May 5, 2017 – Expanding Brood Nests

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The extended period of warm weather has allowed the hives to really expand the brood nests. We have added a second brood box to nearly 75% of the hives to allow them more room to expand.

A hive inspected from the bottom, ready for more space

I add a second brood box to hives once they have at least 8 frames covered in bees, when inspected from the bottom. Top inspections tend to be misleading, I have found that what appears as 8 frames from the top is only 5 frames of bees from the bottom.

I add the additional brood box underneath the existing colony. The idea with this is that the bees will work and prepare the cells for the queen more quickly as they have to pass through the empty box to get up to the existing brood nest with each load of honey and pollen. Also, the bees often build a thick barrier of honey at the top of the brood nest. The queen often doesn’t cross this honey barrier, as she is looking for open cells in her existing brood nest. In my experience, adding the second brood box to the bottom speeds up the brood nest expansion by at least a few days, and I would advise it to anyone wanting to expand quickly for splits, it does involve additional lifting though.

stacks of new equipment ready for paint or wax dipping

We have a bunch of new equipment that we built during the winter, which needs to be painted or wax dipped to protect it from the elements. I have been painting everything thus far but am leaning towards getting this fresh stuff dipped, I have been hearing good things about it, and painting is quite time consuming.

I was going to talk about queen rearing this week, but am still working things out with how I will be setting up my mating nucs, my first round of splits will get a queen cell, but I also plan to use mini mating nucs to be able to add mated queens to freshly made hives in June. This is a new adventure for us, but purchasing queens no longer fits in our budget so we are forced into making our own for our current year expansion. Not that this is a bad thing, as I really believe locally mated queens are better to use than imported.

04/29/2017 – Spring Prep and Odd Jobs

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The winds began from the north this morning, and through the course of the afternoon shifted to bring up some warm southern air. Over the past week, I have been working on odd jobs and spring prep here on the farm.

I had planned to get in some bee work today, but I ended up running all over town trying to find items that were no longer available. It is really frustrating to waste weekend time, but this is something you deal with in country life, a trip to town means at least an hour of your day is gone. For those curious it was an insulator fastener for cattle fencing, we used to use them on all our steel fence poles when dad was farming beef, but I guess somewhere along the line they stopped making them available.

The fastener that wasted my day!

Some items that will carry into next week are, cleaning equipment, melting wax, and fixing equipment.

The bees tend to fill comb and propolis into the queen excluder by years end, I will melt it off to give them a clean slate for the current year

I spent the majority of my time at home today working organizing the shed and garage, shifting from winter garage, to summer (knock on wood). I got side tracked and began a working on a project that has been sitting on the to do list for a few years. With my garden tractor I received a pull behind tiller with a blown independent motor. Last year our walk behind tiller gave up but the engine still runs decent, so I have now decided I will try installing it on the tractor tiller. I had originally planned to buy a new motor for it, but anyone who lives in the country knows the money runs out before the projects do. I purchased a few parts for this mid 70s motor off of Jacks Small Engines website. What a good resource, showing all parts available for nearly any small engine, and any aftermarket replacements. Shipping to Canada was steep as it always is but I sent it to the depot in Walhalla, ND for 1/3 of the price.

The mid 70s Briggs Motor I am switching onto my tractor tiller. New air and fuel filter are on the way.

Here a sneak preview on what I expect next weekends blog post will be about:

Mini queen mating nucs

 

April 22, 2017 – Drawn Comb or Foundation?

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I received a question this past week from a new beekeeper asking if he should buy drawn comb to begin his beekeeping adventure, or if he should just drop the bees on foundation?

I have heard and read many stories of how new beekeepers drop their new bee colony onto all fresh foundation and come back a few days later to find that their expensive investment has disappeared, absconded, gone with the wind. This is not to say it doesn’t work, only that risk is increased using this method.

I use drawn comb to start my bees on, and I advise new beekeepers to do the same for at least their brood boxes. Having drawn comb available to the new package, will prompt the queen to begin laying quickly. When there is eggs and brood in a hive it gives the bees something to work for, and they will make it a home.  Your package of bees will already be dealing with it’s fair share of stresses, and one of the largest concern with package bees is they sometimes dwindle quickly. By providing your new bees with comb, you eliminate the waiting period for the queen to start laying while the hive attempts to build comb. I strongly suggest buying a local hive or nuc instead of a package if you are just starting out. Building comb when there is not a honey flow on is not an easy task for the bees, it takes 8 lbs of honey for the hive to draw out one frame of comb.

Top: Very old Brood Frame which needs to be culled Bottom: Fresh comb built last season which has never been laid in

As mentioned in last weeks post, it is a good idea to have a plan in place to rotate out old equipment. In the past few years, I have been running 10 frames in my honey supers and each super was given 4 new frames for the bees to fill out, this was both to introduce new frames into my operation and also because I did not have enough drawn comb. This year I will be switching to 9 frames in each honey super, I will put 2 new frames in each super. I am also adding 2 new frames to the second brood box on each colony. Mark your frames with the year to track them. If you switch out 2 frames per year, your operation will have very few frames older than 5 years.

My second brood boxes have 2 frames of foundation each which the bees will fill out fairly quickly.

I appreciate questions which will allow me to fill space and educate in weeks like this last one, where there is not much excitement to blog about. Any questions you have feel free to message us on Facebook, or email us and I will do my best to help you get the answers you seek.

Not much has happened on the farm over the past week, just checking on the hives to make sure they have enough feed and pollen. Added another half pound of pollen substitute to most of the hives, that should get them through the cold forecast for the next 5 days, which will keep them from foraging on the natural pollen the trees are providing.

April 16, 2017 – Spring Management

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Another interesting week…. We had wonderful weather until today when we had some snow coming down. I can’t complain too much, thinking back to the draining springs we have had for the past few years. Overnight temperatures are remaining at or above freezing for April thus far, which is good for the bees while they build up their nests.

The hives have all taken down another pound of bee pro dry pollen substitute and also a pound of 10% pollen patties inside the hive. I opened them all up to assess the stores on Saturday afternoon, many of them required an additional pound of pollen patty. They were very calm and I was able to open and work them without gloves without any stings, a luxury that is not common, as often due to my day job I am working the hives later in the evening, when they become more defensive.

It is interesting to see their feeding pattern as the size of the nest can somewhat be determined by how many frames they are feeding on the patty from.

Many of the hives look as though they will be needing additional space towards the end of next week, weather permitting but some will need an additional 2 weeks after that. The first round of spring brood is now hatching which should help bolster the hive populations and health.

I have also been preparing the additional brood boxes with 2 new frames of foundation for the bees to build out. They are marked with the year and “B” for brood comb. I have been buying in a lot of frames from other beekeepers as I expand my operation, my plan is to rotate these frames out of my operation eventually. Ideally frames would only reach an age of 5 years before being rotated out for fresh comb. Replacing 2 frames from each super is a good management practice and doesn’t slow up production much at all.

We have one hive that I found to be queen-less on inspection today, rather than waste precious time trying to save a doomed hive this early in spring, I shook out the remaining bees in front of a weak hive, and after finding no sign of virus on the frames, will use the honey frames to help the other hives make it to the dandelion flow.

April 9, 2017

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It has been a busy week here at BHH. The warm weather has the hives working hard at getting fresh brood in place to replace the aged winter bee populations. We have given each hive their second pound of pollen substitute, I expect the trees will begin blooming next week.

bees have been working away at the pollen patties, fed to the young larva.

Most of our hives have come through winter at medium strength, but have really improved over the past week. I expect in the next 2 weeks, if the forecast holds true some of the hives will be given more space.

Yesterday we added Apivar strips to the hive, this has been a very effective treatment against beekeeping’s largest threat, the varroa mite. We find with a spring treatment, sampling in fall are below threshold and treatment is not needed with the spring treatment.

Mornings are still chilly but the daytime temps have the bees on the pollen sub feeders