The Georgia Flow is Slowing Down

In my neighborhood the tulip poplar has finished its bloom and the blackberry is all done. The air smells of privet but even the privet is at the end of its bloom with the flowers changing from bright white to old yellow on the branches.

It's amazing to me that the bees have so little time with an abundance of nectar before they are in short supply.  And here at the end of the flow, we have had a sudden spate of cold weather - temperatures in the low 60s for several days and in the 40s at night.

Now the bees who have been very productive over the last month will have less to gather and will have no major source of nectar blooming in this part of Georgia.  They will still forage and will find garden blooms, milkweeds on the sides of roads and ditches, with sumac yet to start blooming as well.  But the big push for nectar gathering is done.

We only have one big nectar flow in this part of the state.  Goldenrod and asters provide a minor early fall flow, but those are not delicious honey flavors.  In Rabun County the sourwood flow doesn't start until June, but it too only lasts for a month.

Now the work of the bees is to ripen the nectar they have gathered and to cap it for storage for the winter (and for harvest for the beekeeper).  After only a short, intense month, they will have to make do for the rest of their winter stores.

Speaking at Young Harris Beekeeping Institute

At Young Harris, I gave a talk on "Simple Beekeeping: A Low-Tech Approach" to the students there. I had to give the same talk four different times, so by the fourth time, I felt a little babbly. But many people told me they enjoyed it and I didn't hear any negative feedback, so that felt great.

I talked for 45 minutes, hitting the highlights of the simple approach to box size (using all mediums), foundation (using foundationless frames), pest management (a homemade SHB trap), melting wax (solar wax melter from a styrofoam beer cooler), and honey harvest (crush and strain).

I demonstrated cutting a wax strip with a rotary cutter.



I showed them how a foundationless frame looks going into the hives.



And, of course, I introduced them to the wax tube fastener and told them my story of learning to use it.



After all, it came with no directions, and I'd like to save others the agony I went through!



The first day the room was crowded and overflowing for each of my two talks and the second day, the room was full for each of the talks, so I felt pleased. I also spent a good amount of time evaluating the practical abilities of the certified beekeeper candidates.

I entered a wall quilt and my creamed honey in the honey show.

My creamed honey came in second place (my friend Julia won the blue ribbon!) and my quilt came in third place.

Julia (who is a great beekeeper and has kept bees longer than I but didn't start the certification process until last year) earned her Journeywoman certification and Noah, her son, and my friend and fellow beekeeper, earned his certified level in the Georgia program.

Rabun County Hive Check

In the terrible tornado weather in the Southeast on April 28, Rabun County, where my bees are located, suffered two tornadoes. One occurred about 2 miles from the hive at Lake Burton and the other occurred in Mountain City, another two miles in a different direction. I wonder how the barometric pressure changes in such terrible weather affected the bees?

Both of these hives were started with packages in early April. Both hives have built out the bottom box and one of the hives had started in the second box. Hive One which is housed in 10 frame medium boxes had not built in the second box at all.

In the first box the frames with the most mature capped brood looked like the one below. Pretty good brood pattern, some holes where bees had emerged, and a general good healthy look.



I found some odd laying patterns but still wondered if the tornado and accompanying weather phenomena affected the queen and her laying. The capping was new looking and fresh. Since larvae is capped about seven days after laying and the tornado was less than two weeks ago, I wondered if the odd drone pattern represented confusion in the odd weather pattern when the eggs were laid.



The good news about this hive is that almost every empty cell was filled with eggs or young brood.  Perhaps the queen is back on track or perhaps this drone laying pattern is an indication of a bigger problem for the hive.



I love the yellow tint of the wax in the newly built comb because of all the pollen coming in.  Hive one was only housed in the lower box, so I left it with two medium boxes as its configuration.

Hive two, housed in eight frame medium boxes, had built out all the frames in the bottom box and had drawn out three frames in the second box where they had proceeded to store nectar.  Also in hive two there was an egg in almost every cell.

Actually both hives are about at the same point.  Hive One has built out 10 frames in one box.  Hive Two has built out 11 frames in two eight frame boxes.



I left the hives with bottle caps on the inner cover corners to raise the lid slightly and provide more ventilation.

I'll be back Memorial Day Weekend to see how these bees are doing.

Great Progress at Stonehurst Place

I'm heading for Young Harris tomorrow so I stopped by Stonehurst Place today to check on the bees. I thought there was a slight chance they might need another box. I added a super to each hive on Monday, the 1st, and even though that was just about a week ago, we are in the middle of a nectar flow.

Both hives had good activity going in and out of the hives when I got there.

Hive one had nice white new honey comb in the second box but had not started making comb in the third box. I checkerboarded some of the comb from box 2 to box 3 to encourage them. I didn't move a lot of the comb because the queen is laying in the second box and there was some brood on the frames as well.

In the second hive at Stonehurst, the bees peeked up at me from box three between well-filled combs.  They had already filled every frame but one with comb and honey.

Here is some of their beautiful honey.  I expect the guests at Stonehurst will get to eat some of this as cut comb honey if the owner is open to that idea.

The cappings are just gorgeous!!

In the second super in this hive there was also brood.  This is a busy queen and a good, growing hive.

More brood.  I checkerboarded the frames in boxes three and four to increase the bees interest in box four.  In the process I had to cut off some honey-dripping comb so Jim, the inn-sitter while Caroline and Gary are away, and I tasted the first taste of their honey - really light and DELICIOUS.

I added a fourth box to this hive and put bottle tops on the inner cover corners of both hives to add to ventilation.  I thought we ordered slatted racks for these hives, but we don't have them.

Funny that two hives started at the same time could be in two different places.  The bees in hive two (from which Victor sampled 300 bees) are more productive than the bees so far in hive one.

Albert Alligator and the Blue Heron hives

When I was a little girl, my father always loved the cartoon Pogo, drawn and written by Walt Kelly. It was a little confusing for me because there was a famous clown in the circus at the time named Emmett Kelly and I got the two mixed up and thought the clown wrote the cartoon in his off hours. Of course now I'm a beekeeper and there's a great beekeeping company called Walter T. Kelley. (Good I'm not still a child - think how confused I'd be).

Nonetheless in the cartoon, Pogo (a possum) and Albert (an alligator) frequently played checkers. When they did, Pogo often won and Albert had many responses to being beaten, most of which involved creating some kind of chaos. In one of my favorite Albert Alligator checker games, Pogo is winning and Albert suddenly throws the checkerboard into the air yelling, "Earthquake! Earthquake!"

If the bees at Blue Heron had read Pogo, they would have been buzzing "Earthquake! Earthquake!"  today when Julia, Noah, and I returned to the scene of the morning's inspection.

This is what it looked like in the middle of the chaos:



Noah took this picture below by accident, but I'm sure it's how the bee's world felt to them!

In the earlier inspection we found that despite queen cells in both halves of the split, neither hive had a queen.  I don't know if it was because of really bad weather over the last weeks; if I killed the queen when I dropped my hive tool through the one hive two weeks ago; if the emerged queens were killed going to or from their mating flights; or what.

The sad story is that the splits both failed.

I went home and stole a frame of brood and eggs from both Colony Square and Lenox Pointe.  They were none too happy since I had inspected both hives the day before and being opened two days in a row is more than disruptive.

I put the two stolen frames into a five frame nuc with some empty frames to make transporting it easy.

I made sure before the move that both stolen frames had eggs and very young brood on them....as well as capped brood.  The pheromones from the capped brood help the queenless hive avoid developing laying workers.

We removed two frames from the bottom box of the strongest of the two hives.

In their place we put the two frames from home.

Both hives had a good bit of honey on them.  We put the boxes of honey back onto this hive.  Then we topped the box with a piece of newspaper.  You are supposed to trim the newspaper so that there are not edges hanging over to wick in rain water.  I forgot to do that and will return today with a pair of scissors.

When the newspaper is in place, you take your hive tool and cut three or so slits in the newspaper to facilitate the bees working their way through the newspaper.  By the time the bees chew through the newspaper in two or three days, they will be friendly to each other.

We then put a box on the top for the bees from the other hive.  One frame at a time we sprayed the bees with sugar syrup and then shook and brushed them into the new box.

The frames we were shaking were deeps and the box into which we moved them was a medium.  We even shook the slatted rack and the screened bottom board.

We then added all the honey frames from hive 2 to the box into which we had shaken the bees.

In the end when we finished the combining, there was STILL chaos all around us.

We closed up the hive, cleaned up the "Earthquake" and went home with crossed fingers. We won't open this hive again for 21 days to give the queen time to emerge, go on her mating flight, and return to lay eggs.   I hope, hope, hope that this combined hive will survive, raise a queen and keep going.  We'll see on Memorial Day!

It was a difficult operation and I so appreciate that Julia and Noah came back with me to finish this project.  Both of them helped so much and Noah took most of these pictures.  They are wonderful friends and dedicated beekeepers and I enjoy every beekeeping minute with them.

Blue Heron Inspection May 7 2011

In this inspection at Blue Heron, we wanted to check on the progress of Julia's hive (started from a package in mid March) and to see if the even split of my hive had worked and resulted in two laying queens.

We found Julia's hive to be a little slow, but still up and running. We wondered about the bad weather (tornadoes and storms over the last few weeks) or if the location in the woodsy shade (better than the flood plain, but not ideal for bees) contributed to the slow start.

Linda's even split was a complete failure. Neither hive had a laying queen. We determined that we needed to combine the two hives later that afternoon after I had gone home and stolen frames of brood and eggs from Colony Square and Lenox Pointe.

To follow up, see tomorrow's post.....

Honey, Brood and A New Aid for Ventilation

In checking on my hives at home today, I was quite pleased with my bees.

I hate it when in the process of lifting a comb, despite my best efforts, some comb is broken open. Of course when that happens, it is always fascinating to see the bees surround the honey drips and put their proboscis to work sucking the honey back up as you can see in the picture below of the Colony Square bees working hard to retrieve spilled honey.




This curious frame in Colony Square was filled with nectar and right in the center there was capped brood???


The queen in this hive has been laying like crazy. Generally in the life of the hive, the queen builds up the population until the summer solstice at which point she gradually begins to slow down and continues the slow down until winter.



At Penny (my Virginia mentor's) suggestion, I am trying to increase ventilation in the hive by putting bottle caps at the corners of the inner covers. I wondered before I did this how the tops would stay in place, but I think I was imagining placing them on the corners of the hive box. Once I realized they would go on the tops of the inner cover corners (duh!), it's clear that they would easily stay put.



Lenox Pointe was doing well too. I didn't take pictures while in that hive, except for the one below, showing a beautiful frame of brood.
The bees in both of these hives are bringing in nectar as fast as they can. We are at the height of the nectar flow in Atlanta so it's prime time for the hives to be building up their honey supplies.



I put bottle caps on Lenox Pointe's corners as well. My son-in-law, Kevin, has been collecting bottle caps for me so I am now carrying a baggie of bottle caps in my hive inspection kit.

A Beekeeper's Lunch

I didn't go to work this morning because I needed to meet a roof repair person (who later rescheduled.....) but nonetheless, it is lunch time and I am at home.

I made myself a half of an egg salad sandwich (leftover Easter eggs) and took a handful of unshelled English peas and sat on the steps in my backyard.

This is what I saw.



A few minutes later, this is what I saw:



A few English peas and another bite of sandwich and this is what I saw:



And a little later, this is what I saw:



And it MADE MY DAY!