Looking Ahead to 2017

Our hives in the new apiary, covered with snow but sitting
in the sunshine. 

It was a very busy fall for us. Our first priority for the fall was to move the bees to the new apiary. It has lots of room for growth, and we can park a trailer in there as well, which is the long term plan – then we can keep some bees on the trailer, and move them from orchard to orchard, getting that wonderful fruit pollen. It makes amazing honey. For the move, the hives were loaded up on the back of the truck, the tables were hauled over (we don’t like to have the hives directly on the ground because then they are just too inviting to bugs and critters who might have a hankering for some bees – yes, we mean skunks. They don’t care about the honey but they sure do love bees… and not in the good way.)

Taking the honey from the FlowHive

We also extracted our honey… lots of honey. When all was said and done, we ended up with about 1100 pounds of honey. If that sounds like a lot, you want to try to store it all in your kitchen pantry! Like all things, there was still some learning this year in the extraction department. We harvested our FlowHive for the first time, with mixed results – it was a very messy process! We also harvested 32 pucks of honey in the comb, and were very happy with that. With a little bit of that extracted honey, we did all our preserves and especially our jellies, using less than a cup of honey per batch instead of the many cups of sugar normally used, and it turned out wonderfully.

Moving the hives to the new apiary.

So, what about 2017? The hives are topped with snow, the bees are inside making sure the hive stays at the right temperature, and we are pondering the next honey season. As always, it seems, there are hive boxes and honey supers to be made. That is a never-ending task, it seems, as we grow. Since we hadn’t anticipated the growth we had last year, we used up every available box and frame, so there is work to be done there. We need to make our ‘shopping list’ of necessities – like queen excluders, calculating as best we can how many hives we will aim for next year. It’s hard to anticipate because so much depends on the winter. This winter has been very cold, unusually cold, with a lot of wind, so we could find that the hives are not as strong in the spring as we hoped. We also had a long fall, so they could have depleted a lot of their stores before the cold weather came. We also are over-wintering with single hives, instead of doubles, so there will be less stores for them to rely on inside.

Our honey in the comb, ready for sale. 

Without knowing what we have when we start the year, we almost require a couple of contingency plans. If the bees do well, and they are up and running strong early in the spring, we will have to decide if the focus will be on creating more hives, or creating honey, and if we go with creating honey, do we do more liquid honey or honey in the comb? We can also focus a bit more on gathering propolis and pollen instead of just honey, or we can decide to create hives to sell for other beekeepers, spreading diversity and helping new beekeepers get established. Regardless of what route we take, we know we have to re-queen the hives which raises the question of ‘growing’ our own queens or purchasing queens. We learned from last year that to purchase queen cells are much cheaper, but much more of a gamble. The growing of queen cells is an involved and intricate art, requiring a careful hand at the start when the harvest the day-old larvae, and absolute vigilance in monitoring and timing their growth to be able to move them appropriately at the right time. Being off even one day has dire consequences, so we need to be sure of what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. The learning curve on this task is, honestly, a bit intimidating, but the benefits, especially for our own hives, would be substantial.

University of Purdue -- growing queen cells. 

We have to look beyond these issues though, and consider what we do with what our bees produce. Selling hive nucs and queens are one way to make this gig pay, but are those enough or do they deplete our own ability to produce honey? We have been selling our honey, by the jar, by the puck and by the bucket, but is there more we can be doing? We have gathered a lot of beeswax over the last few years, so perhaps it’s time to find a use for that, something that will help to make this more than just an interesting hobby.

When you have angry bees because you have
just taken away all their honey, you have
to get creative when working outside.
Greg is geared up to do some welding,
while wearing a bee suit! 

So while we sit and ponder, and dream of sunshine and flowers for our bees, we will have more than enough to keep us busy (besides just making new hive boxes). We will pull out the aprons and the pots, and do some experimenting with the many wonderful by-products of bees, integrating the wax and hopefully the pollen and propolis, so more people can reap the benefits. At this point, at least for a few more weeks, the evenings will be spent reading and researching. The days inside the house will be spent testing and sampling. We’ll try to share some of the results as we go. It could be an interesting (and messy) journey. 

Waxing Poetic

It’s been a busy summer so far, with very weird weather, but we finally found a few minutes to do a bee update!

Removing the partition from a Queen Castle to turn it into
one standard hive.

We have some results on our queen castles – the hives where we put three small nucs into one box. Two weeks ago we cracked them open to see how everyone was doing. On three of the castles, only one nuc per hive survived. On one of these nucs, we could see the queen had not hatched. On others, there were bees working but no queen laying eggs. Fortunately though, one nuc in each hive was thriving, so we just removed the partitions and turned them into regular hives with 10 frames each. This weekend, we checked those hives again and all but one are doing marvelously. We have even added a honey super to a one of them! Another of the castles, when we opened it, had all three nucs thriving. The bees are laying brood and bringing in honey, so next week we will be splitting them up into their own boxes.

Examining the brood pattern from one of our Kona Queen
Hives. Lots of bees and lots of capped brood!

We also have been seeing amazing results from our Kona Queens from Hawaii. The hives are bursting with bees, and are they producing honey! The three hives have produced more already this year than we had from all our hives the first year with the apiary. All of the ones in our yard now have 3 honey supers on them! For one of them, we have added a special honey super. Instead of giving them frames to store the honey, this one has round openings, about the size of hockey pucks, for them to fill with wax and honey. When we harvest, we simply pop the pucks out and put them in containers, selling the honey in the wax. It’s even healthier that way and a popular treat for many people. We’re excited to see them doing such a good job filling in the ‘Ross Rounds’ and will be looking at doing much more of this next year.

Building lots of burr comb on the lid of their hive.

Although it’s late in the year, with all the rainy and cool weather it seems the bees have gotten a bit discombobulated. We received a call this weekend about a swarm in someone’s yard. This is our fourth swarm to pick up this year – this one was big and about 20 feet up a pine tree. We managed to gather them though, and two days later these bees are doing orientation flights at the door of their hive already. The bees in this colony are very distinctive – they are much more yellow than ours, and have a lot more attitude.

Two of the other swarm hives are doing well, and in fact one of them now also has a super on them for honey. The last one unfortunately didn’t work out. We’re still very happy with the three new hives; they were a welcome bonus addition.

Inside the Flow Hives. Social media loves this hive.
Sadly, our bees don't. :(

The Flow Hive. *sigh* For some reason, our bees do not like the Flow Hive. We had it on a strong hive for over a month and that hive swarmed twice rather than go up into the Flow Hive. We moved it to another strong hive that had some partially full honey supers on it, but the bees would rather fill anything else, and are avoiding it completely. Next week, we will put it onto one of the hives with the Hawaiian queens, removing the full honey supers and giving them just this and a partially full super, and hopefully they will start to put something into it. It was easier getting them to do the work in the empty Ross Rounds with no frames at all than it is to go into the Flow Hive.

Checking a frame of brood. The bees were very active
this day, but the sun was shining so everyone was happy.

Our inspections have been rather spotty over the last month, because the weather has not been cooperating. They do not like to be opened when it’s cloudy – most of the bees are in there instead of out gathering pollen, so it’s full and they get a bit crabby. We cannot inspect hives when it’s windy or, obviously, when it’s raining, so it has limited us quite a bit on when we can see what they’re up to. The hives in the second yard are definitely in need of some TLC. That will happen next week. Also next week, 12 hives will be re-queened with new, local queen cells. Hopefully we will have nice weather, because they clearly did not like being checked today.

Messy, messy, messy! This is what happens when we forget
to give them something to build on!

We also pulled a frame from one of the hives two weeks ago. It was a mess! We had miscounted the frames when we closed it up, giving them 9 instead of 10. The result was that the bees decided to be creative, filling in the extra space themselves. One of the Queen Castles, as well, was missing a frame. They built their own, attaching it to the roof of the hive and filling it with honey and brood. I suppose, in the bee world, it’s a work of art, but I would rather see them putting that sort of energy into filling more Ross Rounds.

Another example of the bees taking initiative! They didn't have
a frame so they just created the frame themselves, building
it out of wax and filling it with honey.

Time Sure Flies

2015 New Zealand new hive package Queen cage and comb

It’s been almost a full year! How did that happen? Our last blog was about the Flow Hive, and we start this season off with, yes, you guessed it, a real Flow Hive of our own. It's only one of the new developments from the last 12 months, and to be honest, we are more than ready to leave 2015 behind and start 2016 with a bang. We can’t wait to get our Flow Hive out there and full of bees, and we can't wait to include updates about the hive in our blog, so come on, Spring! Time’s a-wasting.

Frame with Queen cells -- 23 of them -- not a good sign.

2015 was busy in many ways for us (which is why we never did any blogs). It was also, to say the least, a bit disappointing from the beekeeping perspective. The year started off wonderfully, with all our hives coming through the winter with flying colors. We were thrilled to see all those bees in all those boxes. The Queens seemed strong, the hives were busy and everything seemed wonderful in our little bee world. We set a couple of hives in a new yard (thankfully) and prepared for a year of growth, success, and lots of honey. Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men...

The new motorized 20-frame extractor!

Though we started off strong with all our hives, and we added three new package hives from New Zealand, and three new local nucs to the mix, we ended up the year with one less hive than when we started. These were definitely not the results we had hoped for, but it was better than it could have been. The new packages started off well enough and grew steadily enough, that we purchased more boxes, more equipment and, thankfully, a new motorized extractor that didn’t have to be hand-cranked! Soon into the spring, though, our bees faltered. The new hives didn’t grow. The queens were laying in spotty patterns – not a good sign. We found hives with dozens of new emergency Queen cells, indicating that the hive was in a panic to create a new queen -- the current one was either sick or dead. We had many bees dying, their tongues protruding as if they were poisoned. In fact, we assumed that they must have gotten into a sprayed crop and brought the poison back with them, but the symptoms didn’t seem quite right. It was the start of a massive learning curve for us, as new beekeepers.

A week hive -- one of the new hives from New Zealand. 

We had the provincial Bee Inspector come around and he went through all our hives. The idea of it being Foul Brood was mentioned then ruled out (thank god, because the thought of burning our hives completely - the only treatment for the disease - was heart-breaking). Mites were also considered and tested for, but were ruled out. Samples were sent off to be tested, but the results were inconclusive. Through this, more of the hives faltered. We would split some because of massive queen production then find all queens had perished. It was a year of many challenges, and not much good news to share with anyone.

A weak frame with no production and few bees. 

Add to this the fact that we had a very dry year, not conducive to flowers blooming or plants growing well, and not really something that makes already-stressed bees happy. The bees were always looking for water, finding it too often in the swimming pool where they then became trapped. The drought also meant an increase in wasps, too many of which had a taste for new bee brood. We lost three hives completely to wasps – they came in, killed the already-struggling bees and robbed the brood.

A Queen cage, complete with Queen and attendants.

As we learn in life, though, failure begets knowledge. We learned many things over the course of the year. Among those things learned was that it was not a very good year for beekeepers in general around the continent. It was not a fact to celebrate, but it did reassure us that perhaps we weren’t the cause of our hives dying. We learned that spring in the apiary business means increased sensitivity to stings. We learned that in dry years, the honey will be less abundant but thicker in composition (thank god for the motorized extractor!). We have had the ultimate crash course on just about every disease known to bees, and every threat, and how to try to mitigate the damage they can cause. We tried a different treatment program (still organic) for the treatment of mites when we put the hives to bed for the winter. We will be trying some new techniques in the spring when the hives get ready to swarm, hopefully resulting in more hives for us in the end.

Mostly what we learned, though, is that we love being beekeepers, despite the challenges (and man, were there challenges in 2015!). Our first inspection this year went very well. The bees were in good clusters, and the hives we were sure would not last the winter seem to be going strong. We have put out feedings for them – another new recipe, as well as the pollen patties – and we are watching as they emerge on those first spring flights; they have waited a long time to go to the bathroom. It feels to be an early spring, with a new year of possibilities and potential (and hopefully a few less stings than last year, although we also learned some new, amazing tricks to deal with that as well). We have our new signs to up – hanging out our shingle, as it were – we have some new ideas and plans for our bees and their honey, and we’re ready to face 2016 head on. 

Building a Better Bee Hive

 We’ve had a lot of people talking to us and sharing with us information about the Flow Hive! Thanks so much for that. This hive claims that we would be able to get honey from the hive without disturbing the bees. We have been more than curious about it, and hopefully in a few weeks will have a chance to view one for ourselves. We thought, though, that we would share some of our thoughts leading up to this, and share some of the things we will be looking for when we finally see this hive that has seemingly turned beekeeping on its ear.

First, one of the big jobs in tending hives is being able to check them to see what is going on inside. That means we need to pull frames, see if there are eggs and larvae at every stage, so we know the Queen is alive and well and doing what she should be doing. It also allows us to see if there are any new queen cells being formed – a sign that the hive could be getting big enough that it needs to swarm and start a new colony, or a sign that the Queen is in distress (or is gone) and needs to be replaced. We also want to be sure that there are no mites, parasites or other problems in the hive; we need to watch for these regularly so that if a problem develops, we can deal with it quickly. The only way to check on these things is to pull the frames and inspect them. Even with windows, you will not get a good view of the activities in the comb or the activity taking place on the inner frames, which so far in our experience has been where most of the action happens. Taking apart the Flow Hive to inspect, with spigots and other equipment there, could become much more labor intensive.

Our understanding at this point of the Flow Hive is that the frames are plastic, and they split open when you turn on the tap, so that the honey drains down and out the spigot. We’re not totally sure, though, how the bees will know that, with the cells capped, their honey has been taken away. The cap will still be there, intact, so the bees will have to learn how to tell when they are empty, and will have to remove the cap so they can then refill the comb. This may take away from their actual production of honey. An additional concern is the plastic frames themselves. Plastic can absorb what is around it, including pollutants and poisons. They will need to be replaced more often than our current frames require.

Another thing that we need to understand is the hive structure. We have two large bee boxes that house the bees and larvae. Both boxes are used for that, to keep the hive healthy and to ensure you always have a steady supply of new bees. When they start producing honey in the summer, they store that near the top of the hive, in what we call honey supers. In the Flow Hive, there are only two large boxes. That would mean they are using the second box for honey production instead of bee production. How does that impact the hive overall? When we remove the honey, we just remove the honey super, leaving the rest of the hive untouched, so we’re not really sure what the benefit would be.

It will be interesting as well to see how they deal with ants and other pests. Having honey outside the hive will be an invitation to wasps, ants and other critters we do not want trying to get into the hive. It also means that the honey is more accessible/tantalizing to skunks, bears, raccoons, etc. Do we have to remove and clean the spigots every time and does that require taking the boxes apart? How do we keep it all clean without having to break down the hive, which is the thing this hive is supposed to circumvent?

When we first saw the information about this hive, we were skeptical, to say the least. Information on the internet shows that it’s been around since about 2008, but has only gotten legs now. It was the subject of a huge crowd-sourcing effort of late and we honestly wondered if it was nothing more than a scam. That said, several well-known and reputable beekeepers have said they’ve seen it, and were impressed, so we will absolutely go into this with open minds. We’re excited about going to learn more about the hive in a few weeks. Hopefully our questions will be answered. Then the next issue will be if the cost of a Flow Hive, for anything more than a promotional/education tool or as a novelty, will pay off.

Now for a quick update on our own hives. We checked them a few days ago and gave all of them (except The White Outs and the Moody Blues) pollen patties. None of the hives had touched the sprinkled sugar plates we put in with them. We didn’t give pollen patties to the Moody Blues because we thought we had lost that hive. There was no activity in it at all. The White Outs missed out because, well, they had a few attitude problems when one of us (who shall remain nameless) mistakenly grabbed at the hive to pry off the lid and in the process slammed his hand over the upper opening... and about 300 bees. They will get their patty this weekend. On a more positive note, in the last few days, with warmer temperatures, we are seeing some activity around the Moody Blues, so maybe they were just really hunkered down because of the cold. We’re hoping so anyway.