Showing posts with label beekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beekeeping. Show all posts

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Bee-sy

It's been a hot and rainy summer here in North-East Florida, and for somebody who keeps their bees in a topbar hive that means it's been a long 'hands-off' couple of months for us. You are not supposed to open up your hive when it's raining or threatening to rain (the ladies do not take to kindly when you take off the roof of their home and things getting wet) and when it's too hot, the comb gets so soft it might break off and wreak havoc on your colony.

Since a small piece of comb had broken off during our last inspection at the end of July, we'd been extra careful not to pick a day when it was too hot. Or raining. Getting free time to align with those other two turned into a feat of epic proportions but finally, last week the stars aligned and we got some quality time with our girls!



Our girls had been keeping busy over the summer despite many days spent on the porch (bearding, because it was so hot and humid) and we found partial comb attached to almost all topbars. Then we spied something  really interesting and called up Little Man who'd been doing homework. In his undies.


Little Man had gotten stung once this summer (he accidentally stepped on a bee in the grass) and while he's gotten over the sting quickly (and with no allergic reaction to talk of), we had been a bit worried how this would affect his relationship with our fuzzy bugs and his eagerness to work with them. Well, as you can see, nothing really changed. He just threw over his beekeeper's jacket and that was it. That's all. Undies and a beekeeper's jacket. 
It's also a testament to the mellow temper of our bees.


And this crazy comb construction was what we'd wanted to show Little Man. Clearly they had taken decorating cues from the collapsed comb in July and added willy-nilly globs of comb at the bottom of the hive, underneath perfectly fine drawn comb suspended from the bar above this mess.

All of that had to come out or we'd maneuver ourselves into a tight corner before spring encouraging the ladies to keep on building crazy crosscomb until we could no longer open the hive without destroying comb and harming bees, worker and - worse - the queen in the process.


There. All cleaned up. This is a picture of a lovely brood comb (with capped brood at the bottom) and heavy with capped honey stores at the top. 


We didn't harvest, really, our hive being a first year hive but we did keep the cut-off bits and bops of comb for ourselves. Some of them had capped honey (and a few small pieces of uncapped honey), and we eagerly carried it off.


Yes, we did. We crushed up a piece of comb and dipped croissants right into the honey puddle. HEAVEN! 


Then we went to process the remaining comb. First we squooshed everything into a pot and mashed it up. It smelled deliciously of honey and bees wax, even if it didn't look pretty. Then all that was left to do was to strain the honey and wax 'soup' through a fine mesh and bottle it!


Lovely, isn't it? And it's so delicious! It tastes different than 'regular' honey from the store, fruity, almost citrus-y - it really makes you wonder which flowers they visited.

What's left after draining the honey is a sticky mess of crushed comb. Since it was still coated with a light layer of honey we returned it to our bees so they could lick it clean. No drop went to waste! The crushed comb is not pretty look at even if it smells great. While honey comb is a beautiful light color, older brood comb is dark with dust and leftover pieces of cocoon.

In order to clean the wax you need to render it, melting it and running it through a filter. Since the weather had turned iffy so that a solar wax melter wouldn't work, I decided to volunteer the crock pot. There, in a bit of water, I placed a glass bowl filled with some more water on which the wax would float, topping it off with a piece of cloth to use as a filter.


Yeaaaah, so not pretty, but it smells heavenly. The wax melts, seeps through the cloth and leaves dirt and other contaminants behind.



Golden wax floating on water. It's amazing to see how well the cloth filter actually works, and that the wax indeed melts right through it.


And at the end, we had a few small jars of honey, about a pound of glorious, sweet golden bees wax and a chunk of honey on the comb to show for this year's foray into beekeeping. There won't be anymore this year. What's left in the hive and whatever else the girls are bringing in right now is theirs alone to hopefully ensure their survival throughout the winter. It's been an amazing adventure so far, and it's already impossible to imagine life without our bees so stay tuned - there will be more posts about beekeeping here at our Little Old House.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Gangbuster!

Our fuzzy bugs are going gangbuster - that's really the only way to describe their activity level. Seriously! There is no stopping them from drawing comb, raising baby bees and loading up on pollen and nectar to feed everybody and hoard for the coming winter.

Heh, that one cracks me up. If they only knew. Our girls are from Minnesota and are probably expecting massive snowfall and months with temperatures below freezing. Man, are they going to be in for a surprise.


Ahh, sunny Florida. Living here has its perks.

We try to inspect our hive every other week but because the weather had been hot, humid and Hordor! , I mean, wrought with thunderstorms, we missed one. That taught us that our girls aren't to be trusted to stay in line. Since they had an extra week of unsupervised activity, they came up with a few small, but crazy cross comb sections that we had to adjust which they didn't like as much.

Imagine you discovered the mother lode of all thrift stores going out of business and bringing home all kinds of cute side tables, chairs, chests, baskets, etc. only to have a cleaning crew come in and leave with half of it. Without asking.

Not cool.

Despite us rummaging through their stuff, they were still pretty mellow. They grumbled i.e. their buzzing sounded quite a bit louder and urgent than their usual constant hum, but there were no defense flights or straight-out attacks.

We also discovered a few small hive beetles which didn't make us too happy as they can become a real pest, even overrun your hive, but down here in the south it's like termites: the question is not 'if' you will have termites but 'when'.

 Our bees weren't crazy about the little bugs either. We watched them chase them around and even tackle and wrestle with them, so that's good. We'll help them out by installing a beetle trap to manage the numbers.

The coolest thing about Sunday's inspection?

One of the pieces of cross comb we had to cut loose (and shamelessly kept to ourselves) was stuffed with honey. Once we closed up the hive again, the three of us ended up in the backyard again, breaking small pieces of comb running with golden honey over our fingers and getting a first taste of what our bees had produced.

O-MY-GOD! So good! So sweet! So beautiful!
You stick whole chunks of comb into your mouth and chew it like gum and all the honey bursts out (you don't have to eat the wax; you can just spit it out and return it to the bees)
Simply amazing!

Since this is our first year we are not expecting an actual honey harvest; the bees will need pretty much all of it to build up the hive and to last them through the winter so sneaking a bite (or two) is very very precious and a much treasured experience.



Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Beekeepin' Busy: 4 Weeks

 It's been four weeks since our package of Apis Mellifera Carnica aka Carniolan Honey Bees arrived at our little old house and we have enjoyed every day of our beekeeping adventure. We are madly in love with our fuzzy bugs, their industrious coming and going, their soft buzzing, and the marvelous creation of wax comb.

Yesterday we inspected the hive for the second time in four weeks. One of us usually sneaks at least a peek through the viewing window into the hive but since opening up the hive is a bit stressful for the girls, we opted to give them peace and privacy for two weeks at a time before invading and rifling through their home.
After two weeks, our girls had drawn 3 1/2 good-sized bars of comb, providing enough room for our queen to start laying the moment she saw a ready cell. There were pollen stores and even capped brood!
Another two weeks later, they had expanded the hive to a total of seven combs - an amazing effort when you consider that each pound of wax requires the energy of five pounds of sugar or honey!


 This time we finally caught a glimpse of our hive's queen. She's a lovely jet black and keeping busy laying eggs into comb with her attendants following in her wake.
We knew she was there and healthy by all the capped brood but seeing her was really neat!

Nobody got stung even though we spent almost 45 minutes inspecting the hive, cleaning, replacing the feeder, and inserting a few empty bars. We got a few curious looks - more curious than weeks before when there wasn't a brood nest to defend. - but for the most part they hunkered down and continued their work. Every once in a while a more assertive bees would take a peek at us but was easily discouraged by a little waft of smoke.

They are simply A-mazing, and we're so happy about this addition to our little old house menagerie!


Thursday, May 9, 2013

Bee Keepin' Busy

 This little old house has been buzzing with excitement since Saturday almost two weeks ago when we returned from our trip to the Historic Homes Workshop in Tampa to find this on our porch:

  

A box of bees! Our 2lb box of Carniolan Bees had finally arrived! There is something crazy exciting about a meshed box filled to the brim with buzzing bees. I don't know about you but I never really have the opportunity to get that close to almost 10,000 fuzzy insects so needless to say we were thrilled. Following Charles' instruction (he's the guy who sold them to us) we sprayed them periodically with sugar water and fed them bits of pollen patty while we readied the hive for its new tenants. Since these bees have to start from scratch in their new home and don't have any stores, we supplied them with a feeder with sugar syrup and pollen patty inside the hive so they wouldn't starve ...or, you know, up and leave looking for greener shores.

Little Man spent a lot of time with his nose -very- close to the mesh marveling at the little creatures. We had to remind him they were mostly girls when he started naming them Bob 1, Bob 2, Bob 3, and so on. Silly monkey! He couldn't wait to don his beekeeper jacket but since we were so busy getting everything ready and the bees into the hive, we forgot to take pictures.

This picture shows Little Man proudly showing off his beekeeper jacket (and Mio photobombing). It's a size medium so he has time to grow into it and the one or other guest can wear it if they want to sneak a peek.


Here's our topbar hive in situ: 17ft in the air on a small stair case landing with free airspace across the yard. This location is beautifully out of the way, and without taking a closer look the hive looks like a harmless, oversized window box. It's been a week and half since the bees' arrival and we are amazed at how little you notice them. Occasionally we see a bee in the backyard, checking out the spiderwort and spanish needles growing wild where I haven't weeded yet but there is no increased traffic at all.

From their hive, they just go up and away to forage, just like we'd hoped they would. Unless you look up directly at the hive, you won't know they are there. I love it when a plan works out!

We also chose Carniolan Bees for that purpose since they are known as the gentlest of bee breeds hoping to increase our chances of remaining good neighbors. Again, so far they are very laid back and happy to ignore our bumbling beginner beekeeper struggles and clumsy workings.


If I sit on my nightstand and peek out the window I can watch the entrance to the hive. Over the past week and a half we have learned that

  • Our bees 'sleep in' - before 8:30am you are hard-pressed to see a bee anywhere outside the hive, and I have checked on the feeder and moved some bars around without any protection at all since the girls were still happily snoozing in their cozy, warm cluster.
  •  Watching bees is hypnotic and relaxing - It's hard to explain but we can all sit for hours by the window watching the bees go in and out, sometimes carrying a bright load of yellow or orange pollen in their pollen baskets. Really! I have spent 45 minutes doing nothing but observing their fuzzy butts going about their business. This is also my excuse for the lack of cool projects, no kidding.
  • Bees are toasty warm! We noticed that for the first time when they were still in their box. Holding your flat hand against the mesh you could feel the heat the little insect bodies radiate. It was almost hot. Even now that they are in their hive, I can locate the cluster easily by just sliding a hand along the hive body. The spot where they are is warm to the touch compared to the rest of the hive.
This weekend we will try to do a first thorough inspection. Last week the weather was simply too rotten to do so but so far the weather outlook looks promising. Just by tentatively lifting the bars a fraction of an inch (more like millimeters) I know the last  four bars are heavy so I'm pretty sure they've been busy drawing comb. And hopefully we won't forget to snap a few pictures to share with you!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Busy Bees

On a completely different note ....

 While we are still waiting for the chicken legislation to pass that will one day hopefully allow us to legally keep a chicken or two in our urban back yard (I so would love to own a pair of silkies!), we have been toying with the thought of keeping bees for several years now.

Last year this plan of ours was tabled due to a possible job offer that would have relocated us waaaaay north (too north for my comfort, if you ask me) but this year nothing was going to stop us from adding a bee hive to our little old house.

After much research we decided to go for one of those new-fangled topbar hive - its simpler nature of construction and maintenance appealed to us, including the smaller amount of needed storage and heavy lifting (neither of which we have to waste nor feel too keen on doing). The drawback of a smaller honey harvest is no big deal for us since we are not looking into going into business with it. We are looking forward to 'harvesting' more sweet-swelling beeswax, and frankly, an expected 15-35 pounds of honey from a healthy topbar hive is still way more honey than we use in a year.

Soo, all that being said, when we received the notification that the apiary from which we are getting our bees and queen this year has begun preparing the bees for shipping, we frantically started building our hive.

And here it is! In all its glory, with topbars in place. It's a simple box, about 4 1/2 feet long. The inside is angled at 120 degrees and measures about 7" at the bottom board and 20" at the widest point.


Here you can peek into the cozy inside. We opted for a closed bottom for this hive (we might experiment later) because supposedly it's easier for the bees to maintain the proper interior temperature and humidity when they don't have to factor in a screened bottom that may or may not be open.
The screened bottom is often used as a tool in dealing with Varroa mites but we're hoping to avoid this issue altogether by buying hygienic, mite-resistant bees able to battle those pests by themselves without the 'help' of pesticides and antibiotics used in the hive.


Of course I had to pick up a few new flowers for the yard as well when I went to the Blue Box to buy the lumber! I added a few red salvias, orange bulbines, more bright orange and yellow lantana and Confederate Jasmine to our back yard. All of those plants do well in our climate, are drought resistant once established and bees like'em!


We also added a cute roof to our hive to keep the girls nice and dry. Here is the husband hard at work measuring and cutting the sides for our hive's roof. He's just as excited about the imminent arrival of our bees.


I poked around the hardware store for a lightweight roofing solution and finally settled on those light, clear but textured light box panels (you know, for those awful fluorescent ceiling lights *shudder*). We attached the panels with screws and then caulked over the screw holes to make sure no rain would seep through those holes, and voila! a roof!

Now we have to wait for a probably frantic call from the post office to come and get this 3lbs box of a buzzing nightmare busy bees and their queen. STAT! So stay tuned for more updates on this little side adventure!