Shallow honey

Today is a relatively cool day for June with temps in the 70s, so it's a good day to harvest more honey. I took the top super off Apollo and found all 8 frames were filled with honey, so I removed them. This is a shallow super and I was pleased to see that the honey is a light amber, plus most of the frames were dry capped. They look "cleaner" than some previous frames that had multi-colored pollen stores as well as honey.

When I scrape the wax cappings off these frames, I'm hoping to be able to wash and melt them down to use as a side product — perhaps candles or hand cream. So there is my winter project!

Why Sweet B is inhospitable and more...

My goodness, how time flies! It's been two months since I last posted and there's a lot to catch up on here.

First, several people have asked if there are bees in Sweet Beezus. The current answer is no. I decided against ordering another package of bees this year, instead hoping to attract a swarm. A few weeks ago, there was a buzz inside Sweet B one afternoon and it appeared a swarm had taken up residency. By the next day, however, the bees had moved on.

Today I noticed a lot of frantic activity in front of the Rocky hive, so I went out to prepare Sweet Beezus in case the activity turned out to be another swarm. When I opened Sweet B, I saw some icky, scary stuff: there was evidence of wax moths, a couple of roaches and a whole colony of earwigs. I started taking the hive apart, removing the frames that had wax moth webs, knocking the earwigs and roaches out...and then I turned over the bottom board to brush off some spider egg cocoons. Fortunately I spotted the round black spider before my fingers reached it — it was a black widow! YIKES! Talk about inhospitable for new bees!

I cleaned up Sweet B as best I could, put in some clean frames and added some "bee lure," a pheromone that is supposed to attract bees. Perhaps now it will be more inviting.

Second, I harvested my first batch of honey for the year a couple of weeks ago. I took only five frames each out of Apollo and Rocky, and spent half a day crushing, straining and filtering the honey. Those 10 frames (from medium supers) yielded about 30 pounds of honey. I left three half-finished frames in each super and replaced the ones I took out with empty frames. Also, I moved the shallow honey supers to the top of each hive and was excited to see those were almost full of capped honey, too!

So, with this banner crop of honey, I decided it was time to sell it. I ordered 8-ounce squeeze bottles with flip-caps and a roll of labels from Brushy Mountain. This weekend, I filled 40 bottles to sell and began getting the word out to friends and acquaintances. So far, 10 bottles are gone with orders coming in for more. Very exciting!

There's a lot going on in the bee world right now.

The unusually warm temperatures for this time of year have generated a lot of early activity among honeybees in many parts of the country. Here in Atlanta, trees and flowers bloomed early, the pollen count has reached extreme levels, and swarming began in late February.

My Apollo bees swarmed a couple of weeks ago. They "buzz level" was audible for a few days beforehand and bearding happened the day before. The swarm made its way to the pine tree limb in my neighbor's yard, a popular spot for last year's swarms. Later that same day, the bees came back down into my yard and clustered near the ground on some scrub shrubbery. My attempt to collect them from the ground failed miserably (including taking a couple of stings to my right leg). The next afternoon, the bees were back up in the pine tree and later took off for parts unknown.

I have since learned how to collect a swarm from the ground via a YouTube video and some words of wisdom from Jerry Wallace of the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers. In a couple of weeks, my friend Drea and I are driving up to Lafayette, Ga. to visit Pigeon Mountain Trading Company, which has quite a cache of beekeeping supplies. I plan on buying a swarm trap and some bee lure (pheromone) to see if I can attract some bees to fill my empty Sweet Beezuz hive.

This morning's inspection was really interesting, probably generating more questions than answers. First, the Rocky hive: I removed the top shallow super when I saw that the wax inserts were all coming out of their frames. It would be almost impossible for the bees to shore them up enough to store honey. I'll fix them and put the box back on next time. A look into the next super showed that the Rocky girls are busily making honey there — no sign of laying activity, so I hope to harvest this box in a couple of months. I pulled out the sticky board from below and saw something interesting — a bunch of dark "pods." I can't tell if these are just propolis or if the bees have entombed some kind of insect. I set the board aside to look at later.

Now, the Apollo hive: there were bees in the top shallow super and the frames there were in good shape. But when I went down into the next box, I got a little shock. The Apollo girls are storing honey around the edges of the frames, but there were a LOT of supersedure cells (emergency queen cells) on the middles frames. Does this mean the hive is without a queen or is it just an indication of a lot of future swarm activity? So there's my homework. When I pulled out the sticky board, dozens of earwigs came with it. Ugh. I am leaving these boards out of the hives for now — most insects that the bees can't take care of themselves will fall onto the screened bottom board and not cause problems.

I removed the plastic feeders from the entrance of both hives. I found wax moth larvae at the Apollo hive entrance, which I quickly destroyed. The beetle traps seem to be working well in both hives. Next time, I must remember to take the camera and document with photos!

Here's a video of my first swarm of the season.

Sound detectives...

Here is an excellent article (complete with audio) about research being done on detecting the health of a hive by its sounds and sound levels. It also makes clear the importance and contributions of bees to agriculture, to the environment and to our world in general. (If an active link doesn't appear below, just copy and past the URL into the subject bar of your web browser.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16114890

Dead hive inspection

It's a beautiful, crisp Sunday afternoon in January. The sunshine made it warm enough that I wanted to go outside to do a better inspection of Sweet Beezus, the dead hive. I removed five frames that contained either honey or brood cells and placed them in a sealed bag to bring indoors for a closer look later.

On the recommendation of Linda Tillman, a local master beekeeper who maintains a very thorough and informative blog -- and who doesn't mind answering a novice's questions -- I did the "toothpick test" for American Foulbrood. AFB is a spore-producing disease that systematically destroys a hive by infecting the bee larvae. One of the first signs of AFB is sunken capped brood (sometimes with small chew marks in the caps) and "ropey" larvae. The test is simple: insert a toothpick into a capped cell, wiggle it around a bit and pull it out; if the toothpick is slimed with a mucous-like, ropey substance, the hive's infected with AFB. There is usually a foul odor to accompany this.

Thankfully, I found neither ropey larvae nor a foul odor in Sweet Beezus. There was very little capped lavae at all. And when I took the supers off and sifted through the dead bees on the screened bottom board, I couldn't find the queen. So, the hive was without a queen for quite some time.

In the past, I've always been afraid to keep the hive open for more than a very few minutes in case the queen escaped. One of the most important lessons I've learned from this experience with hive death is that I cannot be afraid to open up the hives all the way down and examine all of the frames once in a while to be certain that there IS a queen and that she's laying eggs.

On the positive side, since there is no evidence of AFB, I can use this hive again. If it had been infected, I would have to burn the frames and at least scorch the insides of all of the hive components, if not burn them all, to make it safe for new bees. Also, according to Linda, I can use the existing frames that already have comb drawn out on them, courtesy of the bees that are now gone. This will make a great home for a new colony because they won't have to work quite as hard to get things going and the queen will have cells ready and waiting for eggs.

I had enough smoke left in the smoker to open one of the other hives for a few minutes, so I took a peek in Rocky. The Rocky girls have been busy eating the fondant and pollen patties, and when I took out some of the frames in the top super, they were LOADED with honey! It's a beautiful golden color and smelled so good. Too bad I can't harvest it for myself, but this is their food source for the winter.

Mourning a loss.

A couple of years ago, I met a fellow novice beekeeper who had lost his two hives during the very cold winter. Sadly, he found the bees in clusters on their frames in the center of the hives, as if they were huddled together to keep warm. We both assumed that the bees had died due to an extended frigid period (for Georgia, anyway) that January, which could certainly be true. But there are many other reasons honeybees die, including starvation, pests, diseases, loss of the queen or old queen...all of which stress the bees.


This morning, I made a sad discovery of my own. I lost Sweet Beezus — the girls were dead, in clusters on the frames and below the hive. I pulled out frames from both supers and didn't see any signs of mites, although there were a few dead small hive beetles. No sign of Foulbrood, either. There was a good bit of honey stored, so my best guess is that either the girls couldn't withstand the cold temperatures last week or the queen died (or was incapable of laying new eggs).

This is my first experience with hive loss, so I'll have to research how to clean out the hive and what to do next — whether to order a new package of bees or try to attract a swarm to live there.


Another new experience: I made fondant candy to feed the bees. This is easier than trying to supply them with sugar syrup, which can freeze during the winter months. The fondant is made by heating a mixture of sugar, corn syrup and water to 238° and then letting it cool before beating it until it turns white. The candy solidifies, but is soft and easy to cut. In addition to the fondant, I wanted to feed the bees some protein in the form of pollen patties (dark strips pictured on left next to fondant).


Both the Apollo and Rocky bees seemed healthy, thank goodness. When I took the covers off each hive, the girls started buzzing and coming up to investigate. Here's a photo of the Rocky bees coming up through the inner cover, happy to discover someone had provided dinner and dessert.

R.I.P. sweet girls of Sweet Beezus. Thank you for making some wonderful honey. I'll do my best to honor your memory by repopulating your hive!