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bee hive oops here s what happened i called kat after work about 5pm and the sun was shining though it was likely to rain later and the wind was starting to pick up we went down to the bee hive talking excitedly about what was going on with the colony and the garden and i popped on my veil and gloves lit my smoker and lifted the lid clouds were gathering by this point the wind was picking up and it was getting quite a bit cooler i pulled the hive open and kat leaned over to take a look both of us still talking excitedly and moving fairly quickly i put the frame perch on the side of the hive pulled out a frame and showed it to her then reached for another one as a few bees bounced around seeming a bit agitated by the disturbance that s about the time kat said ouch and backed away from the hive in a big hurry a bee had gotten annoyed with all the disturbance and stung her right on the forehead fortunately we d talked about what to do if a bee stings you and she got well away from the hive and was able to scrape the stinger out i went over and checked to be sure it was out and that she was mostly okay and put the frames back then closed up the hive she doesn t look thrilled does she i made several mistakes here and i ll let you know what they were i chose a bad time of day the best time to work with a hive is mid afternoon when a lot of them will be gone getting nectar and pollen waiting until evening isn t the best idea the weather wasn t great bees are really sensitive to the weather and don t appreciate having their hive open when it s overcast or rainy the best beekeeping weather is a hot sunny day moving and talking too much honey bees are usually calm animals but they don t enjoy being disturbed and having loud fast moving giants invade their home is worse than having quiet considerate giants take a look if we had been quieter and calmer it s likely kat wouldn t have been stung you might think that not having kat wear a bee suit was a mistake however we ve had a lot of visitors to this hive since it was installed in april and kat s the only one to get stung so far nobody except me has worn a bee suit and some people have gotten closer than kat did and so far she s the only one who s been stung i did buy her a cup of coffee afterward and she seems to have totally forgiven me and my bees for the sting she s even come back to look at the bees a few times and had a lot of fun sorry again kat and thanks for being such a good sport coming soon all about stings published in uncategorized on 25 june 2009 at 4 12 pm comments 4 nectar honey 101 making nectar into honey pretty much everyone knows that bees collect nectar from flowers to make honey but that s just the tip of the iceberg i m not going to talk too much about what nectar is here for my younger readers hello to the mighty midway 4 hers and anyone else who wants to learn more the wikipedia article on nectar is a great place to start but in short nectar is mostly water with some natural sugars and bees have to do quite a bit of work to transform it into honey one of my bees harvesting nectar warning some readers might think this next part is a little gross other readers like me might think it s awesome the bees drink nectar from the flowers bring it back to their hive in their stomach and regurgitate it throw up several times so it s partly digested the chemicals in bee saliva are an important part of the process that transforms the nectar into honey however it s still mostly water so the bees deposit spit the partly digested nectar in the cells of the honeycomb and fan it with their wings until most of the water is gone this concentrates the sugar and when the water level is low enough 17 or less we call it honey so when you eat honey you re eating something that came from a flower but was inside a bee s stomach until they partly digested and then regurgitated it i think that s really cool but i realize that some folks might not want to think about it too hard once the bees have evaporated enough water they put a thin wax cap over the cell and store the honey for later kinds of honey if you go to a grocery store you can probably find several kinds and colors of honey if you can only find clover or wildflower honey try a farmer s market one of the most exciting things about beekeeping is that the color and flavor of the honey depends on what kinds of nectar the bees use to make it you can get honey that s a very pale yellow a rich golden color or even a crazy dark brown and each one will have a unique taste usually pale honey has a light taste and dark honey has a strong taste if you d like to see a list of common kinds and colors of honey the national honey board has a nice one sometimes it s easy to tell what kind of flowers your bees are using to make honey if they re parked in an apple orchard at the right time of year it s pretty safe to assume they are mostly getting nectar from apple blossoms commercial beekeepers rent their bees to farmers for pollination so they get to know exactly what kinds of plants their bees are using however most hobby beekeepers like me just have their bees in a convenient location and don t know what their main nectar source is so we call our honey wildflower honey next time you see that label in the store you ll know that it s code for whatever flowers the bees could find my next post will have more photos i promise published in flowers on 19 june 2009 at 3 15 am leave a comment tags honey honey varieties nectar first inspections earlier i put up a series of posts on installing a package of bees in their hive once they re in the hive the beekeeper can breathe a sigh of relief and start a regular schedule of inspections or check ups to make sure they re doing okay we hope that the bees will accept the new hive and that the new queen will be healthy and start laying eggs quickly and that those eggs will develop into a lot of healthy bees so the colony can grow in the spring it s the beekeeper s job to make sure the bees have everything they need to grow into a huge strong colony as fast as possible here s a quick look at what this beekeeper does during an inspection in the spring early in the year and especially with a new package of bees i need to make sure the bees have fresh sugar syrup which provides a food source right inside the hive adding a syrup pail in an established colony the bees might not need sugar syrup because they would have stored honey to eat over the winter and on cold or rainy days a new colony doesn t have any food stored up and if their first few days or weeks are cold or rainy or they can t find enough flowers in the early spring they could starve before the weather changed this is a pollen patty it s icky and sticky but the bees love it pollen is rich in protein and bees feed it to their developing larvae so it s really important that they have enough or the babies could go hungry i buy pre made pollen patties and store them in the freezer until i m ready to put them in the hive they re strange sticky nasty looking things but bees eat them like candy you can mix your own and it s less expensive but it s a terribly messy sticky job i tried it once and i m never going to try it again i put one on top of the frames where the bees can get it easily they ll chew the waxed paper away as they start eating the patty here s a partly eaten pollen patty now that i know the bees have enough food i need to check that the queen is healthy however finding one bee among all the others in the hive could take hours and even if i do get a look at her i won t really know whether she s healthy or not by looking fortunately a good indicator of the queen s health is looking at her eggs bee eggs hatch into larvae after 3 days so if i can find eggs in the hive that means she was there and healthy enough to lay eggs within the last 3 days and that s good enough for me eggs are a little hard to see but they look a bit like tiny grains of rice stuck to the bottom of the cells you usually only see them if you can tilt the frame at just the right angle on a sunny day and look carefully i have trouble taking photos of them while wearing a bee suit but here s a link where you can see a good picture penn state entomology photo gallery now that the bees have food and i know the queen is healthy i m ready to close the hive and go home they should be fine for another week published in uncategorized on 5 june 2009 at 4 47 am leave a comment tags eggs inspection pollen patty springtime sugar syrup weather tools and toys in the last few posts i ve mentioned a few of the tools i use when i m working with my hive but here s a quick introduction to the supplies i carry around in my bee bucket i think that only two of them are really important for most beekeepers and the rest are fun and useful toys that are more of a choice than a necessity my hive tool the most useful tool i have is called a hive tool it s basically a mini crowbar and beekeepers use it to pry parts of the hive apart scrape and clean parts of the hive move things that are covered in bees pretty much any time you need to poke something scrape something or pry sticky things apart this tool is your best friend i keep mine in a little pocket on the right leg of my bee suit where it s easy to reach when i need it the other important tool that most beekeepers use is a smoker my smoker with the inner grate pulled out smoke encourages the bees to crawl back down between the frames and out of the beekeeper s way and which makes it a lot easier to work with a hive lighting and using it can be enough of an adventure that i should probably devote a whole post to it soon now for the toys these are things i like to use when i m working with bees but at the end of the day they re optional and it s up to the beekeeper whether they use them or not some beekeepers use more toys than me many probably use fewer it s all about what makes you comfortable this is a bee brush i use my bee brush for exactly what you d think brushing bees out of the way it has very soft bristles so the bees won t be hurt and i mainly use it if the bees are crawling on the edge of the hive when i m trying to get it closed i don t want to squish any of them if i can avoid it i usually keep this in the pocket on my left leg while i m working i don t need it very often but when i do want it i want to be able to get my hands on it right away this is a frame grabber frame grabbers make reaching down to pull out a sticky frame covered with stinging insects a lot easier i always worry that i ll squish bees or get stung or both when i m shoving my fingers in between frames and trying to grab one i find that it makes pulling a frame out of the hive a much more graceful experience and i don t worry that i ll drop one nearly as much this handy toy is a frame perch a frame perch see arrow hooks over the side of the beehive and i can rest frames on it while they re out of the hive rather than setting them on the ground or keeping them in my hands i just bought it this year and i already don t know how i lived without it that s pretty much everything i use when i m working with the beehive it s not a hobby that requires a lot of tools or technology published in uncategorized on 22 may 2009 at 5 44 pm leave a comment tags bee brush frame grabber frame perch hive tool smoker tools her majesty the most important part of hiving a package is making sure the queen is installed safely in her new home before a package of bees is shipped the queen is placed carefully in a queen cage so she s protected on the journey and so the beekeeper can find her among the two pounds of bees in the package once i had the workers dumped into the hive it was time to say hello to her majesty she was really active running all over the queen cage as if she was showing off for us this is a great sign you want a queen who is young and sprightly because she has a lot of work ahead of her my next goal is to get the queen into the hive safely so she won t fly away or get hurt somehow most people are pretty experienced when it comes to squishing bugs but when you have one very special insect that you absolutely cannot squish or allow to get away but really really don t want to sting you there s a handy procedure to follow the queen cage is solid wood on four sides has one open side covered with screen and one end with a hole drilled in it and plugged with a cork i used a tiny nail to loosen up the cork waited for the queen to skitter down to the opposite end of the cage quickly pulled the cork out and covered it with one gloved finger unlike every other bee in the hive the queen can sting as many times as she wants so i don t want to take a chance with a bare finger here then i took a deep breath and grabbed the mini marshmallow i d brought along for the occasion with a little squishing it plugs up the hole perfectly the queen is still stuck in the cage but the bees will eat the marshmallow and let her out in a few hours we pounded a small nail into the top of one of the frames so i could attach the queen cage with a bit of wire i don t want to take any chances that the queen cage will fall to the bottom of the hive or that the queen will get stuck inside so positioning is pretty important this might be the last time i see the queen face to face so i take one last look and then tuck her inside with the queen inside it s time to close up the hive i brush as many bees inside as i can put the inner cover on the hive and add the pails of sugar syrup upside down so the bees will have something to eat right away i ve already put a specially made piece of wood in the front of the hive to reduce the entrance so my small colony will be able to defend itself if mice or other bees come sniffing around and the last thing i do is plug up that reduced entrance with grass so the bees inside can t leave right away keeping them in the hive for a while and keeping the queen in her cage for a few more hours makes it more likely that they will accept their new home and not decide to vacate the premises and look for a better spot the bees will pull the grass out of the way before tomorrow morning but by that time they should have decided that this house will be sufficient for their needs and ready to go look for nectar that s it the bees are installed and i get to go home with a smile on my face i ll come back in a few days to make sure the queen got out of her cage but my work here is done next time beekeeping tools published in bee hive on 7 may 2009 at 2 10 am comments 2 tags hiving package bees queen queen cage hiving the package so i ve got bees a hive and all those supplies and now it s time to put them together i pull out four of the frames so there will be a place to put all the bees and spray them really well with the sugar syrup this keeps them from flying too easily and makes my job a lot simpler the next step is to make sure the sugar can in the package is loose then take a...