Blue Heron Inspection April 23 2011

Julia and I have conducted the second inspection at Blue Heron.  It happened on Saturday April 23.  We arrived to find that the city work trucks were occupying the space where we usually park so everyone at the inspection helped carry stuff from the BH parking lot to the community garden area.

We have three hives at the Blue Heron.  Julia has an active hive, installed from a package we picked up from Don in Lula, Georgia.  My hive over wintered and I split it on April 8.  At that time there was no queen in the hive - the hive appeared to have swarmed.  This is only 15 days after the split and each half of the split got a frame with several queen cells on it.

We didn't see signs of a laying queen in either side of the split - probably she is still in the mating phase.  We did see the opened queen cell in one hive and the bees were extremely calm in the other half of the split, so we thought the queen existed but wasn't working yet.

Julia took lots of pictures, so you can see what we did.  In the middle of looking through the second half of the split I dropped a hive tool that fell completely through the hive, through the slatted rack to the screened bottom board.  This upset the bees (duh???) and they were not happy after that.  I have worried ever since that the falling hive tool killed the queen.  Gosh, I hope not, but to be sure I'll take a frame of brood and eggs from a hive at home over to them in the next couple of days.

Here's the slide show:

A Clean Hive Tool Makes for Healthy Bees

Jennifer's hive tool at the Queenery was an inspiration.  As she walks toward us, she is cleaning this already pristine hive tool.

I have recently read that a USDA survey showed that 30% of honey packed by beekeepers had spores for AFB in it and that 100% of commercial-packed honey had spores for AFB.  One simple way to address contaminating hives is to clean your hive tool between hives.  Jennifer is using a wipe in the picture above.  I've also read that the hive tool can be heat cleaned between hives.

In shame and embarrassment, I present the before picture of my hive tool below.  It is gunked with propolis and other debris.  And I pick it up and casually use it moving from one hive to the next without thought.  No more will I be behaving in such an irresponsible way.





You can see the soapy water below the gunky tool.  Today I gave all of my hive tools a good washing and then went after each of them with the brass bristled brush.



I've pulled some Clorox wipes to take on the Blue Heron hive inspection tomorrow (we want to teach these new beekeepers how to do it better than I've been doing it.).



The hive tool on the right is five years old.  The one on the left is a little over a year old (Brushy Mountain gave those away in 2008 or 2009, I believe).  The one in the middle I don't really like and have only used once or twice, so it was a picnic to clean!



So I'm ready to stop potentially spreading disease and get down to healthy beekeeper practices.

A Visit to the Queenery and Jennifer Berry's Apiary

This morning Julia, her son Noah and I left Atlanta at 6:30 AM to drive to the Queenery near Athens, GA, to pick up Julia's nuc for the Blue Heron's last hive.  We had a great time and learned a lot.  One thing we learned that is not evident in the slideshow:

Jennifer's hive tool was immaculate and shiny (unlike either of ours).  She cleans it between hives which lowers the chance of transmitting disease or other issues between hives.  We vowed to take Clorox wipes in our equipment carriers to be able to clean our tools between hives.

Here's the slideshow of what we saw and how we got the last nuc for Blue Heron.  Remember that if you click on it, you'll have an opportunity to read the captions and watch the show full-screen.

Jerry Wallace speaks to the Bee Club on the Calendar for the Beekeeping Year

Jerry Wallace is one of the beekeepers I most respect in our bee club. He and I compete on wax blocks and with our honey each year at the annual honey contest. Last year he and I gave a program together on how to harvest honey. He's wise and makes informed decisions about his beekeeping.

So we were lucky to hear him on February 11 (I'm late posting this) go through a calendar of the beekeeping year in Georgia and hear how he thinks about his bees each month.



Some things he shared that spoke to me:

• In Georgia in a reasonable year, we can expect to get around 50 pounds of honey per hive.
• The average honey yield in the Southeast is 30 pounds per hive; the average honey yield in the United States is 52 pounds per hive.
• The beehive should be boiling over with bees at the beginning of the honey flow.
• He uses the slatted rack for ventilation in his hives (I think he and I are the only beekeepers in Metro who do!)
• Hives need more ventilation at the top than at the entrance.
  

Often on beekeeping forums people ask the fun question: What do you keep in your tool box. Jerry provided us with his list of his beekeeping tools:

• A hive tool
• A frame grip
• A veil
• A smoker
• A propane torch
• Gloves
• Bee brush
• An ice pick (?) - yeah, me too. So I asked him what he used it for and he said to enlarge the holes in frames when he wanted to wire them.
• A frame tool - see pictures below
• A fume board
• Bee quick
• A refractometer
• A leaf blower
• A wheelbarrow

The tool seen above and below is an actual tool. It's sold by Dadant and others. Dadant calls it a frame cleaner.

Jerry uses it to clean out the groove in the frame - a real boon if you are using starter strips as I do.



Jerry also provided us with a list of websites he finds useful as beekeeping resources. Here they are:

Metro Atlanta Beekeepers
Randy Oliver's Scientific Beekeeping
Georgia Master Beekeeping lecture notes
Beesource discussion forum
The Bee-L Listserv
Purdue Beekeeping publications
US Dept of Agriculture
Ohio State's Honeybee Lab page
CyberBee
Walt Wright's Articles

His calendar for Georgia:

• January:

Check the cluster and feed the bees on days with temps above 60
Repair and paint equipment

• February:

Open hives to look at the brood pattern
Mid February feed 1:1 sugar syrup to encourage brood rearing

• March:
  

Make splits
Get swarms - usually these begin with the first day of spring
Equalize colonies
Set out swarm lure hives
Check the queen's laying patterns
Probably need to add a box at the end of March
Showed a diagram of Walt Wright's swarm management configuration

• April:
  

The honey flow begins in Georgia
Add supers as needed - one at a time for undrawn foundation, all at once if drawn comb

• May:
  

First three weeks are the best honey production weeks in Georgia
First week in May is the best week to produce comb honey

• June:
  

Nectar flow ends in Georgia, although some great dark honey sometimes comes in at the end of June and into July
When bees are on the purple coneflower, we're at the end of the flow in Georgia
The best hives have 8 - 10 frames of bees going into the winter.

Trying to Keep Bermuda Growing

Today I opened Bermuda to transfer the honey filled frames from the dead hive to it. I was pleased to see what looked like more bees in the hive just five days after checking on Wednesday. I replaced two empty frames with honey-filled ones. See my Wednesday, 2/28 post and you'll see that there are about twice as many bees on the tops of the frames today as there were on Wednesday - Hooray!

I then took the empty super off of the hive. There was some honey in it and some bees so I left it standing in front of Bermuda so that the bees could get the honey and return themselves to the hive. I left the one frame leaning against the shallow super - mostly because I couldn't find my hive tool today (note to self: BUY A SPARE ONE for these occasions) and it was hard to pry out the frames with a screwdriver! If the bees don't take the honey out of it by tomorrow, I'll put it in the freezer.

The inspection continues - part two

I'm using the hive tool to separate the medium from the brood chamber deep hive body on the bottom. I pried the two sections apart as gently as I could.
Now we're down to the bottom level. This is the brood chamber - LOOK AT THE BEES! There are bees by the thousands in this hive.
What can I say! Look at the bees
Here I've lifted the hive body off of the screened bottom board - look at the bees hanging on the bottom of the hive body in the upper right corner of the picture. I loosened the bungee cords to the robber screen, but it fell off with a crash and bees went everywhere. Look at all of them flying above the SBB.

How to light a smoker and other things I learned at the Folk School

I learned many things at the Folk School workshop.

1. How to light a smoker

Virginia used wood shavings. She lit a few at the bottom of the smoker and then built the fire up from there. I am lousy at lighting the smoker, but I think I have been packing it too full before starting it. She dumps it all out when she's through and starts over each time. I have left the unburned fuel in mine after using and just stopped it up to end the fire.


These are a little out of focus because I was taking them while wearing my bee suit and veil and it was awkward to take pictures.














2. How to use a honey extractor.

We took the extractor apart to clean it and then didn't know how to get it together. It took five of us working together before Charles, a class member, finally got it right! That's probably the beginning of a good beekeeper joke - how many beekeepers does it take to put together an extractor? (someone will have to supply the funny answer) For us, it would be one: Charles, but it took five of us klutzing around before we found the answer.


3. How to melt and use beeswax.

Virginia's secret was to pour the wax through the control top part of (unused of course) control top panty hose to filter out any extra stuff from the comb and frames that might accidentally be in the wax. She poured into a 1 liter plastic bottle which is just the right thickness to handle the heat of the hot wax.

4. How to use the hive tool.

I've been using the curved end. Virginia almost exclusively uses the straight end and this allows less of what I end up doing - breaking into comb and causing drips of honey and damage to the comb.