Swarm Season......It's Here!

Late yesterday afternoon we were called for a swarm. When we got there we were told that they had been here for two days and that it had originally covered from the corner to the end of the top of that door below. A couple of people said they flew off and someone else said, "someone sprayed them with WD-40". The poor girls on the outside suffered and died :( I do wish people would have some compassion on living things! I'm guilty of not educating myself on things and being critical of things I don't know about or understand. I'm working on that and I hope others will join me :)
PLEASE....PLEASE don't spray honeybees with ANYTHING, (unless you are trying to catch them, then spray them with warm honey or sugar water). Have a heart people! This pic below broke mine! These bees were doing nothing but stopping over to rest before moving on to a new home. They harmed no one and never intended too.
While the bee vac was being set up for me (the electric outlet was a mile away) ;) I had the bright idea that maybe if I sprayed some sugar water on the frames and up inside the box that maybe...just maybe they would march in eazy peazy style for me ;) I even tried laying down a white sheet for them (so they wouldn't go underneath the box really) ;) But the wind was so bad and boy was it getting cold!

WOW! I was getting really excited by now!

But, it didn't work....the other girls couldn't hear because of all the wind ;) Anyway......the vac came up and on, so I started vacuuming those sweet babies up. The suction is so low it took forever to get them through the hose. It sure would've been so much easier on them if they had've marched on into the box, but they wouldn't listen to me ;)



Boy! They were packed in there!
More vacuuming
And finally my co-workers ;) said it was time to shut the vac off and head home. We left the box hoping they would go inside before dark then we could seal them up before daybreak and join them with the ones we took home. (I hope that made sense)Well, this morning once I got the stragglers home, I joined them with the rest of the girls and figured while I had them open I would take a quick peek to see if I could find the little queen. Can you see her?
She's a young queen and from the looks of her (to me) this will be her first colony. I feel (and this is just my opinion) that the hive they came from, split once already....she doesn't look like the mother queen to me....what do you think????
She is bee-u-ti-ful in every way!

Until next time.....

BEE ON GUARD! ;)

Julie

The Log Hive

I suppose a woodpecker is responsible for this, after all, what other explanation could there *bee*? ;/ I wonder what happened when it kept on knocking? Did the bees come out to defend their home?
We'll have to coax them out and into a new home soon........

Here below is the entrance to the hive......
Bizzy girls!

Bringing in pollen......




My husband got a package today and Honeybee decided she liked the way the box fit.....after all there's a bee suit inside ;)
Until Next Time....
BEE COMFORTABLE!

Julie

Update On Hive Split

I checked in on the Nuc that me and my husband split five days ago. The girls have pulled out queen cells galore! Some of them are already sealed. They have been *bizzy* ;)

They are in a super/nuc. This is one my Niece Hannah painted two years ago! My goodness! Time has flown!

The girls are in a wonderful area! Some of the trees have already bloomed and sprouting out with seeds! There's still a lot more waiting to bloom!
We were hoping that we'd be able to get more splits, but things don't always happen the way we want them to. Some of our hives, we had to put back into nucs from their larger boxes due to decreased size of the hive.
It's good to keep the girls tight so they can fight off the hive beetles, wax moths, wasps, etc. Poor girls, they have so much to do and worry about!

Until Next Time.......
BEE BIZZY!
Julie

A Warm Winter

Honeybees need water to make comb, propolis and honey. I love watching the girls collecting water from my small ponds.

A beekeeper in the making! ;)

His Sweet wife, my Awesome cousin and her Adorable husband! ;)

We graduated two of our Nucs today. This one was the first.....the girls are checking out their new home.

The hive was full, healthy and the queen was and has been laying like crazy!

This was the second Nuc. It was just as full and healthy!
We also split one of our large hives, I didn't get the chance to take pics :(
They had already started pulling queen cells, getting ready to swarm. We will definitely have to *bee* on our toes this year! Last year we let quite a number of swarms go to the wild.

Our winter has been unusually warm here this year. Some days it still feels like summer!
I hope the weather has been good to all of the honeybees and all of the other pollinators every where.

Until next time!
Bee Bizzy!
Julie

Open Air Feeding and Our Log Hive

We have had a dry summer this year and as a result, some of our hives are very low on honey stores. I don't like to feed them unless it's really necessary OR when they start robbing my neighbors hummingbird feeders ;0). I've tried all sorts of ways to open feed and this is the best one I've tried. All the others tend to kill more bees by drowning and that breaks my heart! SO, I bought some sponges of different sizes, rinsed them really good, mixed up my sugar syrup water and soaked the sponges in the syrup. I then placed the sponges in various containers, the top of my birdbath, saucers, etc. It needs to be shallow so the bees can get out safely. I don't fill the containers up because if too many bees come in for a drink they'll get stuck in the syrup and drown, that's another reason for the sponge, it gives them better footing, so to speak. These also need to be placed out of the way of human/animal traffic, because it can get very "bizzy" with "beez buzzin" every which way! They won't set out to sting you, they'll just bump into you because they're so "bizzy" ;)

All it takes is for one little bee to find it and then the "wiggle dance" tells them all. I'm sure that today there will be so many bees on these sponges I won't be able to see it! I'll post more pics.....

Before long they are happy with their find.......well, until the blooms start again. I'm sure they would much prefer Natures nectar over this.....but sometimes when you're hungry.....
I want to add that we left a super of honey plus what they had in the deep brood boxes, on our hives this spring. I don't/won't pull all of their honey because our summers here are just as bad on them as the winters are. If we don't get honey, well, we just don't get any! The health and strength of our hives is more important to us than getting honey. I know so many keepers that have lost hives because they pull to much honey from their bees then the weather changes and the bees suffer. That's just sad to me!

These girls are our newest addition. A nearby city was going to cut down the tree this limb was attached to. The entire tree was hollowing out and honeybees had taken up refuge in this part. A fellow beek was called out for the job, but he didn't want to over winter them. My husband told him we'd take them so they wouldn't be killed. We sealed the cut end (containing the most bees) with a board.

The pic above is the top, it still has enough rotting insides to naturally seal this end. We will close it up before the coldness of winter arrives. They have two entrances/exits in the knots. I was really worried about them and was contemplating on removing them from the log and into a bee box. It was late when we got them home and had to seal them, and at the time we didn't notice (or couldn't remember) how their comb was facing. I was worried that the comb was laying on it's side and all of the brood, eggs, honey, etc. would fall out.....or the bees couldn't get in between to care for things.....and then an even bigger worry (which I'm still worried about) the Queen! So we went back out and opened them up and they are fine, the comb was a little off so we straightened them up...but about the queen issue, I can't get inside so I still don't know how she is, I'm just hoping they had enough eggs that if they need(ed) a new queen they can draw one out.

This last pic is of their main entrance, they are doing really well and bringing in lots of pollen. They are a very strong and sweet colony, a wonderful addition to our bee yard!

Until next time....
BEE HEALTHY!!!
Julie