The harvest this year wasn't too good, only fourteen frames of honey. Of those fourteen five are only partly ready to go and they are dark honey so we'll be processing those by hand, no extractor. The other nine went through the extractor I'm borrowing from a friend.
Using an extractor to spin the honey out of the frames was supposed to be easier than the old crush-and-strain method but I have to say for only nine frames it isn't worth the extra setup and cleanup. I was expecting to have at least 30 frames but found that most of the hives didn't have any honey for me this year. Only two hives produced enough honey for me to take some!
The best part of this is that the frames I put through the extractor will be ready to go next year with the wax comb waiting to be filled. This is great for preventing a booming hive from swarming, when they run out of wax comb the queen stops producing bees and the hive splits. That is a good thing if you can get two hives out of it but if you send thousands of bees flying into a city that is a bad thing.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Preparing the farm bees.
I made a trip out to the farm to check on the two new hives. Last month they had little to no honey stored and weren't drawing new comb. When I checked on them now they still hadn't drawn any comb but they did have enough honey to make it through the Winter. Probably. One hive was a little light, probably about 40 lbs of honey stored. The other is good, with about 55 lbs stored. If we have a mild winter they will eat about 20 lbs and a cold winter will take about 50 lbs so I am taking a bit of a risk with the lighter hive.
While I was going through the hives I removed the crazy cross comb from before, I didn't have enough drawn frames to give proper comb guides so the bees went off of the frames in a few places. Since the comb won't be used until the Spring there's no harm in removing it now.
After inspecting both hives all I had left to do was to reduce their entrances for the winter, but I didn't bring anything along to do that with. I grabbed a few pine branches of the right width and broke them down to the right length and put them in place, I think it will work just fine.
Just one hive left to check, I'll get to that one tomorrow.
While I was going through the hives I removed the crazy cross comb from before, I didn't have enough drawn frames to give proper comb guides so the bees went off of the frames in a few places. Since the comb won't be used until the Spring there's no harm in removing it now.
After inspecting both hives all I had left to do was to reduce their entrances for the winter, but I didn't bring anything along to do that with. I grabbed a few pine branches of the right width and broke them down to the right length and put them in place, I think it will work just fine.
Just one hive left to check, I'll get to that one tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A hive lost?
The new hive in my back yard was not very active so I wasn't too surprised when I opened it up and found the hive nearly empty. Further investigation revealed a queen and about 50 workers alive and little to no brood. There wasn't any sign of disease but I set aside some comb that had scattered capped worker brood for further investigation.
My diagnosis is that the hive was robbed of all of its honey and with the cool weather the bees couldn't bring in enough nectar to keep the hive going. Furthermore the stronger hives in the yard continued to pester the weak hive. There were a few spiders and a few wax moths in the hive but the comb was still in good shape which means the hive crashed sometime in the past month.
I should have reduced the entrance size when the weather got cold and the activity slowed, the large entrance allowed the stronger hives to overcome the defenders and steal the honey. My decision now is do I let this queen and her small cluster of workers die or do I try and save them? I know the answer is that I should let them die but I am curious what would happen if I gave them some honey and protected the hive from further robbing. I put in a division board feeder and closed up the entrance to only a single bee width entrance and put the hive back in the yard. Once I did this the outside of the hive was covered in bees, a few of them nasanoving but most just trying to get into the hive where the top entrance used to be. After a day this activity ceased (the weather also turned cold). I plan to check on this hive in a few days to see how many bees are left alive in the box and to check if they have taken in the feed.
Even if the queen survives until the Spring I know that this hive won't produce much next year, they'll continue to be a weak hive. At this point I've got nothing to lose with the hive (other than the honey I put into it) so I'll learn what I can from this failure.
My diagnosis is that the hive was robbed of all of its honey and with the cool weather the bees couldn't bring in enough nectar to keep the hive going. Furthermore the stronger hives in the yard continued to pester the weak hive. There were a few spiders and a few wax moths in the hive but the comb was still in good shape which means the hive crashed sometime in the past month.
I should have reduced the entrance size when the weather got cold and the activity slowed, the large entrance allowed the stronger hives to overcome the defenders and steal the honey. My decision now is do I let this queen and her small cluster of workers die or do I try and save them? I know the answer is that I should let them die but I am curious what would happen if I gave them some honey and protected the hive from further robbing. I put in a division board feeder and closed up the entrance to only a single bee width entrance and put the hive back in the yard. Once I did this the outside of the hive was covered in bees, a few of them nasanoving but most just trying to get into the hive where the top entrance used to be. After a day this activity ceased (the weather also turned cold). I plan to check on this hive in a few days to see how many bees are left alive in the box and to check if they have taken in the feed.
Even if the queen survives until the Spring I know that this hive won't produce much next year, they'll continue to be a weak hive. At this point I've got nothing to lose with the hive (other than the honey I put into it) so I'll learn what I can from this failure.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Harvesting honey by absconding
I finished with the MH hive yesterday, the third box was full of honey but half of the box was filled with cross comb, to get the first frame out I had to tear through the honeycomb and make a huge mess. I pulled out three frames and got the bees off of them as best I could. The rest of the honey was going to be even harder to harvest.
This was a problem because the bees had a box with no guides in it, so they made the comb in a different direction than the frames. It works fine for them, but it makes it hard on the beekeeper. I decided to try a different method of harvesting, I set the box of honey above the hive, separated by an open box and an inner cover. The idea is that when the sun goes down and the temperatures drop the bees will go down into the hive and leave the honey. The beekeeper then collects the honey with only a few bees left on it.
My problem is that I did this in the afternoon when the bees were the most active. This set off a very vigorous robbing/defensive behavior as all of the hives in the apiary started collecting this honey. After getting stung twice when being nowhere near the hive I declared the yard off limits for the rest of the day.
Before dawn the next day I collected what was left in the box, the bees collected most of the honey that was there but I will still have some. Most importantly, I learned that this will only work when done just before dusk. I'll be trying it with another hive tomorrow.
Also interesting is that this morning there were hundreds of bees looking for water, the pool I have for them only had a small puddle left and they were all over it. All of the honey they collected needed to be diluted down so they could reprocess it and store it. I could probably collect the honey again, but I've stressed that hive enough this Fall. I'll let them go into Winter heavy, the honey I would have collected lost to my learning experience.
This was a problem because the bees had a box with no guides in it, so they made the comb in a different direction than the frames. It works fine for them, but it makes it hard on the beekeeper. I decided to try a different method of harvesting, I set the box of honey above the hive, separated by an open box and an inner cover. The idea is that when the sun goes down and the temperatures drop the bees will go down into the hive and leave the honey. The beekeeper then collects the honey with only a few bees left on it.
My problem is that I did this in the afternoon when the bees were the most active. This set off a very vigorous robbing/defensive behavior as all of the hives in the apiary started collecting this honey. After getting stung twice when being nowhere near the hive I declared the yard off limits for the rest of the day.
Before dawn the next day I collected what was left in the box, the bees collected most of the honey that was there but I will still have some. Most importantly, I learned that this will only work when done just before dusk. I'll be trying it with another hive tomorrow.
Also interesting is that this morning there were hundreds of bees looking for water, the pool I have for them only had a small puddle left and they were all over it. All of the honey they collected needed to be diluted down so they could reprocess it and store it. I could probably collect the honey again, but I've stressed that hive enough this Fall. I'll let them go into Winter heavy, the honey I would have collected lost to my learning experience.
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