Inspection today

My goal today was to take the huge honeycomb off of Bermuda, but while I was all suited up, I checked in on each of the hives to see which one might need a new box. The Aristaeus2 hive just doesn't like popsicle sticks. If you look under my blue gloved finger, you can see that this frame had popsicle sticks as starters and instead of using them, the bees are building messy comb from the bottom.

I'm going to set some frames up with starter strips and give those to them instead.



The best growing hive was Melissa (located in my yard in bright sunshine). Fartherest from the camera is frame 4 and we are looking straight at frame 3. They drew these from starter strips.



Here you can see frames 4, 3, and 2 with 2 closest to the camera. True to typical bee form, they have most built out the frame closest to the center of the box and are working on the ones closer to the edge. I know you may be wondering if this is actually a top bar hive, but this is how bees build comb when allowed to do it in their own way. Eventually they will fill out the frame and often do not attach it to the bottom bar.



My favorite picture of the day is the one below. In Melissa, the bees were festooning in the top box as they draw out the wax. I pushed frame 7 over, creating a space between it and frame 8 and stretching this line of bees who were attached to each other "festooning" as they build wax in the frames.


I'll paint a new box for this hive and put it on tomorrow when I put the foundation-filled frames onto Bermuda to straighten out their wax making. I'll also give Aristaeus2 some foundation-filled frames to help get them on the right track as well.

Giant Honeycomb in foundationless frames

In Bermuda I had noticed a huge honeycomb and knew I had to take it out of the hive today. The bees had taken advantage of the foundationless frame and it looked to me as if they had built comb hooking it to two side-by-side frames.

Instead what they did was to build one huge honey comb attached to the first frame and fattened through the second frame. The comb was not attached except in one place at the top to the second frame. Here's the comb hanging on my frame rack on the outside of Bermuda. At the lower right you can see the broken comb at the top where they had attached to the second frame.



The other side of the comb was beautifully capped honey - I wish it had looked like this on the other side. I could have boxed it for cut comb honey. Looking like it does, I can crush and strain or cut it for chunk honey in a wide mouthed jar. I'll probably do the chunk honey so I can remember what this huge comb looked like as I enjoy the honey.



Here's a side view and you can now easily see how the comb was expanded under the second frame but not attaching to it.


There's another comb in this same box with the same configuration (two frames with one very fat honeycomb), but they hadn't capped it enough to take it off of the hive. I'll fill the empty spaces in this box with frames WITH foundation to get these bees back on track.

Working the Yard with Linda T's Bees

When I set up my two non-deck hives, Melissa and Devorah, my daughters told me that my backyard wouldn't be touched when the yard guys came. Sure enough last week, they worked on my front yard but completely ignored my backyard.

Today I was there when they arrived. I stopped one of the men and asked him about the backyard. "We're too scared of the bees," he said. I asked if he would do it if I gave him a net for his head. "OK," he said but he looked skeptical. The fellow working with him told me that he himself was allergic to bees and his throat swelled shut if he got stung. "You don't need to be in my backyard," I said.

The first guy put this camping mosquito net I have over his head and proceeded to weed whack and blow off the backyard. He seemed somewhat reassured when I told him that bees don't really hear and that the loud noise wouldn't bother them. He should, however, try not to fling stuff into the front of the hive.



He did a fabulous job, the bees ignored him altogether, and I took his picture while he worked. He didn't get stung and we agreed that I would leave this camping headdress on a hook in my carport so that he could work in the back this summer.



I kept my fingers crossed the whole time because it was very cloudy and thunder was starting. The bees can be easily aroused under those conditions, but the bees in both yard hives did their thing and ignored his yard work.

Of course, I gave him a jar of honey and promised more when I harvest this year!

It's time to Name the Hives

When I got home from the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, I inspected the beehives. My main concern was to determine if the swarm hive and the apparently queenless hive yet had queens. When I checked both hives had tiny larvae and I saw eggs in the apparently queenless hive.

So all the hives are growing appropriately and now it's time to give them names.

From left to right on the deck we have Bermuda, Mellona, Aristaeus2, and Hyron.

• Bermuda is my oldest hive, starting the third year of survival. The original hive boxes for Bermuda were painted a pale pink, so the name referred to the sands of Bermuda. This is my only hive with such a simple reason for her name.
• Mellona is next. Mellona is the Roman goddess of bees. Mellona is in her second year. She tends to make wonderful honey, but is slower in production than Bermuda
• Aristaeus2 is named for the Greek god Aristaeus who lost all of his bees to disease. Proteus advised him to sacrifice a number of animals, go away for a time. When he returned, he found swarms of bees in the sacrificed carcasses. His bees were never sick again. This was a small swarm and has managed to get started well, although they have a tendency to build burr comb.
• Hyron, according to Wikipedia, is the Cretan word for swarm of bees. Since this was my first swarm that I collected this year, I decided it deserved the name.
  
  

This hive below is the nuc that arrived queenless (or apparently so). The supplier gave me a new queen who was released but disappeared and there still was no laying activity in the hive five days later.
I believe this hive had a virgin queen from the beginning and she is now laying well.

• So I have named this hive Persephone since Persephone disappeared into the underworld for half the year but represented fertility when she was in the world during spring and summer.
  
  This little hive I have named Melissa, who in Greek mythology, saved Zeus' life by feeding him milk and honey. I hope this enthusiastic hive will make lots of honey to feed me and themselves.
  
  Finally, I have named this last hive Devorah, the Jewish poet and prophet, whose name in Hebrew means "bee." I did have this spelled Deborah, but a good friend of mine said the correct alliteration is Devorah.

"Hebrew scholars offer other possible Semitic origins of devorah,the modern Hebrew word for bee. They consider ancient cognates like the Aramaic for bee, debarta, and its Syriac cousin, deboritha, as well as the Hebrew word for honey, debash. There is another shoresh (three-letter word root) brought forth for consideration: the Mandaic Aramaic dibra 'back, tail, hence 'bee's stinger' (?) to be compared with the Arabic dubr 'backside, tail.'" I found this quote here.

I think since this hive is closest to my neighbor's yard and in full view and since this hive is directly beside the path the yard guys have to walk on to work in my yard, Devorah seems like a gentle name for a hive which at the moment appears to have a gentle feel. But with the sting of the bee implied in the origin of the name, we can also expect Devorah to keep the hive safe.

Comb Configurations

When I inspected a hive last week (the smallest swarm hive), I found that I had put shallows in a medium super and the bees had built burr comb below the shallow frames in the space above their bottom box. I scraped off most of it and put the comb filled with nectar on top of the inner cover for the bees to save the nectar.


In place of the shallow frames I put in medium frames. Some of the medium frames had popsicle sticks for starter strips and some had wax starter strips. I put a frame with a full sheet of foundation in the center. This week there was more burr comb and instead of building comb from the top of the frames, the largest comb they had drawn out was the one below which they built on the bottom of the frame.

Again there was burr comb on the edges of most of the bottoms of the frames on one side of the box. I don't usually smoke the bees after an initial puff at the door. To get them out of the area with the burr comb, I did smoke them and they disappeared down into the hive.

This time I carefully scraped all of the burr comb off of the tops of the frames and off of the frames below. I have to train these girls to draw their comb straight and pretty. You can see below the amount of burr comb I scraped off - it will be nice for the solar wax melter, but what a waste of energy for the bees in this hive.



Thankfully, Bermuda has some beautiful capped honey in her next to the top box. I will take it off this weekend before the bees can track pollen and dirt over the gorgeous white comb. Isn't it pretty? There's a whole box of this. It does have a problem that I'll have to address. In frames 4 and 5, which were put in the hive without foundation, the bees have built one very wide comb. The comb is straight and goes the right direction, but instead of filling one frame's depth, they used two.

I both have no idea how I'll get the bees off of that particular duo comb and don't know what to do with it. If I can get it out of the hive in one piece, I'll take pictures. Then I'll probably crush and strain it.

The Best Part of Young Harris

Obviously the best part of the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute is sharing information and getting to know beekeepers from Georgia and surrounding states.

Here's my fun lunch group from the last day. We had a great time at the lunches. (The food leaves something to be desired but the company is well worth hanging out in the cafeteria.) We all shared the experience of the day with each other. I didn't take pictures at the most fun event which was the shrimp boil held at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds on Friday night. The food is really delicious there and the people are all more relaxed because we're through with all the tests.



Tests? Yes, the Beekeeping Institute is put on by the University of Georgia and The Young Harris College. Most people come to try to get certification at some level. You can take the beginner level - which is Certified Beekeeper. That's what I did last year. The next level is Journeyman (must have two years of beekeeping under your belt) followed by Master Beekeeper and Certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper (those two take at least five years). I believe that Bill Owens is the only Certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper in the state of Georgia. Also available at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute is a class to certify Welsh Honey Judges.

I took the Journeyman tests both written and practical and turned in my proof of the required five public service credits I had earned.

I sweated bullets. I was pretty sure I had passed the written test, but the practical test included some entomology that threw me for a loop. So I wasn't feeling very hopeful as I sat down at the end-of-the-institute convocation.

When Dr. Delaplane called out the name of the person who had passed the Journeyman level, I was not that person, so I sat back in my chair and thought, "OK, maybe I'll try again next year."

Then after a pause, I heard Dr. Delaplane announce, "And Linda Tillman." I was thrilled. He commented that this blog influenced my certification, so thank you to all of you who come to read about my beekeeping adventures and comment on my efforts.



I keep a statcounter on the numbers of people who visit each day and now it averages 300/day from all over the world. Since January 1, 2007, Google reports that 1,989 people have watched my video on crush and strain harvesting and 2,848 people have watched the one on how to make a solar wax melter. Thank you all for your interest and for visiting so often.



I also entered the photograph below in the photography section of the honey show and it won second place. What a great day for me all the way around!

Kim Flottum at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute

I'm very glad to share with all of you some of what I learned at Young Harris. You realize, of course, that you are only getting my take on what the speakers shared and that may not be entirely accurate! I encourage you, if there are beekeeping gatherings - meetings, conferences, local speakers - in your area, go to hear them.

Beekeeping is an art as well as a science. I learned SO much at Young Harris, as I did last year as well. Every speaker brings his/her own perspective and good ideas.

We were so lucky to have with us Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine and author of The Backyard Beekeeper. I heard him speak on two topics.

Here he is talking about "The Many Uses of Nucs." He doesn't think of nucs as devices for making splits. Instead he uses nucs as a source of "spare parts" in the bee yard. By this he said he meant that with a five frame nuc that is thriving, you could take out a frame of brood or honey to give to a hive in need of either. And the use of nucs can provide special "spare parts:" extra queens, should you need them.


In addition to the above wisdom, he suggested a unique method of requeening. He starts the nuc with five frames (his rationale for the five frame nuc is that it is convenient to buy nucs that size). He only uses medium boxes, so he buys medium nucs.

He puts together the nuc with 2 frames of mostly eggs, one of sealed brood, one of honey and pollen and one foundation or drawn comb. He takes these frames out of strong hives and gives one shake to get most of the bees off of them, leaving the young nurse bees still on the frame, before adding them to the nuc. This is the core of a hive and with these resources, they make themselves a queen.

After the queen is up and working the nuc to build it up, if Flottum has a queenless hive, he removes five frames from that hive and substitutes the five frames from the nuc and presto! he has requeened. The five frames he removed from the hive go into the nuc (including a frame on which there is a queen cell or a new egg) and he begins the process again. Sounds like no fuss, no bother.

He sometimes even overwinters nucs...and he's in very cold state, not Georgia where we should fairly easily be able to overwinter a nuc colony.

After his talk, I went to the Brushy Mountain vendor table and ordered two medium nucs. I've had queenless situations in both of my two beekeeping summers and this sounds like a painless way around the problem.




In the second talk I heard Kim Flottum give, he talked about using the web to access beekeeping resources. I must admit that I have never looked at the Bee Culture website as anything other than a link to the magazine. Well, think again. It's a fabulous link to so many helpful beekeeping resources.

For example, if you click on The Science of Beekeeping, it takes you to the many universities who have bee labs, newsletters about apiculture, and research information. Among many others Flottum talked about the University of Nebraska where you can read about the origin of the powered sugar treatment for varroa mites, UC Davis, which has an outstanding newsletter from the Dept of Entomology. Assuming you don't get distracted by the wisdom-filled university web pages on bees and bee labs, if you continue scrolling down the science of beekeeping page, you can find links to the Department of Agriculture for all the states and for Canada.

You can also click on "Catch the Buzz" to sign up for Flottum's own newsletter. Since he had praised a number of University entomology newsletters, he joked about how after his talk, all of us would have very full email boxes!

Ross Conrad, Organic Beekeeper, at Young Harris

I had the privilege twice today to hear Ross Conrad talk about his methods of beekeeping at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute today.

First topic: American Foulbrood:

He discussed a way to handle American Foulbrood without burning the hives. He advocates removing the bees from the affected hive, shaking them into new hive boxes with new frames, all new equipment. Then he burns the old frames. He scorches the boxes, covers, bottom boards, etc. like I did for the boxes donated to the Girl Scout troop.

He notes that the above process allows him to save the bees. What is destroyed are the frames of larvae contaminated with AFB, but the bees are not sacrificed. In general each time he was the speaker he clearly communicated that he was oriented to the bees' needs rather than the needs of the beekeeper.

I hope never to encounter AFB, but what I most learned from was the second talk I heard.

Second topic: Addressing the varroa question by making nucs

As I understand it, this is what he advocates:

We want to promote strength in our hives. This often means promoting the growth of local bees. If you order bees from other locales than your own, then you are asking the arriving bees to adapt to your climate, environment, etc., but if you are using your own strongest bees to expand your stock, then the bees have already demonstrated their ability to thrive in your environment.
Taking this further, he also prefers to use queens that his bees make rather than purchasing queens.

Following this logic, if you have a strong hive then that hive should be one that you capitalize on by expanding it through making nucs.

From his strongest hives that he would most like to duplicate, he makes five frame nucs using as the center frame a frame of new eggs and young brood. On either side of the center frame he puts a frame of larvae and capped brood. Then the last two frames are frames of honey to support the new nuc.

It will take the nuc 16 days to make one of the eggs into a queen. Then the queen has to harden, orient and go on a mating flight. This can occupy a number of other days. By the time she starts laying, there has been an approximate 3 week interruption in the life cycle of the varroa mite. Since the adult varroa mite lies in wait for the tiny larvae on which she lays her eggs, the varroa mite stops in her tracks until the new queen starts laying. Without tiny larvae on which to lay her eggs, the varroa mite can't reproduce herself. This is the cycle disruption.

Ross leaves the nuc alone for 30 days and then inspects it. If there is evidence that the new queen is laying, he moves the nuc into its own hive box. Now his apiary has another hive derived from his strongest hive. And the varroa mite has been stymied for three weeks.



One of the best things about listening to Ross is his obvious earnest, genuine interest in the bees. He has thoughtfully come up with a system that supports this caring for the bees and expresses his own organic approach to the world.



Sometimes he puts two nucs into one hive body to get them started. Here is a rather faded picture of a slide he used to show the division of the hive.

He uses a special bottom board with cut out entrances for both nucs, one on one side of the box and the other on the opposite end. the center is barricaded by a division feeder with all space covered, blocking the movement of the bees from one side of the hive box to the other.

In general I enjoyed so much his positive, genuine approach to beekeeping. I bought his book:
Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture and had him autograph it for me!