First Hive Inspection

Saturday marked 10 days from the arrival of the bees, so it was time to check in and see how they were settling into their new abode. (Special Thanks to Jason who agreed to serve as my photographer so that I didn't have to juggle bees and the camera to document this momentous occasion!)

Feeling like the Michelin Man

SUITING UP

While it is perfectly safe to work around the hive without any protective gear, when it comes to actually opening up the hive body and working on the frames, safety is important, so that means suiting up with the full suit and veil. Honey bees are very gentle, but it is important to remember that you probably wouldn't like it very much either if someone essentially ripped the roof off of your house while you were taking care of your babies either! 

8 frame Super with Plastic Frame

SUPER! 

Once suited up, it is time to gather up all of the necessary equipment. Obviously you want to make sure that you have everything ready to go. Since we're hoping that the bees have pretty much managed to get the hive up and running there is a possibility that they'll already be ready to expand into a new super. I'm using 8 frame medium supers which means that the box itself holds 8 frames or foundations on which the bees will build their comb. Traditional beekeeping used 10 frame deep supers, but those can be pretty heavy to move once they are completely filled, so many home bee keepers are now using the smaller and more manageable 8's. The only downside is that you need more supers. A normal hive will usually need about two 10 frame supers or three 8 frame supers. Today's task is to see how far they've come at building out comb on the frames. If they're working all of the frames, then it is time to give them more space to keep them happy! In my hive I'm using plastic frames in the hive body section of the hive. These are single piece units and you can probably see that they are stamped in what looks to be a honeycomb pattern. The frames are then coated in beeswax so that the bees will more readily accept them. The stamped pattern helps the bees by basically laying out the "road map" for how they should set up the comb. They will build perfectly aligned combs even if there was nothing stamped, but this speeds up the process for the. Think of it as laying the foundation for their buildings. 

Where there's smoke:

Lighting the Smoker Fuel

The other critical piece of equipment is going to be the smoker. Applying small and gentle amounts of smoke to the bees helps to disrupt their alarm / defense responses and keeps them calm during the hive inspection. In this case I'm using "smoker fuel" which is essentially compressed lint from industrial fabric manufacturing. It doesn't really hold an open flame but instead smolders in the smoker can and produces a gentle cool smoke. I've also filled up the large entrance feeder which is the yellow and black thing in the bottom left of the photo. It's full of a 1:1 mix of sugar and water and is what sustains the bees while they are setting up shop. We'll be swapping out the smaller one that we used for the last week. The bees go through a TON of the feed, so having a larger feeder will mean we aren't filling it up multiple times each day!

MORE AFTER THE JUMP!

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Settling In

Spent part of the weekend working on getting the finishing touches put together on the new home for the Bees. After getting them all situated last Wednesday, I decided that the area where they are going to reside needed a bit of sprucing up to make them feel right at home. To recap... this is the before:

Not bad.... but not exactly what the girls were dreaming of.... So a little elbow grease, some plants, and a bit of mulch and we ended up with this:

I worked created a stepping stone path that curves up the hill and around to the back of the hive which is where all of the work gets done from. That defined the edge of a new bed around the base of the tree. I used a reclaimed chunk of concrete as a base for my bird bath and planted the area with some bee balm (naturally), heliotrope, and impatients. In  the bed in front of the hive I planted three hostas, one of which we salvaged last weekend from Jason's house that we are selling. Then I used the old bench base that we found in the yard last year as a pot stand and planted some more impatients. The bees can drink about a liter of water a day, so Jason had the idea of using our old "cat water-er" for them. (The blue thing) I put a piece of broken brick in to keep them from falling in and drowning..... They don't really seem that interested in it, but we'll see. Maybe once it is warmer out and they aren't getting the sugar water they'll be more inclined to check it out.

I worked out there for most of the day on Sunday and the bees didn't really seem to mind which was good. Of course I did my best to stay out of the landing pattern! I did get stung tonight for the first time. It was entirely my fault because I decided to try and feed them again and it was way too late to disturb them. One of the girls got me right on the cheek below my eye. Luckily, other than a bit of redness there wasn't any other reaction so apparently I'm not allergic. Lesson learned!

Here's a short video of the girls at work on Saturday.... if you watch closely you'll see a couple of them coming in with their "hip flasks" full of bright yellow pollen.

I'm looking forward to checking in on them on Saturday which will be my first official "hive inspection" to make sure that the queen is out and laying and that they are pulling out combs. For that I'll need to put on my full suit and fire up the smoker. Should be an adventure!

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Happy Bee-Day

Today we're celebrating the arrival of our very first honey bee colony! Bees are something that I've been interested in for many many years. Up until the move we didn't ever really have room to safely keep a hive around. This year I decided to go ahead and make the investment and get started. It takes a LOT of stuff to get set up, but like any hobby/project once you have the basic equipment it is fairly straightforward. You have to order everything in advance and place the bee orders in the winter, so I've literally been waiting for MONTHS for today.

So right off the bat I'll say that I was setting everything up by myself, in a light rain (bees hate rain), and trying to get done while there was still some daylight left, so the pictures are SKETCHY at best and taken with my phone.

Bee-hive stand

The fist big decision was to figure out where to put the bees. They have a home on the "master plan" but the problem is that the area where they need to live eventually is right in the traffic lane for a couple of other as-of-yet-incomplete projects including replacing the shed. Since bees don't really appreciate a lot of noise and attention I figured it would probably be best if I put them somewhere else for the time being. The absolutely ideal place is down by the windmill, but as that's the lowest point in the yard and was under 3 feet of water during last September's flood I decided that probably wasn't the smartest place either. I settled for a relatively flat spot next to the big walnut tree in the middle of the yard.

Since I was tied up all of last weekend getting Jason's house re-landscaped I was running behind on getting the area prepped and ready so really had to hustle this evening go get it all together. I leveled out the area and laid down six large pavers for my hive stand to sit on. This will keep me from having to mow too close to the hive. I'm pretty sure there was a landscaped bed here at some point, and I'm planing on landscaping around the area with some plants that can tolerate shade and the walnut tree poison and reduce the need to disturb the bees even more.

The hive stand is a bit beefier than it probably needs to be, but a full hive can weigh over 100 pounds, and ideally we'll end up with 2 hives if everything goes well this year, so I wanted to be sure it was sturdy enough. The wood was all left-over from the garden bed project and I didn't even have to cut it. I stained it to match the beds which are more or less adjacent so that everything looks like it belongs.

Special Delivery

The best Priority Mail package ever! The Post Office called just before lunch to let me know that they had some bees for me... I could tell by the guy's voice that he wasn't exactly thrilled about it, so I told him I'd be right up to pick them up. It was pretty funny to see everyone's faces in the lobby when they brought up this buzzing box full of bees. I thought the one customer was going to run out screaming. They had it in a big plastic letter box and the guy carried it out holding it as far away from himself as possible. Everyone just stared when I just reached in and grabbed it and told them thanks and walked out. Mostly they were freaked out because there were a couple of bees on the outside of the box since the swarm attracts other bees if they are in the area. They'll just hang on and wait to see what happens so there's really no need to worry about it. I just sat them on the floor of the car and headed home. I gave them a little fresh sugar water to hold them over until dusk which is when you want to be getting them settled into their new digs.

Successfully Installed 

Here's the hive set up with most of the bees already moved in and getting to work setting up their new home. This is an "English Garden" hive from Brushy Mountain Bee Supply and it has a nice copper top on it that will tie in nicely with the copper on the herb beds and should weather nicely over time. It looks a little small right now because to get started you only use one super (box) until they get established. This is an 8 frame shallow super set up which is a bit more manageable than the traditional deep 10-frame hives that you may have seen in local orchards or farm fields. One of the suggestions that was given in the book that I'm reading was that for people raising bees in the city not to paint the hives the traditional bright white color, so I went with a light cedar colored stain that nicely sets off from the darker stain of the stand and the copper. The yellow thing is an entrance feeder which is full of sugar syrup. the bees have to be fed for about 6 weeks until they've fully established themselves and have had time to build up some honey stores to support the colony. You can kind of see a few bees left in the shipping crate just below the hive. It's impossible to get EVERY bee out of the box so you just leave it sit there and in a matter of time they'll make their own way out and up into the hive.

Checking Things Out

Here's a close-up of the front of the hive. The lighter colored piece of wood is the entrance reducer. This blocks off most of the front of the hive with the exception of the little square that you can see at left. This makes it easier for the bees to defend the hive while they are getting set up and building up their numbers. The bees gathering at the right are ones that were flying around or outside when I closed up the hive. they can tell that everyone else is inside and are figuring out how to get in. Eventually they found the hole and in they went. By nightfall it looked like pretty much everyone was safely inside. We should finally get some sun tomorrow which should make them happy and give them a chance to work on getting the queen eaten out of her cage so she can get to work. After that it will be a few more weeks of getting established before it will be time to try for our first honey!

I'm happy to report that I managed to get everything set and the bees installed without any major incidents or any stings, which I thought was a very big win! I had one slightly tense moment when a bee somehow got inside my veil and was flying around inside right by my face... but I remained calm and carefully let it out and everything else went off without any issues. Everyone who keeps bees gets stung eventually, so I'm prepared for that, I'm just thankful I didn't have to START my adventure with a sting!

Unfortunately I couldn't take photos of the actual process of installing the bees because it pretty much takes all of your attention to manage 500+ bees at one time and get them to do what you need them to do in a relatively short period of time. If you're super interested you can get an idea of what happens by watching the video here: Bee Installation Video from the company that my bees came from. My hive set up is slightly different and so the technique is slightly different, but the general steps/process is the same.

More to come....

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