Painting boxes Efficiently

OK, I know we all say that in the winter is a great time to paint boxes and read bee books. Somehow I always manage to get all the way to spring without accomplishing this.

So it's time to move my overwintered nucs into boxes and to make splits and to move some bees around. There's a good chance that a camera person will be in my apiary this year, so I wanted my boxes to look slightly more like Martha Stewart. (As a well-known blog states, I am NOTMARTHA)

The GBA newsletter had an article this month about painting boxes in a stack using a paint roller. The author had found the method on YouTube. I went and looked at several videos on YouTube an set about trying this out for quick, efficient box painting for the procrastinating beekeeper.

You start by stacking the boxes one on top of the other, upside down. An adorable boy on a YouTube video explains that putting them upside down means that when you paint the handholds, the paint collects on the ledge instead of dripping down. I painted the boxes on top of dirt, mildew, whatever.

First I painted the hand holds since I wanted them to be a different color: green. Then I painted the boxes blue with a roller. The whole process was quick as a wink - took less than 30 minutes. I only know because I was baking bread and started when the bread went into the oven and I was done by the moment the timer went off to tell me the bread was done!

So yesterday I ended up with delicious homemade bread and lovely boxes all in the same day. By afternoon, it was warm enough and the paint was dry so I moved one of the overwintered nucs into its new home.

Procrastination in Winter Never Pays Off

This April begins my fifth year keeping bees. Every winter I know most beekeepers paint and clean their old equipment - not me. Every year I promise myself that this year will be different. This year I'll paint equipment over the winter. Then bread baking, knitting for the grandchildren, watching movies all get in the way of my actually picking up a paintbrush.

This year as a favor and a surprise, one of my friends arranged to get the nuc I was purchasing from Jennifer Berry for the Blue Heron delivered to her house last night. I was supposed to drive to Good Hope on Saturday morning to get it. Instead it came last night and I was frantically painting equipment into the night.



You'll remember our Blue Heron hives were flooded out last September. I lost my eight frame bottom boards, inner covers, slatted racks in the flood. I have a lot of 10 frame bottom boards and slatted racks. Since I plan to move altogether to 8 frame medium boxes, I added a small feature to my slatted rack to adapt it to the 8 frame hive.

I cut a piece of the leftover board from the top bar hive to fit the length of the slatted rack. I painted it, nailed it to the edge of the slatted rack and adapted my hive bottom for 8 frame boxes. This wouldn't work as well with the screened bottom board because it is lower from the side edge to allow for a bee entrance at the front of the hive. In contrast, the slatted racks are only bee space below the edge, so the box sits perfectly in the space.



Here's the finished result. I also only have top covers for 10 frame but that will go over the 8 frame just as well. I bought ventilated hive covers to use this year as an inner cover at Blue Heron, so my hive is all equipped.....and I am breathless due to my procrastination!

Working on the Top Bar Hive

In the last week, I've done a lot of work on the top bar hive. I shortened the follower boards (they were about an inch too long). I set the hive up on newspapers in my carport and painted it green. I was going to use yellow, but my son-in-law who is a Georgia fan did not want a hive that looked like Ga Tech in his backyard!



I used paint that was a reject for my dining room and I think the hive looks perfectly lovely! I still need to staple the screened bottom on and will do that next week.




Inside at odd moments while on the phone I have managed to glue the "woodies" into the slots on the top bars. These will serve as starter strips for the bees when they begin to draw wax. I found these "woodies" at Michaels. They are smaller than popsicle sticks and fit into the slot from the circular saw better than the popsicle sticks.



So now all I need is a swarm and the top bar hive will be in business! 

I just found out about a resource:  www.findabeekeeper.com where people can search for someone to collect swarms from their property.  I listed myself there.  Maybe between being on Cindy Bee's swarm list for Metro and being listed on Bud's site, I might get a call and fill this hive!

Top Bar Hive in my Future!

This weekend should be sunny and warm. I am cleaning and painting hive boxes on Saturday.

Then on Sunday, my multi-talented son-in-law, Jeff, is going to help me build a top bar hive a la Sam Comfort and Phil Chandler. I am so excited. I have downloaded Phil's plans and am set to buy wood. Tomorrow I hit Home Depot for the supplies and then on Sunday we will go to Jeff's father's workshop where there is a table saw and a router. Whoo hoo!

I don't know where the bees will come from to go into this top bar hive, but I plan to be on a swarm list and perhaps a hive of bees will find me.

What You Need to Get Started in Beekeeping

My brother Barry wants to be a beekeeper and I promised him a list of the basics he would need. I decided to post it here for any of you who are curious to get started.

Here's the list - then you'll find descriptions of my thoughts behind it. This is my list and how I would do it if I were starting this year. There are all kinds of points of view and mine is not the only one. I am particularly biased about some beekeeping issues, as you who follow this blog already know!
Basics:
Good beekeeping book
Protective clothing: A bee suit (or long sleeved shirt, pants) and gloves
Hive equipment:
10 medium 8 frame hive boxes
80 frames to fit the medium boxes
Sheets of wax foundation for the frames
2 Telescoping covers for 8 frame equipment
2 inner covers or 2 ventilated inner covers for 8 frame equipment
2 screened bottom boards for 8 frame equipment
2 slatted racks for 8 frame equpiment
A smoker and something to use to light it (lighter, matches, whatever)

A hive tool (preferably 2 - they're cheap)
That will get you started. The descriptive list below includes some description and explanation as well as some extras to add to the basic list above.
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The basics for the beekeeper (the elaborated list):

A good beekeeping book for beginners:
Here are some suggestions:

Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston
Natural Beekeeping by Ross Conrad

Protective Clothing:

A Bee suit – if not a bee suit plan to wear long pants, long sleeved shirt and a bee veil

Bee suit thoughts: It's hot inside a bee suit. You need one that you can stand to wear in the heat. The head gear is often a problem for me. My original suit is from Dadant and comes with a hard hat and veil. The hard hat is regulated by a head band that I hate because it never fits right and slips down over my eyes all the time.

The ventilated suit from Golden Bee (504-456-8805) is great in hot southern weather. I don't like the veil particularly – it relies on a headband to keep it centered and that doesn't work well for me, but the suit is cool (all ventilated material) and I can manage the head part. Also the mesh of the veil is painted white which is great for bees not bothering you but hard for someone else to see your face inside the suit. (Matters to me because I wear it for teaching inspections).

A similar suit is made by UltraBreeze although their website says that at the moment they are not taking orders.

I love a hooded jacket that I have from Mann Lake that is great to throw on for a quick visit to the hives or to use when I'm not doing a full on inspection.

Gloves - Many beekeepers work without gloves, but I don't like being stung on my hands – it's inconvenient.

Gloves present their own problems. Most beekeeping gloves are big, making it awkward to grasp things in the hive well. When you order gloves, talk to the company from whom you are ordering to understand how their gloves are sized. If I am using leather gloves, I like the ones I FINALLY got from Dadant that are XXS and do fit.

However, I take pictures all the time I am in the hives and now prefer nitrile gloves because they allow me more dexterity. I have been stung through them (they are used by surgeons and are not supposed to be penetrable by a knife, but leave it to the bees!)

Glove possibilities: Dadant has these
My favorite nitrile gloves are 8 mil blue ones from Gemplers I'm not doing surgery so I reuse them (!) and the box of 50 lasts about 1 ½ bee seasons

Miscellaneous clothing items that I take with me to the beeyard:

A bandana (there are about 100 uses for the bandana in the world – several in the beeyard – if only to wipe your brow – but I use it to keep my Dadant helmet from slipping),
A lanyard that I hook my camera on around my neck,
I always wear tennis shoes and socks – the only time I have been stung on my foot by a bee was when I stepped on a dying bee in my house

Basic equipment needs:

Hive Woodenware

Enough for two hives – you should start with two hives – this way you have something to compare to when one hive seems off in some way. You also can kill one hive with over zealousness and let the other survive more on its own!

Most beginning beekeepers start with a deep and a medium box for brood and shallows for honey. This is the old way and if you are starting with nuc hives, unless you've made special arrangements, the nuc will be in a deep nuc box.

However, for switching frames back and forth between boxes and for many other advantages (weight when lifting, etc), I would encourage everyone to do all of their boxes as medium boxes. For two hives you need a minimum of 3 medium boxes per hive and probably a couple of extras for each hive in the event that your bees get going well enough to produce honey the first year. I would also encourage 8 frame boxes – much easier to lift and manage

This means you need 10 medium eight-frame boxes. I would order based on shipping prices for your area. Shipping costs can be as much as the cost of the equipment you are ordering. I like to order from Brushy Mountain Beekeeping because the shipping to Atlanta is less than most of the other companies, but I order from Betterbee which is in New York and Dadant which has a warehouse in Florida. There are many good bee companies and you may be able to find a local supplier from whom to get your equipment.

Here are 10 medium eight-frame boxes from Brushy Mountain.

Like I said, you can order them from any bee company. These come unassembled – you nail or screw them together – keep the sides right side up and the inside on the inside! They should be painted which is a good thing to do while you wait for your bees – the Oops cart at Home Depot is a good source of paint. I paint all of mine the same color and keep a large gallon of paint available to do so. There's a post on my blog showing how to assemble them.

Frames for the 10 boxes:
Each box takes eight frames. These also come unassembled. You'll need 80 frames. I don't use foundation at all any more, but starting out, you'll want to use foundation – wax, not plastic. There's a video/slide show on my blog about how to assemble frames. These frames have a groove in the bottom for the wax foundation and a wedge at the top to nail it into the frame.

Foundation for the frames – I would stick to pure wax. Brushy Mountain offers this. It's less expensive than Dadant for the same thing and if you are ordering your equipment from them, it all ships with one shipping charge. But you can get foundation from any bee company. People will tell you to use plastic, but I've now thrown out all of my plastic. The bees don't like it and wax is natural in the hive. In the end, you'll probably switch to foundationless, anyway, and let the bees build their own. Each hive needs a telescoping cover and an inner cover. You're going to be using 8 frame equipment, so be sure the inner cover and telescoping cover are for 8 frame equipment. Here is a telescoping cover and an inner cover.

Brushy Mountain (and others) make an English garden hive top – which is pretty to look at but not practical for an inspection – feel free to get it instead of the telescoping cover, if you would like. My friend Julia likes (and I want to order) the ventilated inner cover – great for the hot summers in the South. If you ordered it, you would not need the inner cover.

You'll also need a screened bottom board.

Ventilation is the issue in the heat of the summer. The screened bottom board helps with this as well as Varroa mite control. The ventilated inner cover would help as well.

I keep slatted racks (a place for the bees to hang out rather than waste their energy fanning the hive) on all of my hives. Brushy Mountain doesn't make them for 8 frame equipment. Betterbee does.

Smoker:This is an essential piece of beekeeping equipment and you'll use it a lot. Here's a basic one from Brushy Mountain. I rarely use mine except to let the bees know I'm coming by puffing one puff at the door. I don't think it's worth buying one of the fancier ones unless you plan to have so many hives that you'll need to relight it a lot.

Propane lighter: Available at any hardware store (I can't find a picture, but I put one in everyone's stocking for Christmas – cheap and useful)

Hive Tool Another essential piece of beekeeping equipment – buy two so you can always lay your hands on one of them.

Helpful Things to Have that aren't Essential:

Frame Rack: Very helpful – especially if you are looking for the queen, trying to see the differences in the bees, taking photos – I obviously love mine, but everyone doesn’t use them.

Frame Grip I've always relied on my hands – I don't want to inadvertently squash bees – but I'm putting it on this list because almost every other beekeeper I know uses this. I just never got comfortable with it.

Bee Brush I use this a lot – especially when harvesting honey since I remove one frame at a time from the hive. If you are going for crush and strain honey, then this is essential.

Harvest Equipment (Hopefully you'll have a harvest!):

Bucket and Filtering system

This is all I need for harvesting and filtering honey. I also use a sharp knife and some basic kitchen equipment. You'll also need jars, but that is your preference. What kind of honey your produce dictates what type of jar you use. You are going to be able to cut comb (the foundation you are ordering will allow crush and strain as well as cut comb honey) or produce chunk honey (comb in a jar of honey)

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OK, I think that is what is needed (at least what I would need) to start beekeeping. This is my list and others out there will want to add or suggest other things. There are other items that you will find useful – a sifter from the kitchen for powdered sugar and a few other things that I carry in my bee basket, but you'll come up with what works for you.

You'll notice that I didn't put any medication or feeding systems on this list. I don't use any medications or poison of any kind in my hives. I also tend to feed with Ziploc baggies inside the hives. A Boardman feeder may be useful for water for the bees, but there are other ways to provide water. I also didn't put an entrance reducer – not going to be necessary in the hot South but would be in other parts of the country.

Note: I did this post in Word's blog post section and uploaded it from Word....never again. The margins are awful - many apologies!

How Does Martha Stewart Keep Her Beehives So White and Clean?

As winter is in full swing in Atlanta, I look at my aging beehives and wonder how Martha Stewart keeps her hives so clean and beautiful. One of my friends on Beemaster took the picture above of Martha's hives herself (so this picture is not doctored up for the magazine)! It was in April, but even in April, my bottom box is dingy from the year before.

Here's a video of a Martha Stewart show on harvesting honey. She uses an extractor and makes it sound as if that is the only way to harvest, but I don't use the extractor and get great (prize winning) honey. In the video she says she gives her bees all new homes for the winter. Even if mine go through the winter in new boxes, they would look a little done in by spring from the vestiges of the weather.

My bees, if they live through the winter, are in an old box at the beginning of spring. I wonder if it's worth giving them a new box? My bees are on my deck in full view of anyone who visits my house and a new box would certainly be more attractive. But would it be worth it to disturb the hive just for beauty? HMMMMMM.....

What Do Beekeepers Do After Dark?

Well, we read books about bees, we chat on the Beemaster forum, we gaze at our hives and wonder what it will be like inside when we look in on the bees the next time. We look at the bearding bees on the fronts of our hives and wonder what is going on there.

Tonight in addition to the beards on the front porch, there was a clump of bees on the ground in front of Mellona. I tried to take a picture but it was dark and the bees were not happy with my bursts of flash so I kept my distance.

When I came in and loaded the pictures onto the computer, I found out what was going on in Mellona. The yellow circle is around one of those 2 1/2 inch Palmetto cockroaches. I imagine he came to visit inside Mellona and the pile of bees rushed him right back out.




This evening this beekeeper came home to Beekeeper's Treasure. The beekeeping supplies that I ordered from Betterbee and Brushy Mountain all arrived in a stack of large boxes in my carport. Given the sparse nature of my equipment - so much is in use at the moment - I hurriedly unpacked the boxes to find out what surprises were inside.



From Betterbee there were slatted racks, an inner cover, and a telescoping cover. From Brushy Mountain there were screened bottom boards, cut comb honey boxes, and two medium frames nucs (two medium boxes per nuc). The little end pieces for the boxes are so cute - like a doll house for bees.



So naturally what this beekeeper did on this night was paint equipment in my carport. Now I can help Persephone who has a solid bottom board both for the top and bottom of the hive, graduate to greater heights and state of coolness with a screened bottom board, a slatted rack, an inner cover, and a telescoping cover (all painted in my 2008 yellow and blue). I can also put a slatted rack on Melissa (another hive short of equipment.)








Now I am waiting on medium end bars to turn the shallow frame kits I currently have into medium ones. This will of course be what this beekeeper does after dark on another beekeeper night.

Small Swarm Gets its Own Hive Box

Last night I painted the hive box for the small swarm that invited itself to my deck. My plan was to move them out of the deep nuc where they have been living to a medium 8-frame box.

I moved each frame from the nuc, orienting it exactly as it had been in the original nuc. When I first put the swarm in the nuc, the bees were living on deep frames since that is the box they had claimed for themselves when they arrived on my deck.

I have gradually moved out the deep frames and replaced them with medium ones. One I moved because it had wax moths. Several others I moved when I added frames of brood and bees from other hives. So I thought they were living on all medium frames in a deep nuc.

Imagine my surprise when I found that the last frame was still a deep - oh, dear. I examined the frame carefully and found that there were a few capped brood cells but the queen was not recently laying there.

What should I do?

I went to another hive and got a frame of capped brood that was a medium frame and substituted it for the deep. I made sure I didn't get the queen from the hive where I stole the frame. To do that I shook most of the bees on the frame back into their original hive before moving the frame. I needed to get dressed and go to work so I couldn't pick over the frames as I might under different time stress. So the frame I moved also had a lot of drone cells. I hope that won't be a problem for this new hive.

I put it all together, stood the nuc box and the deep frame outside the entry to the hive, put the top on and added the mint plant which has been on top of the nuc.

So now the small swarm has its own home. I hope they will thrive there.

When I pulled the frame from Bermuda, I saw lots of open swarm cells and one supercedure cell - and I only looked at three frames. They are packed into that hive, although I've given them lots of room to grow that they are barely using. I'll need to think about how I might open up the brood box even more.

The Building and Construction of Beekeeping

Last night in preparation for a day in the hives, I did building and construction.

I built and painted the medium box below which I will add to my weak hive today. The weak hive isn't growing like gangbusters, but they have expanded and now are using about 7 of the frames in their box. I want to add another box to make it easier for the queen to expand upwards if she is so inclined.

I painted it Bermuda's peach beige color. Hammering together the box doesn't take long (I watched Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel while I did it.) Painting is more challenging because I have to keep the dogs from being curious.



















Then I put together 10 medium frames for this box. I have lots of shallow frames for honey supers but will be building lots of medium frames this year as I move to using medium boxes. You can see the six I already made when I had the idea to take a picture of putting one together. I usually set the whole thing up on a Rubbermaid footstool and then hammer the nails into the narrow bottom bar first.

















I'll bet all of you already know how to hammer a nail! You put two in each end of the frame.

Transformation of Destin

It's time to get ready for Bee Season. I painted Destin today and reclaimed the hive for new life for my new bees coming soon. I have lots of quarts of paint in my basement from indecisive moments choosing colors for my sunporch, so I am painting Destin with Grape Beginnings, hoping it will mean a GREAT beginning for the new hive. On the right of this picture, you can see the yellow of the previous hive and on the left, the new paint being applied.

I broke the hive down into the component parts - here's the hive stand - everyone doesn't use these but I like it because in taking pictures I can sometimes catch the bees on the landing strip that it provides.

And here is the screened bottom board - essential for mite defensiveness - if a mite falls through the screened bottom board when the bees groom themselves, or, I guess, if the mite is awkward and loses its footing, the mite can't come back up through the screen.

And here is the whole kit and caboodle newly painted from the yellow of Destin to its new Grape Beginnings color....guess it may look a little lavendar when it dries. I'm going to call this new hive Mellona - the name of the Roman goddess who was the patronness of bees. Maybe with a goddess looking after it, this hive will do better than its predecessor!

Complaints of a Beekeeper with a Full Time Job

I wish I had a job with more flexibility. Truth be told, I do have a lot of flexibility....I am self-employed but the kind of work I do involves regular commitments and I need to make a living to support all of this bee equipment purchasing I keep doing!

So I end up with a set schedule (which I set) in which I leave early and return home after dark. It's, of course, different in the spring when we are on daylight savings time (coming soon - March 11). Now, however, I don't have daylight to work the bees unless it is the weekend and then I am often busy or out of town. And even if I come home and it is still light at the end of my day, it is not the time to open the bee hives.

My new nucs (two of them) should be here in the next week or two (the beekeeper from whom I'm getting them said it could be as soon as next week.) I need to paint hive boxes and get ready, but I haven't yet. I'm hoping I can find some time for these getting ready tasks before the bees actually arrive. I do own the hive boxes already and am not waiting for an order to arrive.

I did find some paint for the new hives. I have several quarts of paint left from when I was choosing paint for my sunporch - so one hive will be painted "grape beginnings" and the other "peach blush." I don't want to leave Destin yellow since all the bees in it died - bad sign. So I want the new bees to have a fresh color and new start to their lives on my deck. I'll have to come up with two new names as well.

Assuming, as I did, that my hives would make it through the winter, I ordered a comb honey super from Walt Kelly. You have to have a really strong hive, at least in their second season, to make comb honey and my only living hive is quite weak, so I'm putting that box aside until next year. Maybe with small cell regression and more powdered sugar shakes, I can beat the Varroa mite to the punch and keep my hives alive next winter.