  It's practically empty!  And I see Butterfly bushes growing beside it flattened.  I need to go see if he ate the water lilies too! (he didn't.) I'm assuming his claws have punctured a hole into the lining.  Yet another fix-it job perhaps I also wonder if he didn't jump and splash around to cause the water to spill out..  I'll fill  it and then see what happens. I had just removed the pump and hose that goes to little waterfall a few weeks ago.  Otherwise, he'd have probably ruined at least the hose.

One last point.  He didn't go anywhere near the electric fence around the beehives. I won't remove that until I'm sure he's gone into hibernation.

Very discouraging

Today is 10 19 16.  I went out to the hive with my binoculars to watch the girls as I like to do.  Had to go in mid-afternoon since it's getting dark earlier and after work, I can't see them as well.

What I saw were hive beetles going in and out.  That prompted me to do some research real quick and get out to the hive with the strips glued to the bottom of corregated cardboard so that the grooves are exposed, stapled the strips to the smooth side and taped to the bottom board.  That was after cleaning out dead bees and shredded comb.

Then I started removing frames to see what I had.  Basically a lot of diseased looking frames, and no honey left.  A few bees grabbing what they could.

A week or so ago, I saw so many bees.  Now I realize what I saw was robbing going on.

Now I have nothing again.  I'm very discouraged and am not sure if I'll try again or not.  I need to think about it.  I certainly haven't done very well with this hobby and feel very bad about it.

I may put a Nuc with brand clean frames that have some comb into the greenhouse and add pollen patties for them to eat.  Maybe I'll be able to keep a few bees that way.  Maybe it's wishful thinking.

Watched a bee hatch before my very eyes!

I watched a bee be born a few days ago...at least one.  So I believe I witnessed some of the last batch of bees to be born this season.

What worries me is that I just didn't see a huge number of bees.  It seems that by this time of year, I should see more.  But I saw a bit of brood...not much.  And the bees hatching...I wonder if "hatching" is the right term.  Being born then.

The hive is not the usual setup.  I have all the brood and most of the activity in the upper deep.  And the lower deep is the honey stores.  And the stores aren't all that great either.  I just don't know if I have enough bees to cluster and make it through the winter.

I have closed off the entrance to the 3 inch width with the mouse guard over that.  I just have the two deeps there now.  I will add pollen patties very soon and will need to replenish them often this winter to ensure they have enough food.

At this point, I'll order another nuc soon, for next spring.  I had hoped to go into the winter with a very strong hive but that's not what I'm seeing.

I didn't see the queen there this time but that's not unusual, but with the fewer bees on the frames, I think I should have seen her.  But I didn't check every single frame either.  I spot checked. So that could easily be why I didn't spot her.  She had been active fairly recently given I watched some of her babies be born.

Always a mystery.  I do hope, and will continue to do what I think are the right things :) and try to get these girls through the winter.

brood chamber in upper deep

I feel like I must have switched the deeps around but I really don't think I did.  During today's inspection here was my action list:

• remove supers and take honey for me
• add varroa mite strips to the two deeps
• add sugar water in the top hive feeder
• inspect all frames.
• add mouse guard to hive opening
• mow the grass around the hive in the fenced area

I saw good brood patterns and many eggs, capped and uncapped honey.  It looked good...except all this was in the upper deep.  The lower deep had a lot of uncapped honey; some brood pattern, some capped honey.  I'm worried now that they won't have enough honey stores to get them through the winter.

There is a lot of pollen again now with the goldenrod in full bloom.  I hope they can fill up some of that uncapped honey and cover for their own use this winter.

I did buy pollen patties to help them later on.  I guess we'll see what the next weeks show.

I really wanted to add another deep above the other two but that's probably something I'll want to do in the spring.  Or if I can, I'll start another hive in the spring.  But first I need to see these through the winter.

puzzling inspection

I went into the hive this week...just a week after my last inspection.  This time, I think I saw the queen in the most outside frame in the lower deep.

But I didn't see any eggs in the lower deep this time.  I saw some eggs in the upper deep though, but not many.  And I saw one frame that had a bunch of drone brood so I removed that frame.

There were still a lot of  bees but I'm not really sure what's going on right now. Could it be a new queen I saw?  I did find an empty queen cell so maybe the queen I saw was a new queen that hasn't had her flight yet.

Last week's sugar syrup was gone so I added more.  I left the supers on the hive for another few weeks and then I'll take off what I can and hope to see more eggs in the hive.

It's mushroom foraging season.  At this time of year, my free time is spent walking in the woods looking for mushrooms.  Yesterday I found some lobster mushrooms and various fresh boletes, including porcini.  There were others but weren't fresh enough to take.  Then time was spent cleaning and frying up.  Then into the freezer.  Sometimes I dry the harvest but it depends.  Some mushrooms dry up very well, like black trumpets.  Others, like chanterelle, get rubbery if you dry them so I fry them up and then freeze them.  That works well.

Taking off some honey

When checking on the hive yesterday, I see several frames in the supers full and ready so I took off 4 frames that I will extract.  I will leave the rest there for now.

When I looked into the honey stores deep, I found capped and uncapped honey...more capped than not.  I also saw brood in various stages and bees bringing in yellow pollen.  I think the dearth is over with goldenrod blooming.  But in my yard, there's not much goldenrod blooming yet.  Not sure I'll have that much this year since I deadheaded them last year.  I think that was a mistake so I won't do it again.  I want the goldenrod for the bees.  Not so good for my sinuses but it's the price you pay I guess.

I was pleased to see the activity in the hive.

However, when I removed the top hive feeder, it had a lot of yellow jackets in there dead.  I have a yellow jacket nest somewhere in my porch ceiling.  As I read more about the dearth at this time of year, I read that stealing is a major concern with other insects wanting the sugar water or honey.  I decided to close off the venting.  I have holes in two boxes, a deep and a super, which I drilled to give more ventilation in the hive.  I plugged them up with corks yesterday.  I also added back in the entrance reducer at it's widest opening to further close up the entrances to the hive.

I had been noticing a lot of flurry there at the hive and I think it was due to fending off predators. Hopefully they can now relax a bit and not use their energy to fight them off.

And I filled the feeder with  more sugar water to keep the bees fed in case there's not enough flowering plants to satisfy.

It's time to begin thinking about wintering over the bees.  I will need to buy bales of hay one at a time since I no longer have a truck.  That is, unless I can figure out another alternative.

Adding room in the brood box so queen can lay eggs in them

I noticed the other day that my brood chamber had a few frames with uncapped honey and pollen on them...but no eggs or larvae.  So today, I swapped them for a few frames with comb so that the queen has a place to lay eggs. I wanted to do this before they ramp up production again with the goldenrod in a week or two. These were the only deep frames I had with comb on them...at least that's what I thought until I saw I had a few in the freezer from last year.  I guess I should extract what's in there and put them back into production.

I may need the frames from the freezer soon since the two frames I added will need some amount of cleanup. I've heard that it's faster for them to make new comb than to clean up old comb.  Not sure if that's true or not but I do have many frames with  no comb at all.  I thought I'd start off with them next spring to give them plenty of time to build.

Thanks to the "fat bee man" on youtube for the advice.  He's a great resource to supplement the local folks who also provide so much good information and learning.

Hive inspection today - 7/16/16

I went into the hive today to see how things are going.  I needed to look in the brood box since I had seen  some comb when looking through the bottom opening and figured there had to be a lot of misplaced comb down there.  And I didn't get to that box the last time I inspected so it needed to be looked at.

It really wasn't too bad but I took off the comb and checked the frames.  I could see some uncapped honey on a few frames, but also saw just the right mix of capped honey, brood and pollen.  And there sure are enough bees!  I didn't see the queen but saw eggs in cells so I know she's in there somewhere if I didn't kill her in this inspection.  I did see a few queen cells which I left alone.  They were actually building a queen cell on the bottom board too but I removed that one and left the other two I had seen on frames.

I upset the bees today because I got into each box. As I went out just now to take the photo below, I had bees surrounding me and they aren't happy.  I'll leave them alone now for a few weeks.

the leaning hive... I put extra cement block to steady it but it won't get fixed until next time I take the entire hive apart like today. I didn't realize was leaning until it was all put back together.

Here's what I did today:

• Removed misplaced comb which I'll use for candles later in the year
• Checkerboarded the two supers.  The bottom super was almost full so since we have a few more months where they should be making honey, I thought I'd give this technique a try.
• Inspected for queen and brood
• Checked for honey stores in second box (these are filling up nicely!)
• Opened another vent (hole in box) to give them more air circulation. This morning, bees were bearding outside the hive which is caused by poor ventilation.
• Added more sugar syrup to top hive feeder.

Hive update - 7/11/16

I've been in the hive a few times since my June 18th posting.

• The one super left on the hive had a few frames still to build out with comb but the rest were being filled with nectar and honey.  So I added a second super.
• What I need to do this week is checkerboard the second super and the first, to encourage the bees to build up
• I checked half the frames in the top deep and they mostly were building a lot of white comb at the top of the frames, which I cleared out.
• The box is getting very heavy and there was good looking capped honey in there.
• I didn't get to the bottom deep which is what I need to do next.  I will get down there this week when I checkerboard the supers.
• I'm curious about a queen and if there are more eggs now than on June 18th.  I think that by now there should be a new queen.
• The bees do act like there is a queen. There seems to be enough bees but I have definitely seen a reduction of bees coming in with full side pockets.  In the spring, there is a constant number of bees bringing in pollen in various colors. Right now, I don't see them come in with much at all.  That should change as new flowers begin to emerge including the goldenrod that will start blooming soon.
• I am still feeding the bees and will continue so that they can build up lots of comb that I can hopefully reuse next year and save a lot of time.

I need to begin thinking of winterizing the hive and get some hay into the bee yard for winter insulation...although I hate to think of winter at all during the summer.

I can't wait until I can checkerboard the top deep..but I think that will be a project for next spring when I am hoping I can expand the hive.  And then that new deep will become hive #2...if all goes well.

Girls active on May 16, 2016

I checked the hive yesterday and was happy to see the queen.  What I also saw, however, was a new queen cell being built.

I also saw capped and uncapped larvae so she's laying.  But I didn't see that all the frames were full and there were still 4 pretty empty.  I had added a second deep a week or so ago and added a few honey frames, so they will have room to grow.  I think that all the rain we had slowed them down for a week.

It's been cold these last few days so doubt they're out too far away.  I know I'm not!

I also added two supers to the top of the second deep so that they'll draw comb out on some frames in the supers.  My hope is that they will be ready to receive the honey when the bees are ready for the supers.

Some questions after checking the hive today June 18 2016

I just came in from checking the hive.  Here's what I saw and then I'll ask a few questions and publish on the Brattleboro Beekeepers Group, hoping someone has some input.

• I have two deeps and two supers on there.  (The supers are there because some of the frames needed to have wax added and so I wanted them to be there and get ready for honey later in the season.) 
• The supers have been there for a few weeks.
• Above the supers, I added another deep today with no frames, and used it to hold a jar of sugar water.  I think it will help them build comb and to not eat the stores in case there's not enough pollen coming in
• There was lots of comb at the bottom of the second deep and a lot of comb at the top of the first deep - I removed it all
• Three queen cells were found. I left them alone for now (since I have questions...see below.
• I saw brood in various stages of growth. 
• I didn't see the queen but based on the in process brood, I assume she's still in there somewhere.

Questions to anyone who knows and is willing to answer

• With what looks like three queen cells being built, I think I did the right thing by leaving them...anyone have input on that?
• I had two queen cells on one frame, and one on another.  I wondered if I could take one of those frames and start a Nuc or another hive.  It it too new a hive since this is a "new beginning year" where I started with a Nuc.
• I fear weakening the existing hive too much by trying to expand it this year. I might be better off if I waited until next spring and, if my hive survives the winter strong, I could start another hive at that time.  But am I right that I should wait and not do anything more this year?
• Since I saw so much comb being built below, could they possibly be thinking of swarming? They do have more room to fill...and since it's the first year for this hive, I'm not sure.

I am at the very bottom of my own honey from last year...I actually bought a jar at the Coop in Brattleboro last week that I'll use next.  That's kind of sad but I hope to remedy that situation later this summer. Fingers crossed.

New bees arrive

I went over to Swanzey, NH this morning to pick up a nuc from Imaginethathoney who picked up a lot of nucs from Singing Cedars up in Orwell, VT.  I've not tried their bees in the past so we'll see how this year goes.  I noticed that only 4 of the 5 frames were filled out, giving them more room to grow, I guess.  I also found the queen!  It's the first time I've found a queen on my own...after 4+ years.  There she was though, in plain sight.

I have added the frames to a deep that I had ready for them in my bee yard. Now I wait and let them adjust to their new home.  Not many came out to fly around but it's only in the mid 40's right now and rain is expected so I think they'll stay in and stay warm.  After tomorrow, nice weather is supposed to arrive and then I expect to see them flying around my yard.

I have a farm down the road from me...a few miles...and when shopping there yesterday, I noticed a lot of honey bees.  I asked one of the owners if they had a hive and she said they have several.  That is great news and no wonder they have such good looking crops!

So I'm ready to have a great bee season. Wish me luck!

Cleaning, repairing and getting ready

I spent some time last weekend repairing my hives.

• painted some deeps in colors instead of just white.  Nothing gaudy.  I had some paint samples in little jars and since they're too small do print anything large, I decided to use them to paint my hives.
• Scraped off propolis and any remaining beeswax from hives and frames
• Used a propane torch to scorch the inside of the boxes or frames to remove any trace of mites or anything else living on or in them.  What was great about this is the wonderful smell in the house afterwards.
• Ordered any additional supplies I might need for the season.  This year, I needed some new foundation so I ordered enough for 20 frames (hoping to grow my hive from one to two)

Getting the bee yard ready

I recently  electrified my fence around the empty bee yard to begin getting ready for bear to show up. I'd like them to get zapped early if they come by so hopefully they won't come back this season.

I am sticking with the marine battery to charge the fence.  It's the best way to go since I don't need to worry about replacing D cell batteries once a month.  Even after the battery sat down cellar over the winter, when I recharged it, it only took a short time ...under an hour...to fully charge again so it didn't lose much charge at all.  I even hooked it up myself which was a first for me.

Of course, I had taken pictured in the fall to help me do it correctly..and thankfully there is the Internet when I get lost.  I can usually find what I need by researching.

It looks like it's early to mid May before my bees will arrive.  I might have prepared my yard a little early...could I be overanxious?  I think I am.  I have to admit that I missed looking out every morning at my hives to make sure they were intact.  And I missed having a Christmas wreath on them during the season.  This year will be different.  I can feel it.

A new "and improved?" year to come

Let's hope that the new bee season to come is better than last year's season where I lost all my bees.

I attended a workshop this past weekend and there were about 12 people there who all shared their experiences. I left there not feeling alone anymore.  Many of the beekeepers experienced bee losses last year. Some, like me, didn't exactly know what caused their hives to collapse.

I am still trying to understand what happened to my hives.  I took one of my frames from last year with me to see if contained varroa or nosema but the instructor said no...it just looked like a bear had gotten that frame.  And one had!

After I took my hives down in the fall, I stored the frames in my greenhouse so that would deter the moths which like a dark environment.  However, before the bear went into hibernation, they came by, apparently, and smelled the honey in the greenhouse and broke in.  They pushed in one panel on the side and roof and squeezed in and took some frames outside and got what they could.  Now my frames are stored in the shed for the winter, or down in the basement, or "down cellar" which is the term I use.

This year, I will scorch each frame and hive boxes, and add new foundation so that we start with a clean hive.  If all goes well, I will start a Nuc from the one hive so that I will have extra bees of my own in case I need them in the future.  That was the recommendation of Imagine That Honey over in Swanzy, NH.  This beekeeping group will strive to produce our own bees so that we don't need to purchase bees from down south.  We would like to have our Northern bred bees which should be heartier than those from elsewhere and much less stress for them.  I think it's a great goal!

The thinking about my bee loss last year where the remaining bees all died in front of my hives is pesticides.  I have no control over what other people do around here but I did let my entire street know about my hives and to please not use pesticides.  I think most listened.  But I know one neighbor used them to kill barberry bushes cropping up throughout the woods and fields around here. I don't know what the answer is since bees fly up to 5 miles away from the hive to gather nectar and pollen. I can only hope that my bees don't run into it again.  Cleaning the hives can help to reduce any pesticides that might be in the hive so starting off clean is about all I can do and hope for the best.