Tom Seeley Speaking at MABA on Wednesday Night

Tom Seeley is coming to town.  (Author, scientist, and probably the world authority on how/why honey bees swarm)  Really he's coming to Georgia to teach at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute on Friday and Saturday.   He agreed to stop and speak to our bee club on Wednesday night before driving up to Young Harris.

Unfortunately our bee club has this awful policy of just one person hosting the guest speaker for dinner.  I wish we shared the policy of some other clubs such as the Macon County Beekeepers in Franklin, NC.  When I went to speak to that club, they invited any club member who wished to join us to come to the restaurant with the speaker so I got to eat with ten wonderful beekeepers before going to give my talk.

The person who invited Tom Seeley to speak to our club literally said she was going to be selfish and not allow anyone else to join her in having dinner with him.  I have to work right up until fifteen minutes before the meeting, so I wouldn't have been able to eat with him, even if anyone else were invited to go along.  But think how inspiring it would be to new beekeepers to get a chance to sit and have a casual dinner conversation with him!  Oh, well.

We have great speakers at Metro - Juliana Rangel who was Seeley's assistant in the Honey Bee Democracy study, Billy Davis, Keith Delaplane (comes every year) have all spoken to our club, for example.  They each get taken out to dinner by a host before the meeting.  I wish the policy would be changed to include anyone who would like to go and is willing to pay for their own dinner.

I am so excited because I will get to hear him speak on Wednesday night and then he is giving three talks at Young Harris.  Luckily I'm not scheduled to teach in conflict with him so I'll be able to hear him give all three talks.  I'll take notes and share them with all of you.  Young Harris is usually sold out by now but they've increased registration to 150 this year, so there still may be some openings.

But, if you are in Atlanta and would like to hear Tom Seeley talk about bees, the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association meets at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in midtown at 7 PM on Wednesday night.  He will be speaking in Day Hall - it's the first large building you come to after leaving the entry building.  You don't have to be a member to come to the meeting and there's not a charge to attend.  You can either park in the parking garage (there's a fee) or in the neighborhoods across Piedmont Road and walk over.

It's a great beekeeper opportunity!  Join us.

There's a fabulous exhibit at the Garden right now of large creatures made of plants.  Day Hall where Seeley will be speaking is just past the two cobra plant sculptures.

Here, for example, are the fish sculptures that both spew water and spin around, much to my granddaughter's delight:

And here is the monster - we call him the Gruffalo because he looks like the Gruffalo in a book Lark (my three year old granddaughter) likes:

Young Harris Beekeeping Institute Registration Opens on March 4

The annual Young Harris Beekeeping Institute will take place May 9 - 11 2013 at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia.  Registration opens on March 4 (TOMORROW) and it fills up fast. This year in addition to the usual teaching crew (which includes me!), guest lecturers will be Dr. Tom Seeley, Dr. Dave Tarpy and Michael Young from Ireland.

Don't delay in registering - it fills up quickly.  I do understand that this year 175 people will be able to register (25 more than in past years).

At Young Harris, in addition to learning a lot, you can take the Certified Beekeeper exam, or sit for the Journeyman or Master Beekeeper exam.  I think there are several people working on Master Craftsman beekeeper this year as well.  Even if you are not trying for certification, there's lots to learn at Young Harris.

Talks will be given on queen rearing, bees and mites in the forest, queen's effects on her colony, decision making in the bee colony, national bee loss, cooking with honey, and many other great topics. I'm talking about low tech beekeeping, although this year my talk is going to focus on foundationless beekeeping, with some other low tech items thrown in for fun.

I find Young Harris to be valuable every time I go and I expect this year will be especially great.  I am so looking forward to hearing Dr. Seeley who will speak at MABA on Wednesday night before going to Young Harris for the rest of the week.

Sign up - for a great time and lots to learn.

GBA Spring Meeting this Weekend

The "spring" (it's February and relatively cold, for goodness sake) meeting of the Georgia Beekeepers Association is this weekend.  Gina and I are going together and rooming together.  There's a board meeting on Friday night.  Gina and I are on the board as co-editors of the newsletter, Spilling the Honey.  After that there is a reception for the members and we'll go to that as well.

Then on Saturday the day is filled with speakers and gathering.  I am actually speaking.  I was asked to talk about why get yourself certified at bee school such as Young Harris.  I never asked myself why I went through the certification to reach Master Beekeeper.  It's been a challenge to think it through and to develop a talk about why people should consider certification.

I decided to call the talk:  What I Did for Love: Why Go for Certification at Bee School.  I had completed the whole PowerPoint before I realized that Valentine's Day is next week!   So I changed the color scheme to red and white!

If you are in the vicinity, come.  The meeting is at Lake Blackshear Resort near Cordele, Georgia.  You can read all about it on the newsletter site or on the GBA website.  It's only $35 to go and that includes lunch.

Cordele is a little over two hours south of Atlanta near Plains, GA, home of Jimmy Carter.  Maybe we'll go eat lunch with him on Friday!

Young Harris Beekeeping Institute 2012

Home from Young Harris Beekeeping Institute today and I'm exhausted.  This, for me, is the end of seven weeks of over-commitment and now it's setting in that I am TIRED.

Young Harris was great in so many ways.  I learned a lot and heard some good speakers:  Juliana Rangel from NC State and Gary Reuter from the University of Minnesota, in particular.  I also taught two workshops on Low Tech Beekeeping and tested the candidates for Certified Beekeeper on their practical exams.

Julia and Noah went also.  Noah earned his Journeyman certification - he's only 15 and I imagine he's one of the youngest, if not the youngest, person to get this certification in Georgia.  He is such a knowledgeable and excellent beekeeper, and I love being associated with him.

I couldn't believe that I left my camera in Atlanta so I couldn't take photos of Noah and Julia in their moments of reward, but I've put in pictures of them in inspections that we have done together.



Julia who earned her Journey(wo)man last year, this year went for her Master Beekeeper and she DID IT!  I have loved working with her over these years and was sure she would achieve this.  There's an old saying that if you ask 10 beekeepers a question, you'll get 10 different answers, but Julia, Noah and I generally think very similarly and agree in philosophy.  I feel lucky and really privileged to be friends with and to keep bees with both Julia and Noah.



I didn't enter any honey in the honey contest - all of my cut comb has been opened and shared with others; my liquid honey is beginning to crystallize, and I never got around to making a wax block or creamed honey, so I didn't have any honey to enter.

I did enter the "art" category of the honey show with the quilt I've made for my newest grandson:  Max who is now five months old.  Jeff, who is his father, keeps bees with me, and he and Valerie decorated Max's room in bees.

I've worked on it for six months and was thrilled to win a blue ribbon.  I've made a number of quilts in my life, but this is the first quilt that I actually drew the design myself so it is totally original.  The six honey bee blocks are based on a traditional quilt block but I made the heads smaller like a real honey bee and put a floral block in the center.



So now I'm going to slow down for a month or two and take better care of myself…..but I will still be sharing my bee life with all of you.

Bees: A Little of This, A Little of That

Yesterday I inspected all the hives at home.  Finding lots of little tidbits of interest, I decided to post a hodge-podge of them, so here goes:

I saw a perfectly lovely queen in SOS2.  She was gliding slowly, unfazed by my arrival in the hive, over her creations and paused so that I could take her photo.  Isn't she pretty - I love the golden queens that my bees often raise.



It has (finally) begun to rain in Atlanta - we've now had several days of it.  My garden is green, and the nectar flow may get a last hurrah with the extra push of moisture from the universe.  Below you can see my water source.  It's a plant saucer sitting on an upturned pot.  Inside that plant saucer is another one filled with rocks so that the bees have somewhere to light while taking in the water.



I fall in love with the bees all over again every time I pull a foundationless frame and find that they are creating comb.



Remember the frames that have stood around untouched until the nectar flow began to diminish?  There have been bees all over them for the past few days and now every cell has been ripped open and all the honey robbed out.



The shards of wax cappings on the ground attest to the robbery.  That is a way that you can tell if your hive has been robbed.  In a working hive, the bees are quite conservative with the wax - they reuse the caps of the brood cells, they move wax from one place to the next.  But in a robbery, the bees are not invested and tear the cappings off, dropping them wherever they may fall.



Early in my beekeeping, when I was still using sheets of wax foundation, I put a box of wax foundation frames as a new super on the hive .  Later that day, I stood by the hive and could hear a definite crunching sound.  I even posted on Beemaster about it because it was such a strange sound.  I came to discover that the bees were chewing the wax out of the new frames and taking it to a place in the hive where it was needed!

Imagine hearing crunching coming from your hive!

My bees in these hives have really been collecting nectar.  They've built some pretty fat honey comb as you can see in the photo below.



I'm off to Young Harris tomorrow night and will be teaching "Low Tech Beekeeping" there on Friday afternoon at 1 and at 2 in room 106.  If you are there, be sure to speak to me and introduce yourself as someone who reads this blog.

Young Harris Shrimp Boil

At the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, there's usually a shrimp boil on Friday night for all the participants. At that dinner, the certificates are handed out for people who passed their Journeyman certification or their Master Beekeeper.  Welsh honey judge certification is also awarded that night and the winners of the honey contest are announced.

It's a fun gathering and a casual time to talk to other beekeepers. Cindy Hodges took this photo of Noah, me, Julia and Allen Facemire, a fantastic film-maker who is also a beekeeper,. Allen has made movies of hive inspections and honey harvests for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association.

It's a rare moment to see a photo of Noah, Julia and me not in bee garb so I thought I'd post a picture of how we look in real life, not at the Blue Heron all suited up for bees.

Speaking at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute

At Young Harris, I gave a talk on "Simple Beekeeping: A Low-Tech Approach" to the students there. I had to give the same talk four different times, so by the fourth time, I felt a little babbly. But many people told me they enjoyed it and I didn't hear any negative feedback, so that felt great.

I talked for 45 minutes, hitting the highlights of the simple approach to box size (using all mediums), foundation (using foundationless frames), pest management (a homemade SHB trap), melting wax (solar wax melter from a styrofoam beer cooler), and honey harvest (crush and strain).

I demonstrated cutting a wax strip with a rotary cutter.



I showed them how a foundationless frame looks going into the hives.



And, of course, I introduced them to the wax tube fastener and told them my story of learning to use it.



After all, it came with no directions, and I'd like to save others the agony I went through!



The first day the room was crowded and overflowing for each of my two talks and the second day, the room was full for each of the talks, so I felt pleased. I also spent a good amount of time evaluating the practical abilities of the certified beekeeper candidates.

I entered a wall quilt and my creamed honey in the honey show.

My creamed honey came in second place (my friend Julia won the blue ribbon!) and my quilt came in third place.

Julia (who is a great beekeeper and has kept bees longer than I but didn't start the certification process until last year) earned her Journeywoman certification and Noah, her son, and my friend and fellow beekeeper, earned his certified level in the Georgia program.

Registration for Young Harris is now Open

The Beekeeping Institute at Young Harris College in north Georgia is put on jointly by the UGA Honey Bee Program and Young Harris.  In Georgia and really in the Southeast, it's the premier place to go to learn the ins and outs of beekeeping.

There's an advanced track and a beginning track.  It's the place where one can become a Certified, Journeyman, Master, or Master Craftsman beekeeper in Georgia.  This year there are some great visiting lecturers including Debbie Delaney whom I heard talk about bee genetics at EAS last year; Dr. Yves LeConte who is director of bee research in Avignon, France; and Jerry Hayes from the Florida Department of Agriculture.

Many people who earned their Master Beekeeper at the Institute are also teaching in the program (including me - I get to teach Low-Tech Beekeeping).  And you'll get to hear Jennifer Berry (who writes regularly for Bee Culture), Cindy Bee (one of the best beekeepers in the country), and Keith Delaplane who is not only the  head of the UGA Department of Entomology but the author of a book many beginning beekeepers use: First Lessons in Beekeeping.

The program only takes 150 people and it has filled up the last few years, so if you want to go, register soon!

Keith Fielder, Master Beekeeper, Speaks at Metro Atlanta Club

Keith Fielder, [if you click on the link, his write-up is on page 3] a Master Beekeeper in the state of Georgia, was the speaker this past Wednesday at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association. He spoke on Bee Biology for Dummies. I enjoyed what he had to say and learned some things I didn't know.



He had marvelous illustrations in his PowerPoint from HowStuffWorks and referred very positively to their Internet site and the illustrations available there. I went for a visit. How's the above for an information-filled illustration (Thanks, HowStuffWorks!)?

Interesting facts from Keith Fielder:

1. Bumblebees scent-mark the flowers they visit. This explains why some flowering plants have one or two bumblebees one day and are covered the next.

2. Flowers have a negative charge. The hairs on a bee's body have a positive charge. Since negative and positive attract, the bees are literally drawn to the flowers. Pollen is also attracted to the positive charge on the bee. And interestingly enough, women's hair is negatively charged so when bees fly into your hair, according to Keith, they are drawn there and can't prevent being pulled into your hair!

3. The pollen basket isn't really a basket at all but rather a concave surface covered with stiff hair. The bee combs the hair on its body, gathering the pollen on its body hairs and bringing the pollen into a ball on its leg.

4. And, away from bee biology into commenting on the hive, Keith said that the honeycomb is the "liver of the bee colony" in that it absorbs all the yuck that comes into the hive. This is important rationale for getting rid of old comb on a regular basis and bringing new comb into the hive.

We are very lucky in Atlanta to have such a wealth of wise beekeepers who come to speak to us.

Keith Fielder is full of knowledge. This is the fourth time I've heard him speak.

• He spoke at my first Young Harris meeting on Requeening your hives;
  
• He gave a similar talk to our bee club earlier this year on making a push-in queen cage of #8 hardware cloth;
  
• He spoke at GABA on giving talks about beekeeping to school children, I believe; and
  
• Now I've gotten to hear him on bee biology. He's always entertaining and I'll look forward to my next opportunity to hear him talk on any bee topic.

Our speaker in October for his second visit to our club this year is Dr. Keith Delaplane.

For Want of a Nail.......

At Young Harris Beekeeping Institute this year, I heard some of the people who were taking the Certified Beekeeper exam comment that there was a question on the exam about how many nails do you need to put together a frame? One might think 8 - two at either end of the top bar (4) and two at either end of the bottom bar (4), but if you gave that answer, you would not be right.

The real answer is 10: two at either end of the top bar, two at either end of the bottom bar and one on each side of the end bar going from the end bar sideways into the top bar. If you have glued the frame together and used that 9th and 10th nail, your frame should stay together well.

Unfortunately yesterday while inspecting, I tried to free a frame built last year from the propolis glueing it to the hive box. The picture below was the result. The top bar pried from the propolis, pulled up on its own and separated from the end bar. This is a good object lesson for me - last year I didn't glue my frames and I only used 8 nails on most of them.


Much to the bees' displeasure, I pulled out my trusty hammer and nailed it back together but didn't add the 9th and 10th nail (didn't want to disturb the girls even more), but I have learned my lesson - never put together a frame without glue and with only 8 nails!



The old nursery rhyme says it best:

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

Benjamin Franklin even included a version of this rhyme in his Poor Richard's Almanac.

It's time to Name the Hives

When I got home from the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, I inspected the beehives. My main concern was to determine if the swarm hive and the apparently queenless hive yet had queens. When I checked both hives had tiny larvae and I saw eggs in the apparently queenless hive.

So all the hives are growing appropriately and now it's time to give them names.

From left to right on the deck we have Bermuda, Mellona, Aristaeus2, and Hyron.

• Bermuda is my oldest hive, starting the third year of survival. The original hive boxes for Bermuda were painted a pale pink, so the name referred to the sands of Bermuda. This is my only hive with such a simple reason for her name.
• Mellona is next. Mellona is the Roman goddess of bees. Mellona is in her second year. She tends to make wonderful honey, but is slower in production than Bermuda
• Aristaeus2 is named for the Greek god Aristaeus who lost all of his bees to disease. Proteus advised him to sacrifice a number of animals, go away for a time. When he returned, he found swarms of bees in the sacrificed carcasses. His bees were never sick again. This was a small swarm and has managed to get started well, although they have a tendency to build burr comb.
• Hyron, according to Wikipedia, is the Cretan word for swarm of bees. Since this was my first swarm that I collected this year, I decided it deserved the name.
  
  

This hive below is the nuc that arrived queenless (or apparently so). The supplier gave me a new queen who was released but disappeared and there still was no laying activity in the hive five days later.
I believe this hive had a virgin queen from the beginning and she is now laying well.

• So I have named this hive Persephone since Persephone disappeared into the underworld for half the year but represented fertility when she was in the world during spring and summer.
  
  This little hive I have named Melissa, who in Greek mythology, saved Zeus' life by feeding him milk and honey. I hope this enthusiastic hive will make lots of honey to feed me and themselves.
  
  Finally, I have named this last hive Devorah, the Jewish poet and prophet, whose name in Hebrew means "bee." I did have this spelled Deborah, but a good friend of mine said the correct alliteration is Devorah.

"Hebrew scholars offer other possible Semitic origins of devorah,the modern Hebrew word for bee. They consider ancient cognates like the Aramaic for bee, debarta, and its Syriac cousin, deboritha, as well as the Hebrew word for honey, debash. There is another shoresh (three-letter word root) brought forth for consideration: the Mandaic Aramaic dibra 'back, tail, hence 'bee's stinger' (?) to be compared with the Arabic dubr 'backside, tail.'" I found this quote here.

I think since this hive is closest to my neighbor's yard and in full view and since this hive is directly beside the path the yard guys have to walk on to work in my yard, Devorah seems like a gentle name for a hive which at the moment appears to have a gentle feel. But with the sting of the bee implied in the origin of the name, we can also expect Devorah to keep the hive safe.

The Best Part of Young Harris

Obviously the best part of the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute is sharing information and getting to know beekeepers from Georgia and surrounding states.

Here's my fun lunch group from the last day. We had a great time at the lunches. (The food leaves something to be desired but the company is well worth hanging out in the cafeteria.) We all shared the experience of the day with each other. I didn't take pictures at the most fun event which was the shrimp boil held at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds on Friday night. The food is really delicious there and the people are all more relaxed because we're through with all the tests.



Tests? Yes, the Beekeeping Institute is put on by the University of Georgia and The Young Harris College. Most people come to try to get certification at some level. You can take the beginner level - which is Certified Beekeeper. That's what I did last year. The next level is Journeyman (must have two years of beekeeping under your belt) followed by Master Beekeeper and Certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper (those two take at least five years). I believe that Bill Owens is the only Certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper in the state of Georgia. Also available at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute is a class to certify Welsh Honey Judges.

I took the Journeyman tests both written and practical and turned in my proof of the required five public service credits I had earned.

I sweated bullets. I was pretty sure I had passed the written test, but the practical test included some entomology that threw me for a loop. So I wasn't feeling very hopeful as I sat down at the end-of-the-institute convocation.

When Dr. Delaplane called out the name of the person who had passed the Journeyman level, I was not that person, so I sat back in my chair and thought, "OK, maybe I'll try again next year."

Then after a pause, I heard Dr. Delaplane announce, "And Linda Tillman." I was thrilled. He commented that this blog influenced my certification, so thank you to all of you who come to read about my beekeeping adventures and comment on my efforts.



I keep a statcounter on the numbers of people who visit each day and now it averages 300/day from all over the world. Since January 1, 2007, Google reports that 1,989 people have watched my video on crush and strain harvesting and 2,848 people have watched the one on how to make a solar wax melter. Thank you all for your interest and for visiting so often.



I also entered the photograph below in the photography section of the honey show and it won second place. What a great day for me all the way around!

Kim Flottum at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute

I'm very glad to share with all of you some of what I learned at Young Harris. You realize, of course, that you are only getting my take on what the speakers shared and that may not be entirely accurate! I encourage you, if there are beekeeping gatherings - meetings, conferences, local speakers - in your area, go to hear them.

Beekeeping is an art as well as a science. I learned SO much at Young Harris, as I did last year as well. Every speaker brings his/her own perspective and good ideas.

We were so lucky to have with us Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine and author of The Backyard Beekeeper. I heard him speak on two topics.

Here he is talking about "The Many Uses of Nucs." He doesn't think of nucs as devices for making splits. Instead he uses nucs as a source of "spare parts" in the bee yard. By this he said he meant that with a five frame nuc that is thriving, you could take out a frame of brood or honey to give to a hive in need of either. And the use of nucs can provide special "spare parts:" extra queens, should you need them.


In addition to the above wisdom, he suggested a unique method of requeening. He starts the nuc with five frames (his rationale for the five frame nuc is that it is convenient to buy nucs that size). He only uses medium boxes, so he buys medium nucs.

He puts together the nuc with 2 frames of mostly eggs, one of sealed brood, one of honey and pollen and one foundation or drawn comb. He takes these frames out of strong hives and gives one shake to get most of the bees off of them, leaving the young nurse bees still on the frame, before adding them to the nuc. This is the core of a hive and with these resources, they make themselves a queen.

After the queen is up and working the nuc to build it up, if Flottum has a queenless hive, he removes five frames from that hive and substitutes the five frames from the nuc and presto! he has requeened. The five frames he removed from the hive go into the nuc (including a frame on which there is a queen cell or a new egg) and he begins the process again. Sounds like no fuss, no bother.

He sometimes even overwinters nucs...and he's in very cold state, not Georgia where we should fairly easily be able to overwinter a nuc colony.

After his talk, I went to the Brushy Mountain vendor table and ordered two medium nucs. I've had queenless situations in both of my two beekeeping summers and this sounds like a painless way around the problem.




In the second talk I heard Kim Flottum give, he talked about using the web to access beekeeping resources. I must admit that I have never looked at the Bee Culture website as anything other than a link to the magazine. Well, think again. It's a fabulous link to so many helpful beekeeping resources.

For example, if you click on The Science of Beekeeping, it takes you to the many universities who have bee labs, newsletters about apiculture, and research information. Among many others Flottum talked about the University of Nebraska where you can read about the origin of the powered sugar treatment for varroa mites, UC Davis, which has an outstanding newsletter from the Dept of Entomology. Assuming you don't get distracted by the wisdom-filled university web pages on bees and bee labs, if you continue scrolling down the science of beekeeping page, you can find links to the Department of Agriculture for all the states and for Canada.

You can also click on "Catch the Buzz" to sign up for Flottum's own newsletter. Since he had praised a number of University entomology newsletters, he joked about how after his talk, all of us would have very full email boxes!

Ross Conrad, Organic Beekeeper, at Young Harris

I had the privilege twice today to hear Ross Conrad talk about his methods of beekeeping at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute today.

First topic: American Foulbrood:

He discussed a way to handle American Foulbrood without burning the hives. He advocates removing the bees from the affected hive, shaking them into new hive boxes with new frames, all new equipment. Then he burns the old frames. He scorches the boxes, covers, bottom boards, etc. like I did for the boxes donated to the Girl Scout troop.

He notes that the above process allows him to save the bees. What is destroyed are the frames of larvae contaminated with AFB, but the bees are not sacrificed. In general each time he was the speaker he clearly communicated that he was oriented to the bees' needs rather than the needs of the beekeeper.

I hope never to encounter AFB, but what I most learned from was the second talk I heard.

Second topic: Addressing the varroa question by making nucs

As I understand it, this is what he advocates:

We want to promote strength in our hives. This often means promoting the growth of local bees. If you order bees from other locales than your own, then you are asking the arriving bees to adapt to your climate, environment, etc., but if you are using your own strongest bees to expand your stock, then the bees have already demonstrated their ability to thrive in your environment.
Taking this further, he also prefers to use queens that his bees make rather than purchasing queens.

Following this logic, if you have a strong hive then that hive should be one that you capitalize on by expanding it through making nucs.

From his strongest hives that he would most like to duplicate, he makes five frame nucs using as the center frame a frame of new eggs and young brood. On either side of the center frame he puts a frame of larvae and capped brood. Then the last two frames are frames of honey to support the new nuc.

It will take the nuc 16 days to make one of the eggs into a queen. Then the queen has to harden, orient and go on a mating flight. This can occupy a number of other days. By the time she starts laying, there has been an approximate 3 week interruption in the life cycle of the varroa mite. Since the adult varroa mite lies in wait for the tiny larvae on which she lays her eggs, the varroa mite stops in her tracks until the new queen starts laying. Without tiny larvae on which to lay her eggs, the varroa mite can't reproduce herself. This is the cycle disruption.

Ross leaves the nuc alone for 30 days and then inspects it. If there is evidence that the new queen is laying, he moves the nuc into its own hive box. Now his apiary has another hive derived from his strongest hive. And the varroa mite has been stymied for three weeks.



One of the best things about listening to Ross is his obvious earnest, genuine interest in the bees. He has thoughtfully come up with a system that supports this caring for the bees and expresses his own organic approach to the world.



Sometimes he puts two nucs into one hive body to get them started. Here is a rather faded picture of a slide he used to show the division of the hive.

He uses a special bottom board with cut out entrances for both nucs, one on one side of the box and the other on the opposite end. the center is barricaded by a division feeder with all space covered, blocking the movement of the bees from one side of the hive box to the other.

In general I enjoyed so much his positive, genuine approach to beekeeping. I bought his book:
Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture and had him autograph it for me!

Pouring Wax Block for Young Harris

I'm leaving for the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute on Wednesday night. I'll take the course for the Journeyman Certification (Journeywoman??) and stay for the lectures about beekeeping. I really enjoyed it last year and learned a lot. This year will be a lot harder.

I've spent time documenting my public service credits - you have to have five for Journeywoman. I put together a notebook with the documentation in it - I gave talks at the Atlanta History Center, a garden club in Stone Mountain, an elementary school in DeKalb County; I am doing ongoing work with a Dunwoody Girl Scout troop; and my blog has been accepted as a public service credit by the powers that be. (Whoo Hoooo!) Just for insurance, I also documented one of the three swarms I collected (you can count 2 swarm collections as public service credits).

Just for fun, I thought I would enter a wax block in the honey contest there. Virginia Webb, a world champion honey producer in N Georgia (her honey won best in the world at Apimondia a couple of years ago) enters wax blocks in the Young Harris contest, so mine will not hold a candle (ha, ha) to hers, but I thought I'd try. So I melted my wax in my Presto pot and followed what I have learned from pouring so many blocks - this is the 11th pouring I've done.

While the wax was melting, I heated the pan for the mold in the oven at 300 degrees along with the measuring cup into which I would pour the wax from the Presto pot.


I boiled two full teapots of water on the stove to put in the cooling pan. The wax block sets up best when the mold is in a pan of hot water in the way that one would bake a custard. Before the wax was finished melting, I put the mold (coated with a slight coat of Pam) into the larger pan and filled it with one pot of boiling water.


The melted wax was then poured from the hot measuring cup into the mold and I poured a second pot of boiling water into the surrounding pan. See the steam rising?


I'll leave the wax until the morning when it should be completely cooled and then remove it from the mold pan and polish it with panty hose. I've also bought a new queen sized pair of panty hose to carry the block to the contest in one of the stocking legs. This should keep the sheen from polishing it and should protect it from marking on our journey to Young Harris.

You can see from the last picture that the wax poured evenly and is cooling evenly. That is the secret to a good wax block. With my luck, I'll turn it out tomorrow and there will be some flaw on the top. Oh, well, I'll probably enter it anyway!

I'm also entering one of two photos that I like of bees on flowers. I'll pick one before the deadline on Friday. I've printed my two favorites out so I'll have both with me.



Post Script: I popped the wax out of the mold to find that it had stuck on two sides and I couldn't pour it again before I left for Young Harris.....so I won't enter it this year and instead I will just take my bee picture to enter in the photography section of the contest.

How to Light a Smoker

The smoker is a metal, spouted container with a hinged lid and a bellows attached. We build a small fire in the smoker with the plan to create a cool smoke that will cause the bees to react by gorging themselves with honey. Beekeepers say that the bees think there's a forest fire and go to ingest the honey to remove it from the hive.

I don't like to smoke the bees. They are upset by smoking and they take a while to recover from the smoke. In addition the smoke affects the honey in the hive. I do always light the smoker when I am going to inspect the hives. You never know when a hive will be cantankerous -- upset by the weather, the loss of the queen, your bad timing, whatever. I want to be prepared to distract them if I am liable to be stung unreasonably.

There are so many hard parts in lighting a smoker. This is the beginning of my third year in beekeeping and I still find it difficult. When I went to the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute last spring, I found the first part of lighting the smoker (lighting the lighter to light the smoker) to be the hardest part!

I can't light a cigarette lighter - my thumb just rolls on the mechanism and nothing happens. I'm not fast enough. The solution for me has been the hand held propane lighter. It's simple to use and easy to light.


There are lots of fuels used to light the smoker. The fuel needs to be one that will release a cool smoke. Most people in Georgia use wads of pine needles. Others use burlap cut into strips and rolled up. Leaves provide smoker fuel. Some of the bee catalog companies sell fuel for the smokers. Sometimes it is pressed cotton , sometimes it is wood pellets, sometimes baling twine.

The goal is not only to light the smoker but to keep it lit. A friend of mine uses cedar chips for hamsters. I find cedar hard to keep lit, but she swears by it. Virginia Webb (a well-known Georgia beekeeper) uses wood chips and puts some in the bottom, lights them and keeps feeding the chips. Bob Binnie (president of the GA beekeepers Association) uses Dadant pellets. Bob starts his smoker with a wadded up paper towel and then feeds in the pellets.

A by-product of using the solar wax melter is the wax impregnated paper towel filter through which the melted wax drips into the collection container. I keep the paper towel filter infused with melted wax residue on hand to be a smoker fire starter, more powerful than the plain paper towel that Bob uses.



Once you've lit the smoker, the main challenge is to keep it lit. To do so, one must remember to pump the bellows every once in a while to keep the fire burning or at least smoldering and providing smoke going up the chimney to use on the bees as needed. I said "one must" because I always forget about the smoker - I rarely use it and it often goes out before I am finished with my inspection.

There are some pictures from some earlier posts on learning to light the smoker here and here.