Preparing for a new bee-ginning...

Although it's January, today is a relatively mild day in Roswell — yesterday's cold rain has given way to sunny skies and mid-40s. Looking out the kitchen window at the back yard is a little sad for me. There are no bees to worry about right now. However, this seemed the perfect day to do some clean up in preparation for what's coming in the spring.

I'm excited to say that I've ordered two nucleus hives or "nucs" from a nearby Master Beekeeper, Cindy Hodges, who also happens to be president of the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association. A nuc is a small colony of a few thousand bees with a queen that has already produced brood on the frames being purchased. In the past, I have started hives from package bees, which, literally, come in a screened package with the queen in a separate cage. There are pros and cons to both nucs and package bees. Since nucs are locally produced, the bees and their queen are already acclimated to the climate. Additionally, nucs build up faster and are less prone to starvation, absconding or robbing by other bees. The nucs should be ready in mid-to-late April.

Here is a neat explanation of how to install a nuc from my favorite bee blog, Linda's Bees.

So, back to today's prep work. I took apart what was left of the old hives and threw away the parts that can't be salvaged. The rest of the hive components can be cleaned up with either a wire brush or a torch and the outsides repainted. Thanks to my good friend, Drea, and her donation of unused hive equipment in pristine condition, I have everything I need to set up two new hives this spring.

And speaking of two new hives, I'll be holding another contest to name them. Winners will receive a jar of honey when the bees provide it!

Sad. Just sad.

I have lost Apollo, my original (and only) hive. Upon opening it this afternoon, I saw only a few handfuls of very sluggish bees. There is a little evidence of wax moth activity, but the hive beetle trap had been doing its job. There are a few queen cells, one of which was partially hatched, but it appears poor Apollo has been queenless for a while.

Now I have to decide if I want to start this venture all over again next spring. I have a few weeks to ponder that question. Package bee orders must be placed in November/early December. Otherwise, I can order a couple of nucs from local sources early in the new year.

I did freeze a couple of frames that had drawn comb and a little honey in them. Maybe that will help a new colony next year.

Sweet Harvest

After a summer of being a relatively bad bee mom, I lit the smoker, suited up and carried all my equipment out to check on Apollo. Apollo is my original and only hive.

Digressing for a moment here...I'd intended to start a second hive this summer and ordered a nuc from Pigeon Mountain Trading Company in Dalton, Ga. Due to the cold winter, the bees were much later in their production cycle this spring and delivery was delayed for many weeks. As the weeks passed by and I had travel plans during the summer, I decided to cancel my order. Let's just say customer service at Pigeon Mountain is extremely poor and their representatives are rude and make multiple excuses. I forfeited my deposit as expected, but Pigeon Mountain did nothing to try and retain my business. I will NEVER buy anything from them again. And yes, I did some research and found a bunch of complaints on file against them with the BBB. Live and learn. I'll stick with Brushy Mountain Beekeeping in N.C.

So, back to Apollo. The hive has three medium supers and a shallow honey super on top. I removed the shallow today and then was pleased to look down into the top two mediums to see that they are brood heavy and the queen is laying in a healthy pattern. Lifting the hive from the back, I could feel its weight. Heavy = full o' bees!

I took four frames of honey for harvest and left some for the bees. But now that nectar flow has tapered off with summer ending, the girls will need food. I'll start giving them simple syrup and then, when the weather turns colder, I'll make sure they have pollen patties and fondant for winter.

Linda Tillman, who writes an excellent blog on beekeeping, made a YouTube video of her "crush and strain" method of honey harvesting. This is a simple method for the backyard or beginning beekeeper.

First, using a serrated knife, I cut or scrape the honey from the frames into a pan. Then, I crush the honeycombs with a pestle.

Next, I pour the contents of the pan into a two-bucket strainer system. The top bucket is lined with a fine mesh bag with a metal strainer plate below.

The contents of the top bucket are strained and the filtered honey drips into the lower bucket, which is equipped with a gate. When the honey has finished filtering, I will fill individual bottles from the honey gate.



It's a hot and sticky process, but the results are so worth it! I love my girls and thank them for the hard work they do to help our environment and provide such a beautiful perfect food.

Fond of Fondant

It's a beautiful and mild (60 degrees) winter day in Roswell...and with colder temperatures and a "possible weather event" coming later this week, I thought it would be a good time to give my bees a little winter boost in the form of fondant.

Fondant is a simple sugar candy. Here is my recipe:

2 cups white sugar
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1-1/2 cups boiling water

Combine and heat ingredients, stirring until sugar dissolves. Then, heat — without stirring — until the mixture reaches 238 degrees on a candy thermometer (or until medium ball stage).

Pour into a bowl and let cool to touch. Beat the mixture until it's light and pour into a wax paper-lined mold.

As you can see here, I let the fondant cool a bit in a wax paper-lined loaf pan.

Later I removed it from the pan, lifting it by the wax paper. I put another sheet of wax paper on top and rolled the fondant out into a thin sheet, which I then cut in half. The bees will get half the fondant today and, whenever they finish it off, I'll give them the other half.

As soon as I placed the sheet of fondant on top of the frames, the bees were on it. (The darker substance on the left is a pollen patty that I placed in the hive a few weeks ago for a protein source.)

When I replaced the inner cover, a few of the girls peeked out at me and the sunshine. And then it was time to replace the outer cover and seal up the hive so the bees can eat and get back to their important work.

Starving!

I was so thankful to receive dire warnings via Facebook and email from Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association, as well as Brushy Mountain Beekeeping and Pigeon Mountain Trading Co. about the immediate need to feed the bees! Even though the season is deceptively warm and we're lured into thinking the bees have plenty of food, an actual lack of nectar flow has put Southern bees into starvation mode.

Yesterday I made a big batch of sugar syrup and went out to inspect Apollo, my only remaining hive. Sure enough, when I pulled off the inner cover, there was a cluster of about 100 dead bees on the top super. Sad, sad, sad. This super, which was full of honey a couple of months ago, was now almost devoid of honey. The bees were STARVING and had been feeding off their stores.

On the positive side, the queen had apparently made it up into this super and been hard at work laying eggs. Six of the frames were full of beautifully capped brood, eggs and larvae, and the laying pattern looked just as it should. My sweet little honeybees need a food source so that they can, in turn, nourish these baby bees and make a strong colony.

The girls went through a large plastic feeder of syrup yesterday and they are now working on a small feeder this morning. Probably time to think about ordering a feeder that can supply them for at least a few days at a time.

Hope I've dodged a bullet and kept Apollo going — I'd hate to lose yet another hive.

Queen or no queen, that is the question...

Two weeks ago, my package bees arrived and I installed them in Sweet Beezus. Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake with the queen's cage and forgot to remove the small cork that covers the candy plug right away. Two days later, I remembered and removed it.

A few days after that, I opened the hive and found that the workers had eaten through the candy and released the queen from her cage. I looked and looked, but couldn't see the queen anywhere...until I noticed her on the inner cover, which I'd placed on the ground nearby. Yikes! I put the inner cover back on the hive immediately, and closed things up.

Today I thought it should be time to add another brood super. However, when I opened the hive and inspected the frames, they were only full of stored sugar water. No brood in sight. So, either the queen is dead or she is not laying.

Since I don't know how long it "too long" to wait and see if the queen will start laying, I called Rossman Apiaries to ask what to do. They advised me to open the hive again and find the queen. Obviously, if there is no queen or the queen is not laying, there is no brood. And without any brood, the hive cannot survive because the workers have no larvae available from which to a new queen. This means I'll have to requeen the hive.

Requeening is a process I'm not looking forward to — it involves killing the old queen (if she's still alive) and then introducing a new queen (in her cage). But first things first. Tomorrow I'll figure out whether or not Sweet B has a queen and go from there.

On a wing and a prayer...

Since Apollo is my only surviving hive at the moment and its residents have been through a lot already this year, I can only send up a prayer on little honeybee wings that these girls will make some honey to spare this summer.

This morning I installed a beetle trap and put on a queen excluder and two shallow honey supers. The inner cover had deteriorated over the past three years (assisted by the wax moth infestation a few months ago), so I replaced it. While I waited for the smoker to do its job and the bees to calm down and retreat, I peered down into the top brood super -- nice to see it was chock full of bees and they were storing some honey around the edges of the frames.

I removed Rocky from its perch and will break it down and bag it for trash. While there is evidence that the hive had wax moths, I can't help but believe there were other problems that contributed to its demise, including hive beetles, mites and maybe too much moisture.

Sweet Beezus is ready and waiting for new occupants. I can't find my receipt from Rossman Apiaries, but if I recall correctly, my package bees will ship out sometime next week or the following week. Maybe the second time around will be the charm for this hive.