After the last hive check, we thought it was time to harvest the honey. So I spent a warm sunny afternoon removing the honey supers with the assistance of some Bee Quick and my shopvac set to blower mode. It's amazing how well that Bee Quick works; gets all but a couple stragglers out of the supers and then I blow the rest out with my shopvac.
Based on the weight of the supers, I was guessing we'd have our best harvest yet. That evening I went through the first four supers and extracted only the frames that were 90% capped. We only have a cheap 2-frame hand-crank plastic extractor, so it takes a while because I have to keep flipping the frames to prevent frames from breaking. Even so I always end up breaking a couple frames which just increases my resolve to start cross-wiring the foundation. I returned those four supers to the hives the next day. Then I extracted the honey from the next four supers the next evening and returned those supers the next night (including a couple replacement foundation frames). In all we got over 76lbs of honey, which equates to around 25 quart jars. Woohoo! We're in the honey! We're in the honey!
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
Hive check
Haven't checked all the hives for a while, so with the good weather today, we decided it would be a good time for it. On a brief side note, I put two supers on hive D a week ago and I did a quick check in the deeps and didn't see any eggs or brood.
Today I started at hive A and went through all of them. I didn't do a frame by frame check on everything and didn't find spot any queens today. It's also hot enough that I completely pulled out the entrance reducers. I didn't see any eggs, larva or brood in hive A, but I did see a beautiful capped swarm cell at the bottom of a frame. Lots of pollen and honey in the deeps, but it looks like they're holding a good cell pattern open for new eggs. For the time being, I'm going to assume a new queen will emerge from that swarm cell, but I also transferred one frame with eggs and larva from hive B to hive A to help them stay calm.
Hive B was doing great. Lots of eggs, brood and larva, so it looks like they've got a healthy queen. I didn't see any swarm cells.
Hive C is also doing great. Lots of eggs, brood and larva, so it looks like a good queen here too.
Hive D is pretty honey bound in the upper deep, but the bottom deep has quite a lot of open cells. Good news, I saw eggs and larva on multiple frames in the bottom deep. Not a whole lot, so I did swap a frame from hive C with eggs and larva in to give them a boost.
On the honey front, just about all the supers were getting very full and I figured we'd be ready to harvest the summer honey in about another week. Right now we've got two supers per hive. The top super on hive D still had a lot of foundation, so I swapped a few of those with full honey frames from supers on hives B and C.
Overall, I think things are going well. I'm still not sure if it was hive A or D that swarmed, but I'm thinking it was A now. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on hive A and make sure there's some new eggs in the next two weeks.
Today I started at hive A and went through all of them. I didn't do a frame by frame check on everything and didn't find spot any queens today. It's also hot enough that I completely pulled out the entrance reducers. I didn't see any eggs, larva or brood in hive A, but I did see a beautiful capped swarm cell at the bottom of a frame. Lots of pollen and honey in the deeps, but it looks like they're holding a good cell pattern open for new eggs. For the time being, I'm going to assume a new queen will emerge from that swarm cell, but I also transferred one frame with eggs and larva from hive B to hive A to help them stay calm.
Hive B was doing great. Lots of eggs, brood and larva, so it looks like they've got a healthy queen. I didn't see any swarm cells.
Hive C is also doing great. Lots of eggs, brood and larva, so it looks like a good queen here too.
Hive D is pretty honey bound in the upper deep, but the bottom deep has quite a lot of open cells. Good news, I saw eggs and larva on multiple frames in the bottom deep. Not a whole lot, so I did swap a frame from hive C with eggs and larva in to give them a boost.
On the honey front, just about all the supers were getting very full and I figured we'd be ready to harvest the summer honey in about another week. Right now we've got two supers per hive. The top super on hive D still had a lot of foundation, so I swapped a few of those with full honey frames from supers on hives B and C.
Overall, I think things are going well. I'm still not sure if it was hive A or D that swarmed, but I'm thinking it was A now. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on hive A and make sure there's some new eggs in the next two weeks.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
New swarm trap
So this spring, with the move of the hives, we had to come up with a new location for the swarm trap we had. We had our original swarm trap on the side of our shed, which is just around the corner from where the bees were. It was one of those giant peat pot type traps and in the 2 or 3 years we had it up, I never saw a bee in it. Might be time to make a new swarm trap. After a little internet research, I decided to make a swarm trap that is actually very similar to a nuc box. I got some pine boards and after a little cutting and nailing, had a nice swarm trap that held 5 deep frames nicely. We have a nice tree about 35' in front of the new hive location and I attached it about 9 ft up on May 30, 2013. I also removed the feeders and installed two shallow supers on the three strong hives.
Over the next few days we noticed there were bees checking it out (I baited the trap with two old drawn frames and two frames of foundation, and a few drops of lemongrass oil). This evening I checked the trap again and there were a ton of bees going in and out, so I suited up and sure enough, the swarm trap was completely full of bees. I took the trap down and found it had one of our marked queens, but I'm not sure which hive it came from. While inspecting the swarm I discovered they had been very busy and had quite a lot of comb drawn out in the space where the missing frame was. They had also drawn the two foundations frames a lot. I didn't see any eggs yet, but there was a lot of nectar being stored. I removed the two old frames, shaking the bees back into the trap, scraped off the burr comb and installed three more frames of foundation.
We don't have equipment for another full hive, so we'll be giving this swarm to some local beekeepers. I learned I have to come up with a better way to mount the hive to the tree because it's a pain to take it off and put it back up, especially when on a ladder and surrounded by so many bees. However, I'm pretty pleased with how well the swarm trapped worked.
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| Swarm trap near hives |
Over the next few days we noticed there were bees checking it out (I baited the trap with two old drawn frames and two frames of foundation, and a few drops of lemongrass oil). This evening I checked the trap again and there were a ton of bees going in and out, so I suited up and sure enough, the swarm trap was completely full of bees. I took the trap down and found it had one of our marked queens, but I'm not sure which hive it came from. While inspecting the swarm I discovered they had been very busy and had quite a lot of comb drawn out in the space where the missing frame was. They had also drawn the two foundations frames a lot. I didn't see any eggs yet, but there was a lot of nectar being stored. I removed the two old frames, shaking the bees back into the trap, scraped off the burr comb and installed three more frames of foundation.
We don't have equipment for another full hive, so we'll be giving this swarm to some local beekeepers. I learned I have to come up with a better way to mount the hive to the tree because it's a pain to take it off and put it back up, especially when on a ladder and surrounded by so many bees. However, I'm pretty pleased with how well the swarm trapped worked.
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| Caught a swarm within 5 days of putting it up |
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| Inspecting swarm trap on left |
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