Location, Location, Location: What a Difference a Zip Code Makes

My hives in my Atlanta locations: 30342, 30306, 30316 are thriving.  I have honey boxes on all of the overwintered hives, sometimes stacking up to seven boxes.  The new hives are rocking along as well, with most now up to three boxes on the hives.

My hives in Clayton (30568) are a different story.  The nectar flow in Rabun County about 120 miles north is about a month behind Atlanta.  So these hives are really moving slowly.

A lazy spider has the luxury of creating her abode under the top cover of the Rabun Blue hive.



That hive hasn't drawn out the box I gave it on the 20th of April.  I adjusted a few things but didn't add a box although I had one with me for that purpose.



The frames in the top two boxes that were being used were filled with nectar, which is a good sing, but none of it capped as it would be in Atlanta.



The green swarm hive in Rabun is drawing that pretty yellow wax I frequently see in hives in Rabun at this time of year.  And they are raising brood and growing.  But they, too, didn't need any more space.




By the way, I think this swarm came from a feral hive that lives in this old abandoned school that is on the edge of the meadow where the community garden is.  I've shown pictures of this hive before.  I walked over to look at it on Thursday when I was there, and they were still busy as bees.

Inviting Bees into a New Super of Foundationless Frames

This morning I visited the Morningside Community Garden hives to see how they are doing and to determine if either hive needed a new box.  I only had about 20 minutes so it helps to know the purpose of the inspection.  Once I've gotten my question answered, I can shut the hive up and go on to work.

Hive One did not need a new box.  They have three boxes and they had only built in four of the frames in the new box.  Since two of those were ladder frames, in essence they had only drawn out two of the new box's frames.

However Hive 2 was a different story.  They had built out seven of the eight frames in their second box so it was time to add a third box.  The photo below is of frame seven.  It isn't completely built out but I still want to add the box.


In a tree the bees build down.  I want to put the new box beneath the current ongoing second box.  To invite the bees into the super, I need to create a ladder of drawn honeycomb for them to traverse between the two boxes.  This will encourage them to build in the new box two which will contain six empty frames and two filled frames serving as the ladder.

I removed two empty frames from the new box to make space for the ladder frames.

In box two, I removed two frames of brood and eggs - in the same position as the two empty frames from the new box.


I put the two brood frames in positions 2 and 3 in the new second box.  It helps that they are brood frames because the bees will come into the box to keep the brood warm and fed.  You can use honey combs for the ladder, but brood combs are more inviting for the bees.

Below you can see the brood frames moved into position 2 and 3 in the new box.


In box two I pushed the frame in the number 1 position against frame 4 (making it now in position 3) and put the two empty frames in positions 1 and 2.

Now the box is all put back together.  The box with the "6" stenciled on it is the new empty box with the ladder in positions 2 and 3.  The box above it is the old second box (now box three), full except for the frames in positions 1 and 2 which are foundationless frames, waiting to be filled by the bees.

Organic Gardening Magazine Article

In their October/November issue, Organic Gardening Magazine will include an article by Janet Davis on beekeeping featuring three beekeepers - one in Vancouver, one in Chicago, and me!  Yesterday a photographer for the magazine, Greg Miller and his assistant, Tim, spent about three hours at my house shooting pictures of the bees, me, my house, my bee things.  It was such fun.

Greg has taken a number of beekeeping assignments for various magazines so he was not at all afraid to lie down right next to the hive to get a good shot of the girls as they flew in and out of the hive.



I can't wait to see his shots in the magazine.  If you follow the link to his website, his lead photo is a shoot he did of another beekeeper and his son.




When he finished with this hive, we opened almost every hive in my bee yard to look for various photo ops, but my favorite moment was one when he showed me how he captures a sunbeam…..he had the smoker puffing into the area where sun was shining through the leaves of the trees and the smoke delineated the sunbeam - I could see the sunbeam as if it were a concrete object…..just gorgeous.

Birth of the Bee Blog

I try to notice every year when we reach an anniversary of the blog.  As of the end of April, my blog has been ongoing with regular postings for six full years - now begins the seventh year of my beekeeping experience and of my record keeping on this blog.

• Thanks to all of you all over the world who follow this blog - you make my day!
  
• Thanks to all of you who comment on my posts - it's such fun to hear your thoughts!
  
• Thanks to all the beekeepers out there who, like me, are learning, growing and sharing with each other all the time.

I'm having a great time with this blog and will keep on posting!

As of today there are 993 posts on this blog, heading for 1000.  On the Internet there are almost 135,000 links to my site.  It appears on many bee club links pages as well as bee association pages.  It has been linked 6,700 times from Beemaster Forum.  The two most watched videos are how to harvest honey by crush and strain and how to build and use a solar wax melter.  There are 932 subscribers to the site as well as 508 Google Followers.  People have come from 185 countries - the most visitors from the US, of course, followed by Great Britain, Turkey and Canada.

I won't bore you with the rest of the statistics, but it is all gratifying to me - thank you, all of you, for continuing to visit and be interested.

Stonehurst Hives are All over the Place

In preparation for visiting the Stonehurst Place hives today I waxed foundation into sixteen frames.  I assumed I would need to add a box to at least two of the hives over there.  The last time I was there on April 11, I didn't check the largest hive because a UGS doctoral student was collecting samples of the bees in that hive for his research.

In the service of his research, he probably killed about 300 - 400 of my bees.  But it's for a good cause.  I also had to spend about 40 minutes filling out a survey about how I manage my bees.

So I spent the first part of today waxing frames.  My wax tube fastener kind of bit the dust in the middle - I think it need a long bath fully submerged in boiling water - it seems clogged.



I tried a paintbrush which my friend Jerry says he uses, but just look at the picture.  It did not fare well.


I placed the frames according to Housel positioning in empty boxes to transport them to the inn.



At the inn, I found that Hive One was bursting at the seams, storing honey in comb between the boxes.  I moved the top box off, transferred two honey-filled frames to the new box and inserted the new empty box with the filled frames as ladders between the now sixth and fourth boxes.




I left Hive One with six boxes on it - the top four solid with honey.



Hive Two had a laying queen but the hive was slow to grow.  They had not really used the second box at all.  I didn't do much at all to that box.



Here's their second box - almost unused.



When I was last there about two weeks ago, Hive Three was queenless with about three almost ripe queen cells.  I was sad about this, but this week, I saw eggs - and ripped up queen cells.  The queen has obviously both emerged and started laying.

In contrast to Hive Two, Hive Three had completely filled their second box with nectar.  In the bottom box, they had lots of center-of-the-frame space available for laying and the queen had begun to do so.
I moved two frames of brood, eggs, and honey into what would become the new second box and sandwiched it between the bottom deep and the second box, full of honey.

S&C's Bees are Thriving

Sebastian and Christina have this gorgeous side yard full of cutting flowers - yum to a bee!



I checked both hives today and they are THRIVING.  I started with the 8 frame yellow hive.   These bees were really gentle, despite my earlier experiences.  I only wore a jacket and veil, no gloves and barely used the smoker.



In the second box they were almost fully built out.   I am going to be gone this weekend so I decided to go ahead and add a box.



I wanted to put a couple of frames of brood from the box on top to make a frame for the new box.

I pulled the frame below and there was her Majesty - at about 6:00 with a yellow dot to make it easier to find her!



There was some nice brood on this frame as well.



I moved two frames into the new box and placed it in the middle position, like the meat on a sandwich.  I hope they'll make good use of the box until I see them again.  You can see the two used frames in the box below with empty frames for the other six.



So Yellow 7 grew a box.



The story was quite similar on Blue Hive.  It is a ten frame box set up, so they had only built out six of the ten frames.  Although not quite seven, I decided, given my trip status for the weekend, to go ahead and add a box to this hive as well.



Again, I saw a lot of good young larvae and brood in this hive (but didn't glimpse the queen).  I also took two good frames and put them in the new box, placing the new box in the sandwich position.  These bees were drawing some not so straight, so I reversed a few frames to make curving the comb impossible.  It may confuse the bees but will keep the box from getting out of control.
    


So both hives are doing well and both have three boxes on them - great for this time of year!

Rabun Report - Bees Doing Well

Rabun County is literally a month behind Atlanta only a couple of hours to the south.  In Atlanta, we've been able to plant spring plants since the middle of March.  In Rabun county only now is it warm enough to plant anything.

I last checked the Rabun hives on Friday the 13th.  It is only a week later, but I had to come to Young Harris to a conference (a psychology conference - the bee institute is in May) so I stopped by again today.  I won't be back up here until the Bee Institute at Young Harris on May 10, so I wanted to make sure the hives had plenty of room as it is now the nectar flow should begin up here.

The swarm hive had good bee activity on the 13th (see below)



The queen was laying eggs and you can see c-shaped larvae in these cells.


I saw two bees like the one in the lower center who were completely covered in yellow pollen!

The lovely frame below is one I had stuck in on the side of the box with remnants of old comb.  The bees had incorporated the black comb into new fresh wax in the center!


In the blue hive on the 13th the bees were building wax and festooning.


Grass was growing up in front of the hive making access a little difficult, so I took a piece of cardboard and tamped the grass down with it.


Today on the 20th, the bees were making use of the cardboard as a place to drag out the dead.  Actually they do that anyway, just without the cardboard, the dead get lost in the grass.

Inside the hive, the bees hadn't used much new real estate.  I had brought a new box with me and although I didn't put the box on the hive, I took a full frame out of it and gave them a better ladder in their latest empty box.  I didn't put any new box on the green hive either because they are only in half of the second box.


Also in the blue hive, I saw the opened queen cell in the photo below, indicating that the hive had probably swarmed and requeened itself.  The queen is laying so maybe I missed this the last time I was here.

I'm trying to keep up with my hive boxes this year so before I left, I numbered these boxes.  I now have numbers on all of my 8 frame mediums that are currently on hives.  I also have some numbers on the boxes that are stored, not yet used at my house and at Jeff's. 

This way I can keep up with where honey comes from (that is to say, which hive produces the honey) and also make an effort to return harvested boxes back to the hive from which they came in an effort to keep the hives healthier.