Maybe Tower Place isn't a Good Idea

Our nights in Atlanta are still relatively cool. I woke up this morning to find a beard on Tower Place. What will it be like for the bees when we DO have a Hotlanta night?

Tomorrow I may move them into larger quarters, despite the fun of the idea of a "tree" hive.

Installation Updates

Checked on the 8 frame Jennifer Berry hive and it was also doing well. The bees were located to one side of the box. It looked as if they had slid my three empty frames to the side and installed the five frames of bees on the other side.



I could see eggs and was relieved that the queen was laying although there was very little larvae, so I remain a little cautious.



On this hive I moved the five frames from Jennifer and the one of mine that they were using to the center of the box and put an empty frame on each side. Following the rule that when the bees have drawn out 80% of their box, it's time to add a new box, I then added a new medium super, filled with foundationless frames before I closed up the hive.

Then I drove to Stonehurst Place to see how those hives were doing. I lit my smoker but never really used it. I didn't need it and regretted lighting it because I then smelled like a Girl Scout campfire at work for the rest of the day.



In those two hives, I didn't see the queen but saw good evidence of her presence. You can see the uncapped brood in these frames. I also saw eggs, so I feel good about these Jerry Wallace hives which seemed to be off to a good start.

We had given them baggies of sugar syrup, but they had not touched them, due to the current nectar flow. I removed them from the hives and left them to their own devices for obtaining nurture.



The yard and garden at Stonehurst Place is very oriented to the bees. The hives are underneath a tulip poplar and the gardens themselves are planted with salvia, coreopsis, zinnias, cosmos. These bees should be happy as am I in their off-to-the-races start.

I put a new medium super with frames on each of these hives.

It's funny at the beginning of bee season all the hives are at about the same place but as time goes on, the differences in the bees of the two hives and the growth rates, honey production, etc. become more apparent.

Bees in Tower Place

The bees in the nuc (Tower Place) are doing well. Yesterday I opened the hive. I didn't do a deep inspection - I just wanted to see if they were occupying the frames in the deep and that the queen was laying.

She was and they were already using the box above (no surprise, given that they are in five frame boxes!)



Here they are all peeking out at me in the hive drape opening.



I added another box and closed the hive up. I'll check again on Sunday. I'm a little worried about this nuc box tower, as you can tell, but it feels like a fun experiment.



Somewhat Leaning Tower of Pisa, it is up and going and we'll see what the future brings.

Topsy Turmoil

The last two times I've checked the top bar hive, one top bar has come off from the top bar as I've tried to lift it. The comb attached (or not) is all full of honey.  The comb appears to be attached to the bottom of the hive.  I haven't really had any idea what to do.

The last time I was in the top bar hive, the brood bars were full all the way up to this honey.  I didn't want the honey to make the queen feel honey bound and influence the hive to swarm.  The only choice was to undo the stuck comb.

I have not enjoyed the top bar hive.  It is so much more difficult to work with than the hive box.  I can't see what is going on and I tend to create destruction as I did today.

With a regular frame, you can shake the bees off of it.  This comb could not possibly be shaken, nor can any top bar comb.  I wonder how in the world you harvest honey without making the mess we did today?

I put all of the mess on a slide show.  We killed at least 500 bees in the process and may have destroyed the queen as well, although wet with honey bees all look like queens because their bodies are so shiny.

First Jeff and I slid our hive tools down the side of the hive to loosen the comb from the hive.  Then we reached in and gently pulled the honey comb up from the bottom of the hive (and at least 500 bees).  Bees died from being squashed.  Some died from being coated in honey.

We put the comb in a large roasting pan and tried to brush the bees off....OMG what a mess!  Suddenly Jeff said, "Oh, no, there's the queen!"  He's really a good queen spotter but I'd prefer to think that I'm not sure it was the queen.  We took the questionable bee, covered with honey, and gently put her back into the hive.

We put some of the cut honey back into the hive in front of the follower board on some aluminum foil.  I took the rest home and was heartsick as I cleaned tons of dead bees off of the remaining comb into my kitchen sink.

At least we did see brood and eggs so they have the resources to make a queen if we have destroyed her.  I am so sad about this.  Makes me not want to open the top bar ever again.  I certainly won't build another one.  Here are the problems I've had:

1.  Hard to keep bees in the hive - lost one swarm, lost and recovered one package
2.  The only way to keep the bees in the hive was to put old comb on the bottom and close off the screened bottom board.  The comb on the bottom was the source of the problem today
3.  If comb is crooked or breaks off, there's no easy way to tie it into the hive - you can use string on the top bar, but it doesn't really do the trick and bees get tangled in the fiber of the string.  Rubber bands can't be used.  Below this list is a picture of how bees get caught (and die) in the string
4.  Any problem on the bottom of the hive is invisible until you tear things up to get to it......grrrr.
5.  I can't imagine harvesting - how do you get the bees off of the comb without using smoke and without shaking the comb?

Picture below of bees entangled in the fibers of the kitchen twine (dead).

Anyway, here's a slide show of the mess:

Jennifer Berry Bees - Wow!

After my weekend at a professional conference, I got up at 5:30 AM on Sunday to drive to Athens from Rabun County to pick up bees from Jennifer Berry.  I had dropped off my nuc and an 8 frame deep hive box a few weeks ago to get ready for this event.

Here's Jennifer posing with her girls before they leave the farm.

It was great to see Jennifer on this cold morning and so wonderful to get these last bees of the season (for me) to take back to Atlanta.  I planned to put these bees in my own backyard that has been bee-less since the fall.

Actually I put a contract on a house in town the day before I left and enjoyed the grimace of my real estate agent when I wondered aloud if we could put in the contract that I wanted to put bees in the backyard of the new house before closing!  Oh, well, the bees will go to my current house instead!

Don Kuchenmeister loves a hive he runs all year in a nuc box.  It gets taller and taller.  He says it is one of his best honey producers, because it is like a tree to the bees.

So I thought I might keep the nuc in a nuc box and add my medium nuc boxes to it to give them space and grow them taller.

So I installed it with a medium nuc on top of the deep.  As you can see in the photo, I have two waiting painted medium nuc boxes to add over time and another unconstructed one in the basement.  If it needs more room than that, I'll either split it or move them to a regular sized box.

The minute I removed the screen, these bees were all over it.  They were orientation flying, massing on the front door step and generally full of energy.  The second hive, placed under a tree nearby, looked lifeless - not a bee emerged.

To see if there were actually bees there, I lifted the top and there they were, but nobody came out of the door.  OK, I said to myself, it's only 56 degrees, probably too cold for them.  

An hour and a half went by and the action below is the most I saw.  It was still 58 or so degrees, but I'm not happy with what is going on.  Did I get one good hive and one dud from Jennifer?  Surely not.

Here's what it looked like, comparatively:

After some thought and knowing few if any foragers had left this hive, I moved the lifeless-looking hive to a sunnier location near the nuc.

Within ten minutes, there were the bees!  I hope these hives do well.  If they do, then when I move in July or so, I'll split them and take the splits to the new house.

Note:  I had the deck pressure washed today - it's just up above these hives and the steps to the deck are about five feet away from the front of the 8 frame.  I called the guy who did the work to tell him what a good job they had done.

"Did the bees bother you?"  I asked him.
"What bees? !!!" was his reply.

It was 78 or so today so we can know they were flying, but he and his men did not even notice the bees five feet away!

Birthday of the blog!

Well, belated birthday, anyway.  I missed it!  On April 15, my blog began its sixth year and I began my sixth year as a beekeeper (although this year started so early that it's hard to say it began two days ago!)

I am so grateful for all of you who visit from all over the world (from 176 countries) and comment on my bee adventures.  It has been such a challenge for me to keep learning and sharing.  I appreciate knowing I want to post on the blog.  That always sends me out to take a photo or look up something interesting to share with you.

At this point there are 747 of you who are RSS subscribers, 410 or you who "follow me" on Blogger, a few Twitter subscribers (34) and a few others who subscribe in some other ways.

I've posted 844 times (including this one) which is a lot of picture taking and writing.

It's been a great ride so far - thanks to all of you who stay interested in my bees!

Rabun Hives are Thriving!

This morning I stopped by the Rabun County hives on my way to a professional meeting in Young Harris.  They have been established for two weeks now and are doing really well.

In the first hive (in the old hive box), the bees were concentrated on one side of the box.  They peeked up between the frames as I opened the hive:

I checked the hive and they were mostly using the old comb frames and had not begun to draw out the new foundationless frames.  I moved the concentration to the center of the box and put a couple of undrawn frames on either side.

When I slid the frames apart to remove them, the bees were festooning, linked together making wax.  I hated messing up the good work they were doing!

I never saw the queen but I did see brood and eggs so I was relieved.  Because the nectar flow has started, and I won't be back for a couple of weeks, I added a box of empty frames for them to move into when they are done with this box.

I moved on to the new box.  I was so pleasantly surprised.  The bees had drawn comb on every single frame in this box.  Each frame looked about the same like the photo below:

I thought you'd like to see a close up of these beautiful productive bees.  Here they are:

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Toward the right side of the photo above, you can see some really fat larvae waiting to be capped.

And then on the next frame, the same one on which she was installed, I spotted Her Majesty.  She is a gorgeous queen, moving regally along the honey comb.

Isn't she beautiful?

I gave this hive another box as well and expect they will use it as well as they have the first one.  Good I visited this morning - the rain has been terrible all afternoon and late into the night.

I left the hives closed up for another day and hope they keep going as well as they have so far.

Installing the Bees at Stonehurst Place Inn

Last night I picked up the two nucs for the Stonehurst Place Inn.  I got the bees from Jerry Wallace who took great care to make this go so smoothly for his customers.  He even put my nucs in the car for me.

I drove to the inn and set the boxes up behind the cottage at Stonehurst.  I wanted everything to be in place before the installation today.  Caroline, the innkeeper, mixed up sugar syrup for the bees.  Gary, her husband, carefully built and painted all the boxes and nailed each frame.

We set the hives on old brick and Gary made sure the hives were level:

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I set the nucs on top of the boxes into which they would be placed this morning.

The bees peeked out of the newly opened front door as they waited for today's installation.

Today each deep box got the five frames from its nuc and I filled the rest of the box with deep frames from my stash.

Then I put the frames from the nuc into the hive in the exact position each frame was in in the nuc.

I saw the queen in each of the hives, which gave me a really good feeling about our impending success.  The tulip poplar was blooming in the yard and I stepped on fallen blooms as I moved to the hives.  This could be a really great location, with good blooming plants in the inn's yard and the Atlanta Botanical Garden just over the next street.

I fed each of these hives with a baggie feeder over the inner cover; left the nuc boxes in front of the hives to allow any errant bees to make their way into the hives and left.  I hope they do well.