Bill Owens and the Bees that Found Me

At GBA I ate lunch on Saturday with Bill Owens, the only Master Craftsman Beekeeper in the state of Georgia. I was telling him about the swarm that appeared in my backyard last week. I told him they weren't from my hives because my hives were chugging along and hadn't absconded.

Bill suggested that the bees were from my hive. Perhaps the hive I re-queened actually had a queen who wasn't laying due to the dearth. When I added a queen, the old queen gathered some bees and left. That makes sense to me because when they returned to my backyard, they landed about 20 feet in front of the hive from which they probably originated.

Today I came home about 3:30 to find the original hive looking like it was being robbed. I closed the top and put on a robber screen. The frenzy continued, so I got out the hose and sprayed water over the hive as if it were raining. When I stopped the hose to go back to work, I found that the bees continued swirling and frantically going toward the hive.



I left the hive closed up - bees can come in and out at the right lower edge of the robber screen, but it was otherwise closed up.
When I came home tonight, I noticed a clump of bees at the corner of the telescoping cover. What could this be? I wonder if a queen were in the center of the clump. Maybe they are balling the queen after all the ruckus this afternoon and maybe it's the small swarm trying to return to the original hive.

I guess I won't know the rest of the story until I can open the hives on Thursday. I'll leave it relatively closed up and we'll see what happens.

Randy Oliver on Beekeeping in the 21st Century

Randy Oliver gave three talks at GBA. His energy and smile infuse all of his talks with enthusiasm and his obvious love of beekeeping. I read his articles in ABJ and he is someone who is referred to often on the bee forum discussions online, especially on BeeSource.

One of the talks I heard was on beekeeping in the 21st century. I'm going to try to share what I learned from this talk.

He said that management in the 21st century would include optimal nutrition, managing parasite loads, and using appropriate biotreatments at the right time.

Optimal nutrition means having a variety of pollen being brought into the hive. If you pull a frame with pollen on it, you should see lots of colors - this indicates a varied diet for the bees. He showed a slide comparing a "fat bee" with one that is not. House bees have lots of vitagellin and this keeps them alive and kicking. Foragers lose this fat and begin to age rapidly. Although he encouraged avoiding feeding bees as much as possible, if one feeds a pollen patty to the bees, they should be fed sugar syrup 1:1 at the same time.

For parasite management, he talked about the rapid increase of the varroa in the hive - at the rate of a 2.5% population increase per day. Sugar dusting with powdered sugar can help.

He had a wonderful picture of his methods, as he has described in ABJ.....a bee brush duct taped to a measuring cup in such a way that one can dump the cup and then with a flip of the wrist use the brush to brush the sugar off of the frame tops. The brush is taped one way for left handers and the other for right handers. I can't find a picture on his site, but you can imagine.

He also discussed working on retarding mite growth during spring build up and encouraged us to check for mite levels before supering up. Beginning August 15 all beekeepers should work like crazy to get the mite levels down in the hives so that the September bees who live through the winter will not be mite-infested.

When he is checking for mite levels with a sticky board, he sometimes does a check 10 minutes after sugar dusting. He uses his sticky boards over and over and cleans them with an ice scraper - really quick and effective.

If you can keep mite levels down under 1%, this will help not only with bees' health but also with honey production. Under 1% means that a 24 hour sticky board fall would be 10 mites or less, doing a sugar shake with a jar of bees - I believe he said 1 inch of bees in a mason jar = 100 bees - should only yield 3 mites, or a 10 minute sugar shake check of the sticky board should show a drop of only 5 - 10 mites.

He has invented a fabulous frame for drone management in the varroa fight. People use drone cell frames to grow drones and freeze the frame to kill the mites. These frames have to be on the hives for 28 days to assure readiness to freeze. To address the time issue and be more efficient (I experienced Randy Oliver as incredibly efficient about time usage), he invented a frame for drone management that does not involve freezing.

This frame has a bar in it about 1/4 the way down. He puts it in the hive with no foundation. The bees store honey in the upper fourth. In the lower fourth they will build drone comb. He pulls this frame, cuts out the capped drone comb and throws it away or melts the wax down. The process takes 15 seconds, can happen at the hive, and doesn't take up freezer space - see what I mean about his efficiency!

He also discussed, as many people are today, the idea of making late summer splits to interrupt the breeding cycle of the varroa mite.

When he talked about biotreatments, he discussed oxalic acid and formic acid. He treats his hives on the day after Christmas because the bees are not growing brood at that time.

This is purely an overview of what I understood. I encourage you to visit his site and read his many articles. I love reading his articles in ABJ because he writes in a very easy to grasp way. He ran a series on Nosema earlier this year and has written on Honey Super Cell, Powdered Sugar Treatments and many other topics.

Pollen Substitute and Greg Rogers

At one point at the GBA meeting I decided to go outside and found a fun-filled workshop with Greg Rogers from North Carolina. He has 300 hives and runs his company, Haw Creek Honey in Asheville.

His workshop was on making pollen substitute. He began feeding his hives pollen substitute because in the last couple of years he had lost a number of hives and attributed this to their being weak and in need of more nutrition.

He said that the biggest problem in the south with feeding pollen substitute to the bees is the small hive beetle. The SHB has a breeding cycle of about 21 days, similar to the honeybee. So his reasoning is that if you put a pollen substitute patty on the hive, the bees should consume it within 5 - 7 days to avoid it being a constant food source for SHB to use for their young.

The pollen substitute patty is placed on the hive about 2 inches above the brood to allow ease of reach for the bees.

Here's his recipe:
1/2 bag of Megabee
10 lb dry sugar
1 cup canola oil
24 lb corn syrup or 2:1 sugar syrup

He adds the oil to the syrup and then puts the wet ingredients in the dry ingredients. He uses a masonry hoe to mix these things in a large vat - I didn't get a picture on the slideshow of the mixing but it looked like making bread on a very large scale. It takes him about 4 minutes to mix the whole thing up.

He greases the bucket that holds the finished 54 pound mix with some oil poured in the bucket and then swiped around with a paper towel - just like you would oil the pan for bread to use to rise.

I tasted the patty and it was really good. The Megabee has a citrus flavor and it looks like ginger bread with a citrus taste before it is baked. This was the most fun of all the talks and workshops I attended. Greg is practical and funny in his presentation.

Here are the slides. Click on the picture to see the whole show enlarged and with explanatory captions:

Making pollen patties

Honey Contest at GBA

I decided to be brave and enter my honey in the honey contest on the state level at the Georgia Beekeeper's Association annual fall meeting. I learned from my Metro entries and had polished, polished, polished my jars.

I was so excited at the end of the contest to find that I had won:

First place blue ribbon for light honey
First place blue ribbon for chunk honey (comb in a jar of liquid honey)
First place blue ribbon for cut comb honey (square of comb in a box)
Second place red ribbon for my wax block

There were cash prizes so I also won a total of $110!

I also entered my amber honey which didn't place and I forgot to pick up the jars and left them in Rabun County. Even though it didn't win, it was delicious honey, so I hope someone enjoys it!

The wax block wasn't the one I poured 19 times. After the Metro contest, it had some knicks in it and needed to be re-poured. So I re-poured it several times. The last re-pour before I was scheduled to leave for Rabun County cracked as it cooled.

I took all of my wax stuff with me to my mountain house and actually poured the block again on Thursday night before it was due at 9 AM on Friday! The last pour (that won second) wasn't perfect. It had stuck some to the bottom of the mold so the top was marred.

While at GBA, I went to a talk by Robert Brewer, the judge of the honey show and the certified Welsh Honey judge who teaches honey judging at Young Harris (and co-founded the Young Harris Institute). He discussed the wax block and I learned (in addition to what I had learned from Keith Fielder) that the edges of the wax block at the top of the pour need to be smooth. Robert suggested taking your thumb and rubbing the edge to smooth it out. Mine had edges that needed this. He also talked about how important it is to use well filtered wax - perhaps pouring it through silk. I'll be interested to try silk as a filter next year.

The other thing I was surprised by is that Virginia Webb, a beekeeper extraordinaire, won first place for the wax block. Her block was poured into a mold with raised designs. It was a solid block but had raised designs all over it. I had no idea and thought you had to have a solid, smooth block which is what I have been trying for - so here's something for me to learn more about for the future. I took a class from Virginia at the Folk School three years ago and learned so much from her.

GBA Talk - the History of 8 Frame Equipment

At GBA (Georgia Beekeepers' Association) in Rabun County this past weekend, I heard an entertaining talk by Steve Forest of Brushy Mountain Beekeeping. Steve pointed out that 8-frame equipment has been used and written about as long ago as 1894. He owns the entire year of Gleanings in Bee Culture from 1894 and there are, I believe he said, 24 articles on the advantages of using 8 frame equipment in that year!

He quoted a number of beekeepers who use 8 frame equipment, noting that bees tend to move up and not out. Often the frames on the outer edges of 10 frame equipment are not really used by the bees.

In 1915 Root moved to 10 frame equipment and began advertising it as advantageous. It's all about advertising, and beekeepers began moving to 10 frame equipment. By 1919 everyone believed that "bigger is better" and 10 frame equipment was all the rage.

I love using 8 frame equipment - it's so much lighter to move boxes during inspections. I didn't get to ask Steve what changes in measurements between 8 frame and 10 frame equipment.

My frames in my 10 frame equipment are snug in the box and fit tightly together. In my 8 frame equipment from Brushy Mountain, there is about 1/2 inch of wiggle room making the frames sit loosely in the box. So far that doesn't seem to be a problem, and maybe it works out the same as if I put 9 frames in a 10 frame box, which many beekeepers to do encourage really thick comb.

Fall Wildflowers at Black Rock Mountain Lake

I love the fall with the golden rod and blue asters.


The picture below is Euonymous Americanus, also called "Hearts A-Bustin'"--I love seeing it in the fall. It's an American native plant and is found all over the east.

Candle Results

The candles came out just fine. I took them to the Ga Beekeepers' Association show but then found out the only way I could enter them in the show was in a holder - and I didn't bring one with me.

We did burn them at my mountain house and they were just lovely. I can't wait to make more. I learned a lot with this group but they did have depressed ends (at the tops of the mold). I filled it in with wax, but it left a line. There must be a way to do this better and I'll research it on the Internet before I try again.

Pouring Candles

Today some mold release that I ordered from Brushy Mountain and a candle mold arrived on my doorstep. I was so excited that I had to try it out right away.

I was planning to melt wax tonight anyway since I'm trying to get a good wax block to take to the Ga Beekeeping Association Honey Contest. Keith Fielder, a Master Beekeeper - one of the few in Georgia, wrote me with some helpful hints so I poured this block using his hints - but he made me promise to keep his secrets, so I am not sharing them here.

Suffice it to say, my first effort was almost good enough and the second effort is solidifying in the oven as we speak. However it turns out, I will enter it in the show, if only to be able to thank Keith through my actions (using his methods to try for a good block).

I melted last year's wax block to make candles. Threading the wicks made me want to SCREAM. My wicks have been waxed (ie, I dipped the wick in melted wax) and that made it a little easier to thread them through the holes and the length of the mold. However, I couldn't get the wick to go through two of the holes - so I didn't make candles in those mold sections.


After threading the wicks into the molds, I tied them to bamboo skewers to hold the wick in the center of the candle while the liquid wax was being poured.

The directions that came with the mold said to put a wet sponge in the freezer to get it really cold and to set the mold on top of the frozen sponge. Thus when the hot wax leaks out of the tip of the candle which is against the sponge, the tip of the candle will quickly solidify! Who knew?

It was a messy process as you can see above. As the candles cooled, they shrank, leaving a concave space on each candle. I remembered from taking class with Virginia Webb that sometimes you have to go back and fill that area with wax, so I remelted some wax and did exactly that - see the picture below.

I don't think these candles will go to Ga Beekeeping meeting with me, but I am taking the wax block, my honey, my cut comb honey, my chunk honey, and I believe that will be all. It's a little silly for me to enter a state level contest, but I figure why not make the effort since I am going to be up there anyway and my honey is still bottled in good shape from the Metro contest.