Quick Update

I was at the farm yesterday to drop off nuc boxes I had painted, and stopped to check on the beeyard.  The temperature was in the upper 50's, and the bees were buzzing all over.  They were all taking turns getting out for a cleansing flight and checking the area for signs of spring!

Bee Yard Update

Today I went to the farm to assess the hives and tidy things up for the end of winter.  Near the end of January I discovered that 5 more hives died out, leaving me with only 5 of the 13 hives that went into winter....make a note - combine weak hives for winter!  Below is a photo of my bee yard.  The surviving hives are 1, 4, 5, 6 & 11.

I removed the empty hive boxes and stored them in the grain bin with moth crystals to protect them from wax moth.  One good thing out of this is that I now have a lot of drawn come to use with swarms this spring!

In addition, a few weekends ago I built 7 nuc boxes, and today I brought them home for painting.

New Year's Eve Update

Just a quick update on the bees.  Christmas Day I ran up to the farm briefly and took the time, since it was a nice day, to check on the bees.  Sadly, three hives were dead : Aaron's hive and both of the Gates Hives.  They had plenty of sugar available in the candy boards, but I think the sugar was just too far away for their ways.  I had made deeper candy boards so I could put more sugar in them, but I'm afraid that it back fired.  So, today I went up and cut off all the excess wood bringing the candy as close as possible to the frames.  I also removed a second hive box that was mostly empty and put on a reworked candy board.  I hope the rest of the hives survive winter!!!

Rearranged for Winter

Today I went to the farm to check on the bees, see if any needed to be fed, and to rearrange the hives for winter.  I brought up some concrete blocks, removed the empty hives, removed the "high rise", and moved everything closer together with entrances facing south to avoid the northwest winds of winter.  It was relatively cool today, so I was hoping the bees would be staying inside for the move, but enough came out that some had a hard time finding their way back home.  Several were still looking for the "north entrance" on their hive.  Also there was a fair amount of fighting when the foraging bees came back to their location only to find a new hive there.  Hopefully they will figure it out without too much distress or loses.  My hope is to rig up a wind block behind the row of hives, especially those on the wooden stand.

Extract, Filter & Bottle

Well, I am almost done working my honey for the season.  Last night I used my extractor to spin out 20 frames of honey from three of my hives.  This morning I filtered the honey, and tonight I filled close to sixty bottles with some honey still left in the bucket.  I bought 192 half-pound bottles a few weeks ago, and they have all been used!  I've also filled 10 half-pint Mason jars, and still have about a gallon left over to bottle.  That is over 100 pounds of honey!!!  Wow!!!  I definately did better than I expected to do this year.

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!