Feeding the Bees

I stopped by the farm today to feed the bees in preparation for winter.  From my inspection last weekend, I have several hives needing some help with their winter food supply.  I wanted to try a couple of new feeding methods.  Typically I use enterance feeders, but some hives I want to pack with sugar water.  I remembered that Lonnie Langley had given me some 1 gallon feeders that had been tucked away in a corner of the woodshop and forgotten.  A gallon of sugar water holds 4 pounds of sugar.  I placed this on Hive #14

I also made an internal jar feeder out of one my candy boards that I made last winter but never used.  I drilled six holes in the board and placed window screen over the middle two to allow for ventilation.  I placed this feeder on Hive #13.

I also noticed something that gives me mixed feelings for Hive #13....I found a supersedure queen cell near the top of a frame.  I would rather they not try and swarm at this time of year, but maybe they know more than me.

I also placed a double feeder on Hive #15, the Wallace Hive because it was starting out having to make comb from scratch.  I placed two enterance feeders on it.

I also found two dead hives today: #8 & #10.  It was sad, but expected as they were not doing well.  These hives were the Kull Extraction and the Buzzard Swarm.  As I think back over the time with them, both had poor laying queens.

I also followed-up on a phone call last week about a bee tree that blew down and there were bees keeping it from getting cut up.  I stopped by the house and easily found the tree in the backyard.

As I inspected the tree, I realized that the flying things were not honey bees but were yellow jackets!  I informed the home owner of her options, and that she didn't have to feel bad about killing them since they weren't honey bees.

Logo for Quicksall Honey Bee Farm

Over this year I have been playing with a logo for the honey bee farm, and I've settled on this graphic.  I have placed it on my bottled honey this season.  Next will come t-shirts and embroidered shirts!
 

So far I've sold over 50 bottles of honey, and this morning Aaron will be selling honey at the Effingham farmers market at the Village Square Mall from 9-11am.

Wild Hive Bottling Done

Earlier this week, I finally finished crushing and bottling the last of the honey from the wild hive extraction.  I tried several methods to extract the honey, but what seemed to work best at this time was to gently warm 1 inch strips of comb in the oven for about 4 minutes, but squeeze the honey out.  Long processes...hard process on the hands!  I believe I squeezed out around 7 gallons of honey!  Let me tell you, using frames and an extractor is much easier!

Effingham Old Settlers Day

Today was Old Settlers Day in Effingham on the old courthouse lawn.  The Crossroads Beekeepers had a tent set up featuring all kinds of information about beekeeping including a large assortment of suits, a regular and top bar hive, and honey from three different beekeepers.  I sold just under 30 bottles of honey from the Gates extraction on Labor Day.  The day was a lot of fun!

Below is the booth with Rick showing his topbar hive in the back, Dick selling Lance's honey on the left, my display under the Got Bees? sign, and Dave's honey display on the right.

Here is a closer view of my display.

Two Queens

Today, Jessica & I went to the farm between activities to check on the new hive from the extraction on Labor Day; we met Dawn there following her trip up North.  As I looked through the hive frame by frame I found the queen I marked on Monday, and placed her frame back in the hive.  Two or three frames later I found another queen!  I suddenly spoke, "By golly, it was two hives."  I quickly gathered a few hive components and split this hive with one queen in each hive.

I also did a quick look at some of the other hives and found the Kull hive was not in good shape with very low numbers and poor laying pattern; this hive will not survive winter, so I need to start planning my winter preps to allow as many hives to survive winter as possible.

Mother of All Extractions!!!

Today, Dawn & I drove to the home of Nic and Candy Gates between Greenup and Charleston.  They had an old shed with a hive between the walls that needed removed.  As Nic and I tore into the shed we discovered that this was not a typical removal, but the Mother of All Extractions (at least in my book).  As you can see in the below photo, this hive was quite large.  I'm estimating we vaccuumed up 20 pounds of bees and removed over 100 pounds of comb. 

 

Here is a close up photo of the honey comb on the right panel.

And this is the Nic & Candy, who have learned more about bees today than they were expecting! 

 

Tore Apart Birdhouse

Today, I did several bee chores including cleaning out a dead hive that was infested with wax moth (YUK!).  This was quite a chore that including scraping out the old wax, scrubbing and scraping the frames, and using near-boiling water clean the plasticell foundation.  Maybe it would have been easier to just have bought new frames!

I also took apart the birdhouse and removed the bees and comb...boy was it packed!  The honey was also amazing...I thought it tasted like sweet white wine!

Finally, I disassembed the observation hive and placed the frames in the swarm box with the Deters swarm.  We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.  Either the queen will prove herself, or they'll have to be combined for winter.

More Late Swarms

Recently, I received two more phone calls regarding bees, one from Doug Deters in Teutopolis and the other from Kenneth Wolf in Neoga.  Doug found a small swarm under a kiddi wading pool building a come on a weed near his house.  Kenneth received a call about a swarm in a birdhouse, but he wasn't prepared for it and offered it to me.  Saturday morning would be the big day.  After an early morning trip to take Aaron to Urbana I stopped by Neoga on the way home and met XXX who had a swarm in the neighbor's birdhouse.  The best part of this capture was when he said I could have the birdhouse!  I just stuck it in a box and took off....what an easy removal!!  I dropped the birdhouse off at the farm and then headed towards Teutopolis.

Unfortunately, when I looked in the transport hive that contained the swarm from Draves, they were basically all dead!  I'm not exactly sure why; possibly because I didn't give them  a feeder than night I dropped them off.  It was a sad sight.

I then ran over to Teutopolis and met with Doug who showed me the small swarm they found.  I placed it in a transport nuc and brought it to the farm.  I placed it in my swarm catcher nuc with some sugar water inside the box to see what they would do.  They are awefully small, but we'll see what they do in a day.

This afternoon we had the Girl Scouts out to the farm, and I wanted them to have a chance to see the bees up close, so I installed plexiglass in the new observation hive I bought at the HAS conference and loaded them with a couple frames of bees from one of the hives.  It turned out pretty good, though I need to trim the glass a little.  The girls had a lot of fun watching the bees!

Late Season Swarms

Tonight was a busy time after work.  Dawn received a call from Drave's Archery about a swarm outside their building hanging on a fallen tree branch.  I stopped by after work and found a small swarm; the owner said it was four times the size a few days ago, unfortunately I didn't receive the call until today.  I placed the swarm in my transporting nuc and headed home to pick up the family for the big event of the day.

Sean Wallace had called a few days ago about a hive that had built comb up in a tree in the back yard of one of his properties.  Dawn, Aaron, Dad, and I went to remove the hive and comb up about 12-15 feet up in the tree.

Here is the hive where you can see the ridges of honey comb under the bees.

In this photo you can see how we tied the honey comb into open frames to be placed into the nuc.

In the photo, Dawn is on top of the ladder vaccuuming the remaining bees after all the comb was removed.  Larry is holding the bee vac because the hose wasn't quite long enough.

New Boxes & Dead Hives

I spent the afternoon today conducting a big inspection of the hives.  This was prompted by several factors including buying new hive boxes from Jason Weaver down at St. Peter.  So now all my hives have two deep supers to build up with honey for the fall nectar flow.  I also found hives #3 and #10 were dead or nearly dead.  They had not been doing well for quite some time, so this didn't surprise me too much.  I installed the last mating nuc into the site of Hive #3 and the new Buzzard Swarm into the site of Hive #10.  They each received fresh boxes and frames.  The frames in these new cypress boxes have white plasticell foundation with a deeper impression to encourage the bees to draw out comb better/faster.  We'll have to see if that works, but I do know one thing for sure, the swarm really took to the new frames!

More Equipment

What time is it when you have too many bee swarms?  Time to buy more beekeeping equipment.  After more success than I planned on when I was building hive components over the past winter, today Aaron and I drove down to rural St. Peter, Illinois, to buy deep hive boxes and frames.  Jason Weaver builds quality boxes out of cypress wood and orders frames from Dadant.  10 hive boxes with frames equals more money than I wanted to spend, but it will hopefully ensure my new swarms will have enough food for the winter months.

August Swarm Capture

Received phone call today from Allison Buzzard from Beecher City that she had a bee swarm in a tree in her yard she wanted removed.  So, after work Aaron, Seth, and myself headed out to capture the bees.  As you can see in the pictures, it was a pretty good sized swarm and the boys had a lot of fun working with the bees and the bee vaccuum...this was Seth's first swarm capture.  Allison was a bit nervous at first, but she joined us after some encouragement and learned quit a bit about the bees.  We then took the swarm to the farm and placed them in a nuc with sugar water available until Saturday when I'll put them in a regular hive.

Hive Inspection

Well, it had been quite a while since I saw the bees (Boy Scout trip to Montana from July 17 thru August 3), so today Dawn & I went to the farm to inspect the hives.  All are doing well with the exception of Hive 8 which has no queen.  My plan is to combine the nuc that I have with Hive 8 since the nuc has a queen.  I desperately need more deep boxes and frames for the goldenrod flow that is just starting.  Time to place an order!

Yet another mystery

Aaron & I went to the farm today to check on bees before leaving on our scouting trip to Montana.  The swarm I captured last week at the Stewardson tractor pulling grounds was gone, empty, out-of-here! (again?!?!)  Their feeder was empty, which I initially thought was a good sign as I approached the hive, but when I looked inside their messages was "So long, and thanks for all the sugar".  My assumption is that they didn't have a queen and possibly joined my other hive on the other side of the house in my cypress nuc.

Also, regarding the combined mating nucs in the cypress nuc, they are going strong, and I finally found the queen!  I've been seeing brood, but never found her until today.

As for the rest of the apiary, Aaron's hive is doing well, but we found a supersedure cell on one of the frames.  I cut it off the frame and placed it in hive #8 which still has no queen.  Hive #1 has uncapped ripe honey in its honey super along with a little fresh brood up in the honey super, so I did a full inspection, rearranged the frames in the brood chamber, and added a second honey super below the filled honey super.  I also threw a second deep hive on one of the hives (oops, I can't remember which one) with only 5 deep frames, which finished off my supply of deep frames.

All and all, the apiary looks pretty good: Aaron has a hive that is going well, and with the cypress nuc I have 13 hives.  I'm thinking about over wintering the small hives in one box with insulation and a large candy board with a pollen patty buried in the sugar.  Just a few thoughts.  Aaron and I will be gone to Montana for 2 weeks, so no bee updtes for a while.

Summary of Updates

It's been a while since I've documented anything from the apiary, so I'm gonna play catch up today!

Regarding the cut-out from the bee tree, they have been doing well and have been moved to the position of Hive #3, which had died out.  They are also in an Illinois Hive, meaning that I am not going to use the standard deep frames for, but all frames will be Mediums or "Illinois Frames".  My reasoning?  I'm out of deep frames! 

I also noticed while doing inspections that I had a supersedure cell on a frame in one of the hives (I can't remember which one), but from the looks of the hive the queen appeared to be laying good and didn't need replacing, at least from my prospective.  So, I took that frame and combined it with the two frames from the last mating nuc that hadn't been combined because it had small amounts of brood being raised, but I could never find the queen.  I figure we will see what happens.  They are now sitting in my cypress nuc next to the old mating nuc.

Wednesday night (July 6th) Dawn & I went to the farm to work on hive boxes.  I had several medium boxes that had been built but never painted, so Dawn painted them up nice...I think 8 in all.  She then helped me use the last of my 12" wood up to make 4 more deep boxes, which she painted as well.  We spent the night, so second coats and work in the bee yard could be done first thing in the morning.

Friday, Dawn received a phone call from Ron Shultz regarding the urgent need for bee removal.  When I called him back he stated he had been mowing in preparation for the Stewardson Lions Club Tractor Pull when he came across a pile of bees on the grass and needed them removed before people showed up for the tractor pull the next day.  Dawn was busy with Relay for Life that night, so Dad decided to help me out.  We picked up the bee vacuum and met Ron where he had been mowing.  About 8-10 feet from a bee tree was about a quart of bees bunched in the grass.  Let me tell you, sucking bees out of the grass is not an easy task, but with some persistence I got the job done.  I then went over to the bee tree; it is a small tree with the bee entrance at ground level.  I added to my bees by sucking up the bees that were gathered on the outside of the tree.  The Lions Club wants the bees permanently removed and want to cut down the tree to do it, so we will get together next month to get the job done.  With the bees in the vacuum Dad and I went to the farm and placed them into an Illinois hive box to see if we have a queen.  While up there I also did some remaining hive work by adding a second deep box to a hive and used up the last of my deep frames to fill out the last of the hive boxes that didn't have ten frames in them.

Saturday, Dawn & I took off for the day and traveled to Vincennes, Indiana, for the Heartland Apiculture Society conference held this year at Vincennes University.  It is a three-day event, but we just went for the last day.  I attended workshops on hive diseases, diversifying what you sell, queen rearing, and trouble-shooting your queen rearing operation, and Dawn attended workshops on cooking with honey, catching swarms and removing bees from buildings, extracting and processing honey, and preparing for winter.  I can't speak for Dawn's presenters, but mine were pretty good; one was an Indiana state bee inspector, another ran a successful bee operation in Missouri who quickly filled in when the speakers didn't show, the third was a queen inseminator, and the last two worked with queen rearing in Hawaii where the operation grafted 2,000 cells a day!  HAS is hoping to have next year's conference in St. Louis; they are working out the initial details.

As for upcoming activities, I need to get to the farm today to retrieve the extractor for the Crossroads Beekeepers meeting tomorrow night for a demonstration on honey extraction.  I also want to check and see if I have a queen from the tractor pull swarm and if Hive #1 is making honey yet.  It looks like another busy day!