Visiting a Preschool

Here is my grandson Dylan in his bee veil. He showed his friends at preschool today how he is protected from the bees when Grandma works in the beeyard.


Today I was lucky enough to get to go talk about bees at my grandson's preschool. The class members were betwee 2 and 3 years old!

They got to feel honeycomb.



They tried on Dylan's bee veil.



They tasted honey on popsicle sticks.



And they did the waggle dance - I didn't get a picture of that because I was dancing with them!

First Semi-Inspection at Blue Heron

We're having a strange March in Atlanta - or really a typical March. March is always both lion and lamb in Georgia. We had thunderstorms and fierce rain for three days running at the end of the week.

I woke up on Saturday, the date of our scheduled inspection for the Metro club, expecting sunny weather in the high 50s. But no, that was not to be. Instead the skies remained overcast all day long and the temperature was only 46 by 11 AM. The inspection was scheduled for 1:30. We had four people eagerly signed up and we were as prepared as we could be.

We decided to meet our participants at Blue Heron and see if the bees were flying at 1:30 when the temperature was supposed to be up. When Julia and I arrived, it was 48 and very cloudy....grim weather and not conducive to inspecting bee hives. Julia brought her two sons: Sam and Noah, both of whom had helped install the hives at Blue Heron.

We decided to do a truncated "inspection." I had brought a new super for the nuc we installed last weekend and we knew it would be needed by that hive and we had a handout for the participants on how to do an inspection, derived from this blog post. We also thought we could demonstrate lighting a smoker, how to use the hive tool, and how to slide a hive box onto a hive.

Here's a slideshow of our "inspection" visit to Blue Heron. Click on the slideshow to see the captions and choose the length for each picture to remain visible to you.



We talked about Housel positioning and each participant was able to see the "Y" in the back of the honey cells - that's why we are looking so carefully at the old comb.

Because of the bad weather, we are rescheduling the inspection to happen at 10:30 AM on Saturday, April 4 at Blue Heron. In Atlanta's inimitable way, let's hope it doesn't snow!

Crystallized Honey (Creamed Honey)

Honey lasts a long time. It's been found in tombs, still in good shape. However, under certain conditions honey will crystallize. My understanding is that the crystallization happens when there are tiny particles in the honey that act as seeds for the formation of the crystals and when the temperature is around 57 degrees F.

All honey doesn't crystallize but some of my favorite harvest bottles from this year did just that. I went out of town for a week and left my thermostat on 55 to save on heating. When I returned my favorite honey had become creamed honey.

When people make creamed honey on purpose their goal is to have a very smooth creamed product. The seed grains in this honey must have been perfect because the honey was smooth and perfectly creamy. Or, as my bias would lean, my method of harvest without an extractor may result in only the tiniest grains coming through the filter.

However, at this point in the year, most of my harvest from 2008 is gone and we love honey at my house. This morning I decided to take one of the last non-chunk jars of honey and reliquify it. To do this, you have to heat the honey.

Part of what I value in my harvest methods is that the honey is never heated - the hottest it has ever been is the interior temperature of the hive. But to re-liquify the honey you have to get it to 160 degrees and keep it there for a minute or so before turning off the heat.

I put the creamed honey in a pan of boiling water. I put a candy thermometer in the honey so I could monitor the temperature.



As the temperature rose, the honey became clearer.



At the end of the process, the entire bottle was again liquid honey. Because I got it to 160 degrees, it won't recrystallize. What we lost in flavor from heating the honey is worth it to me to have the liquid again.



I also have some jars of chunk honey (comb in a jar filled with liquid honey) where the liquid part of the honey has crystallized. I can't imagine that this process would work for the chunk honey because the wax would melt.

Blue Heron - the Queenless Saga

As you'll remember from earlier posts, my hive at Blue Heron was started with a nuc that had no queen. There was little or no brood in the box and we saw no queen and no evidence of a queen - no new eggs or larvae, very little capped brood, all in all a sad state of affairs.

To cope with this I gave the hive brood and eggs on two frames, hoping that they would make a queen. They made at least one perfectly lovely queen cell and the hive is calm, quiet and seems to be chugging along.

Meanwhile the nuc supplier calls and wants to "make us whole" by giving me another nuc, this time with a queen. I called several beekeepers whom I respect: Cindy Bee, Jim Ovbey, and I posted on Beemaster. Everyone agreed that the hive that made its own queen needed to have a chance.

So we got permission from Blue Heron to install the nuc in a second hive. I will keep an eye on the first hive to see if the queen they made successfully mates and begins to lay eggs. If she succeeds, then we have two good hives and I'll move the newest one somewhere else. If she fails, I will combine the hive I installed today with the first hive since we know there's a good queen in the new hive.

Here's what our process today looked like:



Now the supplier feels good about coming through with a queenright nuc, I feel good about Blue Heron allowing us to temporarily have two hives there, the whole process provides a great teaching/learning opportunity, and the new queen in the first hive has a chance to prove herself.

Everybody wins!

Ga Tech Sustainability Project

Having this blog is so much fun! I get contacted by very interesting people as a result of this.

The other day I got an email from two Georgia Tech grad students who are working on a project about sustainable endeavors for other countries. They decided that they would like to explore the ways in which beekeeping might fit the bill.

They came over and had biscuits and honey with me while we discussed lots of aspects of beekeeping. Then we all suited up. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of their friend, Gabe, who was with them as well. We cobbled together enough protection for all of them, although Gabe, who only had a veil and an ill-fitting one, at that, was the least covered.

Dale and Karen wore my extra outfits and we went out to do a hive inspection of my hives. We actually opened and looked at all three of them. Each student examined parts of the hive. Here's Dale holding a frame and looking at the brood pattern.



And here's Karen trying to see eggs with the sun at her back.



In all I spent about 2 hours with them and I had a great time. I hope they got what they came for - it certainly was fun for me!

The state of Blue Heron's Queenless nuc hive

As you may remember, on March 8th I put two frames of brood and eggs from my hives at home into the Blue Heron hive. My hope was that they would make a queen to make the queenless situation queenright.

I checked on Thursday, the 19, and sure enough, they had made a beautiful queen cell. I'm sorry the picture is out of focus. I forgot to put the camera on macro and I forgot my frame rack. So I didn't hold either the frame or the camera steady and it wasn't macro focused.

I went through every frame of the hive. The bottom box had all syrup filled frames. The second medium box into which I had put the brood/eggs frame also had no eggs or larvae.

Important note: I couldn't light my smoker - we've had rain for several days in a row and all of my pine straw in my yard was damp. I worked these bees with no smoke and they were calm as if they had a sense that all was well in their world. There was no queenless roar and the bees did not act angry.



In addition to this lovely queen cell, the frame also had two opened queen cells on the bottom of the frame. I think these may have already been there, but I took again a shaky shot of them as well.



My guess is that if there were a four day larvae on March 8 on the frames I brought them, then tomorrow (Sunday) or Monday, is when Her Majesty should emerge from her cell. She'll hang around the hive a little and then go on a mating flight. Let's hope all of that happens without incident, including her return to the hive without being breakfast for a bird.

Then we might see eggs and brood in the Blue Heron hive!

Memorable First Day of Spring - Beekeepers Everywhere Take Note: The White House will have BeeHives!

In the groundbreaking for the organic garden at the White House, beekeepers have cause for celebration. There will be two beehives at the garden, managed by a White House employee who is also a beekeeper.

This should bring more attention to our favorite pollinators and bring beekeeping to the forefront as an interesting, multi-layered hobby in which to engage.

Trying Out the New SHB Trap

Today I had time to go to Costco to get oil for my Freeman SHB trap. I put the oil in the trap. The tray slides out easily from the back of the bottom board. It was covered in hive debris since it has been on the hive for a week. I dumped the debris and tapped the edge of the tray against the deck rail, but as you can see, some debris is still in the tray.

I filled the tray - the instructions say to fill it half full. Since it slants down due to gravity, I actually had to fill it almost to the top on the edge fartherest from the hive in order to have enough oil in the tray. Sliding it filled with oil back into the hive was difficult. I wished that I had something the level of the opening to rest it on while I filled it. The backward slant made pushing the filled tray into the hive sort of awkward.



Once it was pushed in, I also followed the instruction and pulled it back toward me about 1/8 of an inch to keep it from taking on water on rainy days.


To fill the tray took this much of a five quart bottle of oil, the cheapest they had at Costco. The oil cost $6.99 so I'm guessing it will cost about $3.50 to fill a tray each time you do it. Jerry suggested getting throw-away oil from fast food places, and I am sure there are cheaper ways than Costco, but that is easiest for me, so I wanted to try it following what I would ordinarily do.



Note: I just got this email from Jerry Freeman of the Freeman SHB trap:

Linda,

From your picture, the tray is pulled too far out the back. In the proper position, it will be 1/4" inside the back and 1/8" from the landing board at the front. This sounds confusing so I'll try to get a picture of this on my web site.

Thanks,

Jerry

It's raining in Atlanta now, but I'll go push the trap further in as soon as I can!

I won't check this hive again until next weekend - I'll post pictures to see if there are dead Small Hive Beetles. Jerry is sure there will be.