Just a quick update. After spending some time in the hives a few days ago, two things are pretty clear.

First, the bees still need more time. There are several frames of honey, but the honey hasn’t been capped yet (see the picture of capped honey above). Capping the honey consists of applying a thin wax cap to the end of the cell after the cell is full and the bees have evaporated the water content of the honey down to about 17%. As it stands, only about half of the frames are capped and I expect it will take another 3-4 weeks before it’s ready. Considering my bees got a late start due to several queen issues and tremendous rains in the spring, I’m not overly surprised that I won’t be able to take an early harvest as I had intended. They got a late start so I’m getting a late harvest.

Second, There’s not going to be as much honey as I had hoped for. In a nutshell, my hives are young and I’ve been told that I need to make sure that they have ample stores to get through winter since they’re still a bit on the small side. If I took a large harvest, there still might been time for them to build back up for winter but with all the problems I’ve had getting to this point, it’s just not worth the risk. I’m guessing there will be about 30lbs of surplus honey between all the hives. Basically, that’s about 25 to 30 bottles. After I account for family (I have a very large family) and friends (Ken glances over to the BH crew) there will be a few left for Christmas gifts and that’s about it. Clearly not as much as I had wanted but I believe my decision this year will reap healthy rewards for next year.

Stay tuned, September is just around the corner.

Ken

For the last 13 years, the term “extraction” meant something completely different than what it does now. As a firefighter, “extraction” was something that you never wanted to hear because you knew someone was in deep trouble. Today this word is taking on a brand new meaning and it’s something that I’m really looking for to. In a few days I’ll be extracting my first round of honey from my hives. Truth be told, I’m downright giddy with anticipation.

Above you’ll see the first step in honey extraction, uncapping. More on that in another post. After uncapping, I’ll place the frames in an extractor and that’s where the sticky fun begins. I plan on recanting all that fun stuff after the harvest is complete. At this point, I have my beekeeping mentor meeting me later this evening to determine how much honey I have capped and ready to harvest. I’m also going to combine a few hives to make them a little stronger going in to winter.

It’s been a long and difficult year for my bees, but the end in finally in sight.

Thanks for reading,

Ken

Maybe another month or so and it will be time to take my first honey harvest. I checked the hives yesterday and I have to say, I was slightly disappointed. I was really hoping to see more honey. I know that I shouldn’t be too surprised considering the young age of the hives coupled with the tremendous spring rains that we saw this year, but….. I guess I was just hoping to see a little more. As it stands, I’m guessing that I could take about 40lbs of honey at this point. I’m crossing my fingers that another month of production will make a big difference.

Above you will see the label and bottle that I’ll be using this year. Nine, a good friend of mine from London, was kind enough to create a beautiful label for Talahi Honey. I’m very, very pleased with the results and so heartfelt thank you goes out to him. My brothers company, Fastsigns in Indianapolis Indiana, will be printing the labels and to him, I am also very grateful.

I’m currently working on Talahihoney.com. I own the domain but have no idea how to design it so I’m exploring several different options right now. I hope to have the site up and running fairly soon. I know that 40-60 pounds of honey hardly requires a presence on the web but I’m trying to think a little more long term.

Well, that’s it for the quick update. Cross your fingers that the bees pick up the pace a little in the next month and I’ll let you know when the harvest begins.

As always, thanks for reading.

Ken

Welcome back to the beeyard. Lots of changes over the spring so let me bring you up to date on a couple. First, the two hives without queens are about to become one. Hive #1 raised a fat little queen and she started laying yesterday. Hive #3 wasn’t able to raise a queen and both hives are low on population and resources. I’ll be combining them later this evening. The other hives are doing very well and growing like crazy. If I can get these two weak hives up to snuff, I stand a decent chance of getting a pretty good honey crop this year.

In the picture, behind the hives, is my workbench covered with a blue tarp. I brought it out a few weeks ago because with five hives, I really need a place to set things down and work with them. I also built a little frame holder on the bench to hang frames when I’m not working with them. It also serves as a great place to take pictures of the activity on each frame. I’m hoping to share some pics soon.

Next on the list is Beekware….. rather, HiveTrac. The newest name for our Beekware program is HiveTrac and we’ve even reserved our own little sliver of the interweb thingy at HiveTrac.com. We’re hoping to begin writing a design doc soon. I’m amazed at how long this stuff takes, then I remember that everyone is basically working for free, so it’s a litter easier to understand. By the way, I have no idea what a design doc is. Are you surprised?

~ Ken

Things in my life have moved into whirl wind status. No reason to put you to sleep with the details, but suffice to say, May is a busy month when you sell ice cream for a living. Now on to more exciting things…..

NO QUEENS FOR YOU!

The bees have not had it easy this spring. After learning that both hives were queenless, I went into overdrive trying to rectify the problem. I added frames of eggs from a friends hive to no avail and had just started calling around looking for queens. Nothing, nada, ziltch, zippo….no one had queens to sell for the next month, time for a new plan. Called another beek buddy and he gave me a few frames that were loaded with queen cells, about ten in all. I split the frames into the two queenless hives and mid-month, if I don’t see and eggs, I’m going to take up worm farming.

NEW FRIENDS

I took my guitar to be fixed and met Bruce. I didn’t know this guy and I wanted to make sure he knew how to fix up my six string so I struck up a conversation about guitars in general. When he laid into a perfect intro of Hotel California on a twelve string classical, I knew Bruce and I would get along just fine. Anyway, somehow the topic of bees came up (imagine that) and he asked me if I could get rid of some bees behind the store. The next day I had my first swarm of bees and added to my beeyard by placing the new girls in a nice new home.

Yesterday, I received a call from Mike who said he was too busy working to go on a swarm call and wanted to know if I wanted them. Three hours later, I had my fourth hive of bees and I’m running out of equipment. The picture above shows the swarm (actually two) just before I removed them for the guy who lived there. I was happy to see another group arrive and he was happy to see them go.

Here’s what I should have probably mentioned earlier; since I was worried about my two hives surviving since they didn’t have queens, about two weeks ago, I decided to order new bees. Yep, the girls will be here on Monday and all of the sudden….. I have gone from two hives to five hives. My family is on the grow.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who voted for my idea over on the Cambrian House site. My idea won and now moves to the second round of voting in August. In the meantime, there have been several people who have shown an interest in the hive management software program and I’ve organized a location for all of us to work on the project. I’ll keep you posted on that front.

Be good to each other, at least until I get back.

Ken

Please take a moment to read up on my idea and vote accordingly. Thanks!

Ken

Beekeeping Software Program…. Beekware.

Vote:
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Long live the Queen!!

As you know, the bees survived the tornado but left me with the looming question about the queen…. did she survive? Well, yesterday I decided to break open the hives and go through the frames one by one in search of the queen or new eggs. My Russian girls were in the hive that suffered the most damage, their box was completely broken open and laying on its side on the ground. They were exposed to tornadic winds and cold temps. I decided to start with them.

Yesterday I moved them from the old make-shift hive to the new BeeMax hive that finally arrived (waited for almost six weeks from BetterBee) a couple days ago. As I moved each frame over, I inspected each one very carefully looking for the queen or recent eggs. Seeing a group of nurse bees clustered over an area on one of the frames, I blew on them gently and watched them scatter revealing a couple hundred eggs that looked to have been laid that day. YEA! My last concern from the tornado wipe-out has been laid to rest…. the queen remains. She must be on tough old bird.

The hive looks weak and is down about 50% in numbers from when I first started with them last fall. They still have a few frames of honey so and now that she’s laying, I believe they will be fine once they get their numbers back up. I’m not sure I’ll be able to split this hive in the spring as I had once planned but we’ll see how well they rebound.

I spent so much time working with this hive that after I was done putting it all back together, the sun was fading. I didn’t get a chance to dive into the feral bees but took the time to add a feeder box (feeding 1 to 1 sugar syrup) to the top of each colony. Providing the weather holds out, I’m hoping to open the other feral hive soon.

Also, during a cold, dark moon in February, I planted about two acres of Sweet Clover out by the apiary. Looking forward to a healthy honey flow this summer.

A quick note of thanks to all of my BH friends who have been following my bee adventures. Thank you all so much for your interest and supportive comments. You’re all very kind.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with more after I open the other hive.

Ken

When I arrived everything was a mess. We spent time securing some of the necessary things and getting some more important items to a dry location. We took a lot of damage to the shed, dairy barn and a grain bin. The other grain bin was a few hundred feet away resting quietly in the pond, fully intact. Weird.

After this was done I went to check the bees. It was way too wet to drive back to the field, so I set out on foot while getting hammered by blustery winds and pummeling rain. The temp had fallen about twenty degrees to about 35F. As I approached, I could see that I was in trouble. Big pieces of metal from the now distroyed shed had impacted both hives and knocked them over. It was at this moment that I learned about one of the drawbacks of the polystyrene (styrofoam) hives. They break. It was on it’s side and broken open, bees were exposed and dying off quickly. I looked at the wooden hive and even though it was on it’s side, it was pretty much intact. That propolis is some pretty amazing stuff. The only thing I was worried about was the hive was on it’s side and the bottom screen, along with all the bees, was exposed to the oncoming winds.

I quickly set the wooden hive back up then turned my attention to the styrofoam hive. This hive has the Russian bees inside. I did my best to put the hive together in such way that it would keep out the elements for an hour or so while I called for help. I called Mike and he was cool enough to bring some boxes out with a new top and help me salvage what was left. We did what we could to move five frames of bees at the same time to the new box and then moved the honey over. I was surprised to see that they still had a fair amount of honey left. We secured the hives and hoped for the best. I’m currently waiting on new hives from BetterBee.com to arrive so I can finish getting everything back in order.

About 10 days later, the temp approached 60 and I decided to have a look. Both hives looked pretty strong and I’m thrilled. I feel pretty good about the bees in the wooden hive but am still worried about the queen in the Russian hive. If I lost her in the storm, I’m going to have to get a new one early on in the season. I’m really hoping for an early spring so I can climb in and see how everyone faired. I’ll follow up with another post after my next hive-check.

One finaly note; I just finished planting about two acres of sweet clover next to the bees. If all goes well, I still might get a chance to enjoy my first honey harvest this year.

Ken

Today it’s very cold, about 17 degrees, but the last two weeks have seen temps range from 30 to 45 (daytime highs). I’m wondering if they’ll only lay in to the sugar when the honey runs out.

Also, I received some wonderful beekeeping gifts this year for Christmas, the coolest being a two frame manual extractor from Betterbee. Now the pressure is really on the get the hives through the winter. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be splitting each hive in the spring and bringing the total number to four. The apiary is indeed on the the grow!

Ken

Thoughts?