Melting Wax on a Cold and Rainy Evening - Part One

Pictures are from my daughter's camera which she very sweetly lent to me. Not much bee activity can happen by bee or beekeeper when it's cold and rainy outside. Atlanta has been cold and rainy all day and may start tomorrow that way as well. I decided to use the time to melt wax cappings from last year.

I'm finding that using the wax as I have been to wax in the starter strips isn't always effective because I am using melted wax cappings. The cappings which haven't been melted or filtered, have some liquid in them as well as bee junk. Sometimes this means I am "waxing" in the starter strip with honey watered down wax.

I've kept the wax cappings in the freezer, so I took out the zipped bag in which they have been stored. You can see the flakes of wax. At the bottom of the bag is frozen liquid that remained in the cappings - honey flavored water with which I washed the cappings before freezing them.

















I put a paper towel liner in a colander and drained the wax cappings as they thawed.

















Then using a Sierra cup left over from when I was a Girl Scout leader, I put the wax into the top of a double boiler.

















I melted the wax in the top of the double boiler. Picasa will only let me post four pictures so I'll finish the story in the next post.

Open-Brood plan for Monday

When I go into the hives tomorrow, I will have several goals:

1. To examine the medium in Proteus. This is the box right on top of the deep brood box. When last I looked the bees were building crazy comb and filling it with honey.

• I straightened out the crazy comb problem but I need to check to see if it worked or if there is more crazy comb to cut out.
  
  
• I don't want the queen to be bound by honey above her and want to encourage her to build more brood in the second box. So I plan to add another medium to Proteus and to move some of the honey filled comb up into it.
  
  
• Then I'll put some starter strip frames in the center of the first medium to encourage more usage of that box for brood. I'll put about three starter strip frames in the box. I think I'll install them with honey frames in between, but I'll post on Beemaster or Beesource to get an answer about what I should do.
  
  
• In honor of the tulip poplar bloom and its role as a high nectar source for Georgia bees, I also have a honey super on Proteus. I'll simply move this up above all three boxes when I do the maneuvers above.
  

2. I want to check on Bermuda to see if the bees are drawing out any of the starter strip frames in a medium on that hive that I added last week. I also am generally curious about Bermuda. I haven't looked at the brood nest in about 3 weeks and need to see if the queen is still expanding in her laying.

3. Mellona has a medium box undrawn as of last inspection above the deep brood box. I also in anticipation of going out of town added a honey super to Mellona without waiting for the box below to be drawn out. I'll need to check and see how/if the bees are working on those frames in either box and to determine what is my next concern about that hive.

It's funny, last year I opened the hives about weekly to learn about the bees, but wasn't actually managing the hive. This year I am more focused on hive management. It's interesting how the process of learning works - this year I KNOW so much more (still tons of learning ahead) and what I know informs my choices of what I am looking for in an inspection.

Frustration of No Camera

My sweet daughter who has the same camera as the one I destroyed last week offered to lend me her camera so I would not be without one while I wait for the one I ordered. Hopefully I may have some pictures tomorrow or the next day.

Meanwhile, we've had two good days of temperature and sky and at the end of the week the bees were working their little hearts out. Both Mellona and Proteus had so much action by the hive that it looked as if orientation flights of new bees were going on all day. In reality, I think they were working hard and fast and zooming in and out of the hives. I have seen bees arriving both with legs laden with pollen as well as hopefully bees filled with nectar.

The weather in Atlanta is not going to help the honey crop this year. From extra cold weather (more to come tomorrow) to really bad rain (right this minute), the work of the bees has been disrupted.

We'll see if I get any honey at all this year.

Beekeeping opens the door to many more things in my environment on which to focus. For example, I now watch the weather every day and think about the effect of whatever is going on with the weather on my bees. I am more interested when I see articles in the paper about how the farmer in this country is affected by the weather.

I also think about how we get so scared of what we don't understand. The papers in this country are filled every day with articles about communities that are so scared of bees that hives are being destroyed by firefighters or pest control people. And these very bees are the pollinators on which so much of our foodstuff depends. Here's an article from India on the same theme.

Notes and News about Cannibalism in the BeeHive

Note:
For the last five nights we have had record-breaking low temperatures in Atlanta. The bees have suffered. They can't forage as much - just a few hours in the day. Bees have died. I've seen dead bees outside of Proteus (60) and Mellona (40). They may be dead drones or worker bees who were too close to the edge of the cluster as the weather got colder. I have not seen dead larvae or chilled brood.

Note:
Tomorrow should be a pretty day so I will add a honey super to Mellona. The tulip poplar is in full bloom and should be for several weeks and I want the bees to make lots of honey.

News:
At least this was news to me. At the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Meeting tonight, the speaker was Curtis Gentry, who has a PhD in entomology from KU. Curtis is the beekeeper for the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

In his talk, Curtis commented that bees get food from three sources: the pollen or brood food, royal jelly, and if the queen is too prolific in her laying, the bees EAT the unhatched eggs and feed the protein back to the baby bees. Who knew???

Set up Weak Hive with a New Medium Box

The last time I looked into Bermuda, the weak hive, the bees were increasing in number and the queen was expanding her brood pattern to five or six frames. I removed a frame of honey from last year (we have a nectar flow on now from the tulip poplar, among other plants and trees) and replaced it with a frame with a starter strip of small cell.

It's about a week later and I think I should give them more space for brood, so I set up a second medium. I wanted to inspire these bees for small cell, so I put in nine frames of starter strips and one frame more or less in the center (with ten, where is the center?) of almost a full frame of small cell. I did this to give them more of a guide.


















Since I'm regressing this hive to small cell, I dated the frames so that I will have some idea when I replace them next year. My understanding of small cell is that the bees will have some trouble with it this year, regressing to smaller cell, but not to the natural cell size until one more "regression." To accomplish this, I'll need to replace brood frames again with small cell, so I dated these. Next year I can pull some of these 2007 frames and put in starter strips again, and my now much more adept bees will draw exactly what they need....assuming they live through the winter.

















Here is Bermuda with her new medium super. I installed it with great adventure. It was quite cold in Atlanta for April 9 this morning. When I went to the hive around 11 AM, it was still only in the high 40s. Ordinarily Bermuda has been a placid, slow moving hive, so I wasn't too worried about opening the hive just long enough to put on this box and replace the inner cover and telescoping lid.

I put on my veil and went to the hives, carrying my hive tool in one hand and my gloves and camera in the other. I set down the camera (and absent-mindedly, the gloves as well) and opened the lid of the hive. The hive was quiet, but when I removed the inner cover, they were no longer quiet and placid. The bees were thick on the top of the frames and flew out angrily and I was stung on each hand.

I hurriedly put on my gloves and in the process, trapped a bee under my glove, who of course also stung me on my left arm. This shocked me and I dropped my camera, breaking it.......costly beekeeping moment. The picture below is the last picture taken with the camera before it gave up the ghost.

















Oh, by the way, after waxing in the starter strips, I poured the remaining wax through panty hose (new) into a bread pan as a mold. The double boiler top in which the wax was melted still had wax residue on it. I poured boiling water into the pan and the wax now hardens on the surface of the water. I can pick it up and add it to my frozen wax cappings in the freezer. "Waste not, want not," the old folks say.

















Extra costs of beekeeping this week:

1. I had to buy a new chest freezer. My 30 year old freezer finally died, not of its own accord but because a critter in my basement ate through the electrical cord and by the time I noticed it wasn't working, it was past repair.
2. I have to get a new camera since mine died when I dropped it today.

Lesson learned: Put camera on strap around neck rather than wrist.

I needed a new camera - this one has been taking rather blurry pictures and just yesterday I was thinking that perhaps I should look into a new one. Also the one that I broke was only 5 megapixels -

I came inside, read reviews, and immediately ordered a new camera which should be here in about a week, but probably no posts before I get new pictures. I've ordered one with higher resolution and with an anti-shake feature to control the blur. It will be better in the end for both the bees and my grandbaby. However, I ordered an economic camera given that my camera is always subject to sticky hive stuff as well as the possible casualty of a fall from a high place.

This is a wonderful but more expensive hobby than I imagined!

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.

Honey super for Proteus hive

Last year when I harvested honey, I used the crush and strain method. This means that you cut the comb out of the frame and crush it to get the honey. There's a good description also that I posted on the Beemaster forum.

The frames are left with remnants of comb. I put the frames back in the hive in a super for the bees to clean up. Little remnants of comb were left on the edges of the frame. I then removed the frames and put them in the freezer overnight to kill any wax moth eggs that might be present.

Now I have the frames with the remnants left for the bees to use as guides to draw comb. Below you can see what one looks like.

















Below here is a frame sitting on the other frames so you can also see down into the box to see the frame already installed with a comb remnant on it.

















In the center of the box I put an almost fully formed comb to keep the bees in line.

















Here is Proteus at its taller height with a new box to use for honey.

Freezing Weather in April

Tonight the temperature in Atlanta will be in the 20s as will the temperature be tomorrow night. There are a number of bad things that can come of this:

1. My 2 year old blueberries will freeze (so I covered them, hence the ghostly looking sheets on my lawn). Walter Reeves says that is what to do - and he knows Georgia gardening best.


















2. The tulip poplar just started blooming today. It's a great source of delicious dark molasses-like honey. In Atlanta, it's our best honey flow. What will happen to the nectar with two nights in a row of freezing weather? On this web page the author indicates that late spring frost can have a very deleterious affect on the leaves but doesn't mention the blossoms.

3. Because of the tulip poplar flow, ordinarily I would put on supers tomorrow to allow the bees to store this incredible honey. However, adding an empty super when it's this cold for the next two nights adds to the challenge for the bees of keeping warm, so I'll probably super on Sunday or Monday rather than tomorrow.

The hives are full of capped brood and brood in all stages of early development. It will be a challenge for the bees to keep a large area warm, unlike in winter when the numbers have dwindled. Adding a super adds empty space to add to the area that will be cold in the hive. The bees don't keep the hive warm, rather they keep their cluster warm, but the current tight space they have keeps the warmth in better.