Im sorry to the few people who read this blog, I have been remiss. So, Sarafina and I switched boxes and put the full one on bottom and the empty one on top in the beginning of August in the hopes that the ladies would start to build up.

today, we saw proof.

Looky what I found!

They are full of honey!

The combes on the side were works in progress, and unpulled, or partially unpulled, so I took them out and put them in the middle. 

Last push till winter, and we will feed through out winter. I will get them through the winter, I WILL PREVAIL

I get a top feeder this week and we will continue on. Beekkeeping is about patience and letting nature take its course, with guidance. Ill keep you posted.

good news/bad news

Good news...girls are alive...making babies and gathering pollen and nectar
bad news...they haven't pulled as much comb as i would like to see.

I need to research what to feed them to kick them in high gear on that

I also got a couple in my hair. I guess i really will need to get a hat.
wont need too till August tho, cause Im not doing anything but feeding them till right before I go to the retreat.

I have got to get them through the winter. That HAS to happen. that is my goal.

wish me luck

Grease Patties

These are grease patties. They are made one part Crisco, two parts granulated sugar and half part syrup with wintergreen essential oil.

There are a lot of grease patty recipes out there on the interweb, and even my dad has one, but I chose to go with the simple recipe I got from nice gentleman at http://www.ruhlbeesupply.com/ in town. He said to mix it until its the consistency of mashed potatoes

I mixed it with my hands, but you don't have to. I than took parchment paper and made them into sandwiches and put them in a plastic ziplock bag. The next day the sun is out, I'm going to put a couple in the hive.

I believe you are suppose to lay them on top of the frames....pretty much forces them to eat it and the wintergreen in it helps keep the mites down.

Ill post more when I have more.

The Ladies, an update

Well, look at my girls. They are just buzzing and rocking it. It was the perfect day to take a look at them, and they seem to be on the right track.

If you will remember in the last post, that we had to take some rouge combe off and I took the combe out and placed it in the top of the hive, in the "bee attic" in the hopes they would hatch the babies and clean the combe.

well, it worked!

Look how beautiful the combe is! It is the very definition of Organic homegrown natural combe! It brood combe, but it still smells like honey. :) I have the largest piece at home on my shelve. It's awesome! 

So, today I chose a different way to access the hive. It was a perfect day, the sun was out and it was toasty and I didn't use the smoker. I went to Ruhl Bee's and got another pollen patty, cause they have tore the last one up! That's a good thing, getting their groceries on. :) They told me to add some wintergreen to the syrup I'm feeding them, as it helps keep the mites down. I'm also going to make a grease patty, but first I have to research ingredients. Dad says to use powdered sugar, but the bee guys say that they corn starch in it is something the bee's don't like. The recommend using crisco, sugar, and salt. Apparently, they need salt and don't get it naturally unless they get it from animal urine. I'd prefer to feed it to them. Bee Salt Lick? hahahah

Anyways, I used a spray bottle with wintergreen/sugar water and misted the bee's and they didn't fly crazy, and didn't get all butt hurt and let me inspect and it was super easy. So, as long as its a sunny super warm day, I'll use the mist. You should only open it when its a nice day, but there is a little leeway. I'm going to err on the side of caution and only use the mist when the sun is blazing down. :)

So, that is about it. We are up to date now. I'm thinking next month we will open them up again and rotate all the empty frames to the middle...get those pulled and filled up! :) 

Bye!

going rogue.

Mistakes happen. That is a fact of life, and today I thought I had made one. The ladies had made some comb in an odd direction. They had made it into brood combe in a natural way. Now, this would be ok except that it would have made inspecting hard and it was precariously connected to the foundation. So, we took it off.

This is what we took the top off to. It is basically what the bees do naturally, but having it precariously attached to the top of the box is no good. It had to go. :( IT came off on its own.

This is this inside of the box with more of the off comb.

We checked the other frames and they are in process of being pulled and filled. Our Queen is going like gangbusters. I put the pieces in what I like to call the bee box attic and the girls are going to keep the brood good and once they have cleaned and hatched the brood that was in those pieces, I will take them out again. I place the two left over empty frames in so that there is no extra space and they wont feel the need to make free style comb. I also put one of the brood frames in the bottom to get them to start pulling comb in both the boxes. I probably wont open up again until the beginning of June. They need to be left alone for a while Ill put the honey box on top some time in June. They should be well on their legs by than. I'll keep you updated.

We have BABIES!

So, I am extremely relieved, as we checked the hive and they are going. I mean, after 9 days they have babies in and honey going. The honey is because they the world around here has been just blazing with pollen and nectar and so they have taken the opportunity to make honey. It was a quick and dirty inspection. I just needed to have confirmation that all was well. First we got the smoker going!

Than I applied the smoke to the bees and waited.

Than we opened it up. The brown thing is the pollen patty. They have made a dent in that.

The girls are keeping to one side. If you look close, you can see they have been building out off the comb. hmm.

One frame of babies!!! YAY BABIES!

This is them building OUT instead of building on the whole frame.

It's really awesome. I rotated the two frames and put a couple of empties in the middle. Im going to research more about how to make them spread into the whole hive, but after 9 days, Im super happy with what we have. There are little curly white brood in there, which means that Queen reigns supreme and is making the next generation. I want to howl my success to the world! Till next time ladies and gents!

Queen Bee Death Match!

So, tomorrow is the day, day 9. The day that we will be cracking the hive open and taking a look to see how they are fairing. I admit, I have had a bit of anxiety about the queen leaving, which of course I know to be irrational, but this was quite an investment in time and in money and if the queen left, we would be screwed, and I would cry. I want this to succeed so much! We went to the Bee Shop in Sellwood and I got a second opinion that all should be well since the bees are still there en-masse and have been eating and coming and going. I also picked up a bee brush while we were there. You should check them out, their blog is really informative and they are local to me, literally blocks from my house. The only real difference between them and Ruhl Bees is that they don't sell packages as they prefer to deal in swarms and they prefer to offer top bar hives. They also do not sell foundation. They are very much against foundation. Who knew? Really solid people though. Which leads me to todays question, what is a swarm? A Swarm is the natural way that beehives reproduce and spread in an area. This may or may not be the way you want to make your hives multiple. What happens is that the old queen stops laying due to a swarming urge or that the hive is too crowded so she needs to start a new colony. There are several ways to stop this, but that is a post for another time. She stops laying and stops eating so that she can be light enough to fly. Than she takes about 60% of the hive with her and flies out of the hive. Queens rarely ever fly, in fact, if you keep them from swarming, she never will in her life, but during a swarm she flies to a spot a few yards from the old home. At this point, without a colony to defend, the bee's can be pretty docile. The still will sting if you are messing with them and they feel threatened, but wouldn't you? At this point, the swarm will stay at that first landing point anywhere from an hour to three days. The most experienced forager bee's will become scouts and go looking for a suitable place for them to settle in. They all come back and present their findings to the colony and promote the places they think are best. This includes getting the other scout bees to agree with them. It is very democratic actually. Once a spot has been decided on, they fly there and start all over again. Meanwhile, the parent hive will groom queen cells that had been drawn on the bottom of the comb and the first queen out will sting all the others to death in their cells. If multiple queens emerge at the same time, then a Queen Bee Death Match will happen and the strongest quickest Queen will triumph and go on to be mated and begin her life as supreme lady of the hive. Queens are fed exclusively on Royal Jelly. This transforms a regular worker into a reproducing queen. Here is a queen bee. The REALLY dark spot on top and being bigger than the others gives it away.

They sometimes come with a spot on them. I haven't seen ours yet, but perhaps we will get lucky and see her tomorrow. Hopefully, photos to follow. adieu