Our First Tree Hive Rescue!

I got a phone call this afternoon from my mom. She had an old oak tree cut down that was in her front yard. She said the guys had gotten there early and limbed the tree, mulched the limbs and had not seen anything until they cut it down. Then the yard was full of honeybees! They were flying everywhere! The guys cutting the tree had thought when they came pouring out that they were yellow jackets but when they weren't being attacked they knew it was honeybees. They told my mom and she said she was calling me. They had more trees in the neighborhood to cut down so told her they would come back.

It was a young hive (probably the one we lost due to a swarm last week)! LOL You can tell they were just starting out with the pure white comb and the brood that I saw was still in the c-cell stage. Very little honey. I'll leave you to enjoy the pictures......












The entrance hole


We found where the main hive body was and my husband cut that section off of the main tree trunk. He then stood it upright and assigned me the task of vacuuming them.
We vacuumed them out with a bee vac that my husband made, it has very very low suction and inside the box that they are sucked in we have a cushion pad. If any beekeepers are interested in making a bee vac let me know and I'll post the instructions.

All tucked into their new home for now. You can always tell when you get the queen, the bees stay where she is. We haven't seen her yet but after a day or two more I'll check in on them and try to find her.
This was amazing and should really show people that these insects are very gentle and do not go out of their way to sting! Not one person was stung today!

BEE Not Afraid of Honeybees :o)

TTFN!

Julie

Beekeepers Look Up!

This is a swarm of honey bees......."our" bees this time. Up in "our" tree from one of "our" hives..... My goodness this has been a very "bizzy" year. Last year was busy but we only had one major hive and the busy part was going out to calls and rescuing swarms. Well, this year we have those same swarms that became "our" hives over the year and trying to keep the girls from wanting to swarm, which by the way is in their nature, plus rescuing swarms, has been,well, just plain "Bizzy"!
My husband and his brothers tried to get these girls down but wasn't able to, so we called a husband/wife team in. They have been married for 48 years this year and he has been around honey bees all of his life. His dad had honeybees! Experience.....it's a good thing:o)The girls had settled on a small branch at around 52 feet in the tree. This top picture you can see when he shook the small limb on how they scattered in flight. The queen went into the box and the others followed her. We held it up there for a few minutes to let them settle and then lowered it down.

I have these pictures out of order but the one below here is of them raising the pole with the line up above the swarm, see our little future beekeeper? He is so precious, he's three and goes just about everywhere with them, he's their grandson and he loves his grandpa's bees.

The picture above here is when the pole reaches above the bees, they then lower the rope over the top of the branch of bees, bring it on down and tie the box to the rope and pull it up again.
Notice they aren't wearing bee suits??? And he is wearing dark brown??? Honeybees are at their calmest when they swarm. I kept thinking "I need to go suit up, I need to suit up" but for goodness sakes! look at the little guy! I honestly believe insects as well as animals can sense fear. There was no fear of the bees and actually I was very calmed by their fearlessness and experience, plus after all these girls were mine they "know" me right? lol

We were all so proud of me ;o) No stings, you just have to remember don't swat at them even if they are buzzin in your face...they just want to know who you are. :o)

I was so glad I had my other nuc box, it came in very handy....another home sweet home. :o)
After they left and things settled down I got into another hive to cull out queen cells....we didn't want this to happen again. Here is a new queen, just a bit to the right of my tweezers. She has a larger more pronounced spot behind her head. Her body is more of a honey color without the stripes like the workers have.

And look at the different colors of the pollen! It's beautiful! Depending on what type or kind of flower(s) they gather from is what color the pollen will be.

Look high up in the tree....what is it that you see?

BEE Courageous!

Julie

Swarms are in Season

Our first swarm call for this year.

I was on my way to haul some mulch home for the gardens this morning when my husband called me and said he had a swarm he'd like for me to finish up for him. So naturally off I went in his direction.When I got there he already had most of them in a box along with the queen. I finished herding the rest of the girls into the box, closed and taped them up and started for home.

I didn't realize it until I had gotten on the road......I had a hitch hiker lol She rode right there the whole way home, some 40 minutes away! She was resting and cleaning herself. We had a wonderful conversation..... I asked her to please stay there until we get home......she's such a good girl. I've also heard that the vibrations of a vehicle calms them.......maybe there's some truth to that.

I finally get to use my "Nuc" YAY!!!


I had a little bit of honey from last season that I've been using in my baker's cocoa in the mornings so I took it and poured it on the empty frames to encourage them to start pulling out comb. I also went into one of our other hives and pulled a frame of brood and eggs for them. This encourages them to stay because they have a family to care for and will pull out comb even faster.

Once they settled down a bit I added the other frames and put the top on the hive. I also gave them some sugar water in a feeder until they can get established in their new home.

I'll let them "BEE" for a few days then take a peek....Stay tuned........there's more to come.

It's Spring Time!!!

BEE EXCITED!!!

Julie

Backyard beekeeping

Just having some fun with a couple of nucleus bee boxes. I wanted something a little different to add to my gardens/yard.

These are nucleus bee boxes......they were made so the beekeeper could house a small swarm or to split a large hive. Some beekeepers use the "Nucs" to raise queens in. I have even talked to a couple of experienced beekeepers that have started using these nucs just like they used to use the larger Langstroth hive boxes. They went to these nucs because it's easier on their backs. You can stack these hives the same way and you can add supers on them as well.

I'm going to try them out this year, I've also heard from other beekeepers that do this and they say that the yield of honey is better because the bees always want to build up instead of out.








Hope you enjoyed.

Take care and remember

BEE BIZZY!

Julie

Busy Bees

For some reason our honeybees have been visiting this can of dirt (soil). Even through the winter months when it warmed up enough they would "bee" flying in and out of this can. I got in close enough to see if I could find out what they were doing in there.......it looked like they were eating. So my question was what and why? I took a sample of the dirt to see if I could find out what they were eating, but that still didn't answer my question of why. Perhaps they are like us and need certain minerals and nutrients that come from the ground. Can you see the bee in flight going into the can? (picture below)
This picture below was taken just a couple of days ago, the weather had gotten really warm close to 70 and this is what we saw. The girls have been bringing in so much pollen and a lot of beekeepers won't believe me, but they have been working all winter. Once the sun warmed up the day they would be out, even when the temps were 45 degrees and the wind blowing, bringing in pollen. We located some bushes that were covered in blooms and sure enough there were our girls gathering what they could! When conditions are this good the queen will start laying eggs and the colony will begin to grow and grow to the point where they think they need to split. They will then proceed to build (pull out) (beekeeping talk) lol, a queen cell, actually several queen cells. We didn't want them to split right now because it's still to cold and this picture below is a sign that maybe they want to split because of overcrowding.

So Sunday it got up to 70 and we decided to take a quick look inside. Sure enough they were overcrowded the queen had been busy! Babies were hatching and I found a couple of queen cells being pulled out.
I also found some beautiful honey! Can you see the difference in the two colors? I would really have loved to sample both flavors but they had brood on this frame so I put it back in the hive for them. It was sooo painful. LOL

To remedy the over-crowdedness I put another super on top to give them more room. I checked on them the next day and they were very happy :0)
Above is a better picture of the brood to the left. Can you tell a difference? We left our bees a lot of honey to last them through the winter so we haven't had to feed them, but with the cold lingering on, we want to feed them a little.

So I tried an experiment....I am an explorer, I love to try new things and I'm ALWAYS up for an adventure and a challenge.

Most of you that follow my blog(s) know that I also have chickens. So I took some of the feeders that they used when they were baby chicks and I made experimental bee feeders! A brilliant idea in my mind.......but ONLY if you live out miles and miles away from people. LOL Mind you now there were NO casualties of ANY kind and it was the neatest thing to watch well...for me at least LOL
This was at first....not to many.....
Naturally as all good things go, all it takes is "word of mouth" for things to be found out. It didn't take long for all of our girls to find these feeders. I put out three of them and they drank every drop! The feeders were dry as a bone within two hours.
The yard was like a major Bee highway, and I found so many flaws in my creative experiment that I had to put the idea on hold until I can find some more time to explore the possibilities....lol

Questions???? Comments???? I'd love to hear them.

BEE CREATIVE

Julie

The End of A Drone's Life and Other Things

Could you imagine being treated like a "king" from the day you were born till the day you were thrown out in the cold?? That's the fate of the poor drone in the world of the honeybee. The honeybees are all female except for the drones the only males in the colony and their only role is to fertilize the Queen. Ahh...the life of a drone...... he is fed by the worker bees and nurse bees when he gets hungry and only leaves the "comforts of home" when he flies out to mate with the Queen or to use the bathroom ;) lol Honeybees are very hygienic and WILL NOT defecate in their hive. As a matter of fact we beekeepers see the evidence on our cars and other surfaces in the vicinity. It looks like yellow specks....okay I'm off the subject...sorry ;) back to my story. This poor guy has met his fate. The girls threw him out. It finally got cold here and during the winter the less mouths to feed the better in the bee world. I've noticed them running the drones out for about a week then it dawned on me to take pictures. Still they didn't come out very good. But good enough to see that it's a drone. A strong hive will usually house a hundred or so drones,less than a thousand, they die off here and there and aren't hatched out at the same time. Rotating so to speak. They don't all have the fortune of mating with the Queen, the one that does falls to his death after mating.

The queen stops laying eggs when the temps start dipping low signalling the onset of winter. She will mate again before the drones are thrown out to have fertile eggs for the spring.
She choses which eggs will be fertile (females) and unfertile (drones). The worker bees build larger cells for the drones because they are bigger bees.
We had some freezing weather that came upon us quickly and when the temps plummet some girls are caught out and don't quite make it back home to the safety and warmth of home. I found these girls outside of their hive, some loaded with pollen and barely moving. It breaks my heart to see these poor girls so close but yet so far from home, still struggling to make it. I pick them up carefully and take them inside and when they start warming up I put them in a jar and give them a drop of honey and before long they are buzzing around wanting out. This is the time to be careful especially if it's still freezing outside. I keep them covered (and you have to do each hive separately) take them to "their" hive and let them either crawl in or some will prefer to fly above making sure the hive is theirs, before going in.
You can see one of them crawling around on the inside of the jar, above.
There are so many stands that you can place the hives on this one above is one made of steel.

The one below is concrete cinder blocks. We face the holes to the outside instead of up because ants tend to build inside the holes and that's not a good thing. I just read that a good deterant for ants is powdered cinnomon sprinkled around the base of the hive on the ground. If you are thinking of becoming a beekeeper a good book on the subject is "Beekeeping for Dummies" by Howland Blackiston. I would recommend reading this book BEFORE getting started. This is a book I still refer to. Another good read is "First Lessons in Beekeeping" by Keith S. Delaplane, another I reference to.


This is a design my husband made for us. It is wonderful! The only problem is it was made for "his" height. ;-) Since he (my husband) works and "at this time" I'm at home full time and by the time he gets home it's to "late" to work bees, I work the hives during the mornings( during the summer) whew....anyway we had to move the hive to cinder blocks til he can "lower" it for me;-)
This design is wonderful because it is just the right width to hold the frames during inspection of the hive. You can see in these pics that we have had a LOT of rain....
Still even though it's cold outside don't forget that the girls still get thirsty....so make sure they have fresh water to drink. They'll love ya for it...........

BEE WARM.........

Julie