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

Anxieties with a new hive

I have been resisting the urge to babysit my hive since we installed them on Thursday. This is the critical part of the process, and I admit, the last few days they have not been sucking down the syrup and pollen patty as I expected. I spoke with my father, who has been a beekeeper for some time, and he reassured me as we have had some intensely beautiful weather, warm with sunshine....and he reminded me that bee's, as people, prefer the real thing to the fake. So, they have been out getting nectar and pollen when the sun was out. My father in law sent me this photo

The syrup is down due to the rainy day yesterday, and they are buzzing about due to the sun being out and warm. I confess, I am worried that too may were killed during the process of bringing them to their new home, or that the queen said "dueces" and left, but my father assures me that the queen leaving is rare. I did sneak a peek on Monday and they had started drawing comb, so hopefully they are sufficiently fed. Sunday, we will open up, look for the queen and some eggs and than move the comb over so that the will begin to even up the drawing of the comb. Photo's to follow.

Three Days into the experiment...or Move in Week

So, on Thursday, we put the bees in the hive. The video we posted helped make it quick, easy and smooth. The girls gave no resistance yesterday when I took what was left over of the syrup and put it in the front feeder and put a pollen patty on top. Also known as a grease patty and took the empty box and queen box out.

These are the girls, as we got them


The empty box after the Ladies were done moving into the hive


They were concentrated on the the couple of frames that I had the queen strapped too and i took the queen box off and she was not in there, so I'm assuming all signs point to the first step of success.

So, I'm not going to count my bee's before they brood, but I am confident we are on the right track. So, going forward, the plan for the next week is to feed them nonstop, basically get their wax glands working so they get some comb drawn, cause hopefully, if we continue on the right track, we will be able to open up the hive next week and see brood starting.

keep your fingers crossed.

So, what do you feed hungry new hive bees? The answer is simple, Simple Syrup! Sugar water can have different concentrations, depending on what you need the bees to do, everything from start making comb to making it through the winter to making more babies.

I went with the 1:1 concentration. Three cups sugar to three cups of water and it took all of 5 minutes.
I got the recipes and info from here .

Once its all cooled off, Im going to take it to the bees, check what they have so far and how far they got on their pollen patter and refresh their supply. I will probably keep the front feeder full every day for the next week and a half,

The ladies safely in their new home. ahh, yeah




My father in law, the co-conspirator on the bee operation, says they are looking pretty good. I'll update as soon as I have anything exciting, or at least exciting to me comes up.

Nora, Beekeeper.

Countdown till package arrives!

Today is Monday. Thursday, the bee's come. Please, anyone reading this, pray we have sun on Thursday, cause doing this in the rain will suck.

I have been watching a LOT of youtube videos and reading about the best and easiest way to settle the new bee's into the hive, and I have stumbled upon this site.

The Fruit Guys

He has explained the technique in the simplest easiest least invasive way to start the bees.

Wish us luck. Photo's will follow.

Nora

Painting bee boxes

I lied...this isn't about honey comb...that will be next.....but..

I have been painting. Bee boxes need to be protected from the sun/wind/rain and the elements.
Generally, people paint there boxes white. WHAT!? WHITE!! BLA!!! How messed up is that?
I choose something other than white. I chose yellow. A gentle, pleasant and nice yellow

here is the box while I got the glue off the corners. We went a little tiny overboard with the glue, but this sucker isn't going to come apart.



Here they are put together. I had to test to make sure all the frames fit into it.



one coat of primer. I cannot begin to express my amazement at how fast this dried!



And, finally....the boxes with their first coat of yellow on.
I think we are going to dedicate this to Grandpa...so once its dry and put together, its going to be the Grandpa Azevedo Memorial Beehive. My father in law said he would have been excited and happy about this, as he was a farm boy growing up. I miss Crotchety old Grandpa. :)



My FIL (that's his gansta name. :) ) checked with the neighbours about this, as we don't want a hive near someone that has an allergy, and sometimes you just don't know with neighbours. My in-laws are old school...they know their neighbours, so that was an easy thing to bring up. Everyone seems pretty excited about the bees. Even the family with two little girls are excited....apparently the girls are familiar with bees and wont have issues. I love it when kids are let out to play in the back yard and aren't addicted to the computers like we are. lol. To be fair, I grew up playing outside and getting dirty, which is part of why I'm so freaking excited about the bees. It was really therapeutic to paint the boxes knowing that soon, I will have a little colony to take care of. I am researching how to do the transfer. Ernie and I will get this handled..The Hive with my harem of ladies will be going soon.....three weeks till we expect packet delivery.

the saga continues