A Bee-filled Spring Break!

March 31, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Spring break is finally here, and we are spending it with the bees and the trees! The blackberries are starting to bloom and we see pollen coming into the hives, so the pace should be picking up in the apiary very soon. Hubby drove down last weekend to check our walkaway splits from the prior week while I stayed home and rested my foot. Yep, his back is getting better and my foot got worse, but we now both feeling better daily.

While hubby was here, he saw a post on LetGo about an apiary that was being liquidated because the apiarist had sadly passed away. It seemed worth checking out, and it was; hubby made the 200 mile trip to Jesup, GA and returned with 10 packages of bees and 10 mated queens. He installed the packages and two queens before returning to SC on Sunday and the remaining queens took a road trip! We were able to get them all through the week in the city and back to the farm without any losses.

So, of course yesterday afternoon was all about making sure queens were out of their cages and finding homes for the other queens. We had a couple of walkaway splits that had not produced a queen cell, so we added queens to those. We decided to break up our evil hive into nucs with new queens and found that they did not currently have a queen, so our timing was perfect on that one. They did have a recently opened queen cell, so we tore the hive down completely and moved the nucs to another part of the apiary, just in case there was a queen out on a mating flight. That hive has remained aggressive through multiple requeenings, so we really don’t want their genetics to be perpetuated.

Last week and yesterday afternoon were a whirlwind of action, so today will be about cleaning up the bee yard and figuring out how many hives we actually have now! We’ll then start on complete inspections of established hives, including mite counts, and then get all of the new hives inspected over the next few days. We have to pace ourselves so that our creaky old bones don’t pitch a fit again but balance that with figuring out where we stand. My brain does not like not knowing our numbers or inspection status any more than my ankle likes being twisted!

We remain hopeful that this will be our last spring of long-distance bee keeping. I have some interviews lined up over spring break and my current school knows that I hope to move to Georgia. Big changes like this make me nervous, but being here in the woods relieves all that stress and some…..

Bees · Lazer Creek Apiary · Pests - Bees · Products and Vendors

Gains and losses

March 5, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

While I was checking hives on Saturday, I suddenly noticed bearding on the back of one of our weak hives. I was in the middle of inspecting a strong hive, so all I could do was keep an eye on them. The beard grew and then the dancing started — clearly a swarm in progress. I puffed smoke in their direction in the slim hope that they’d go back where they came from, but of course they didn’t. However, they only moved about 20 feet away and then they settled on a pine branch about a foot off the ground. (What a time for my phone to be up in the camper charging!)

I grabbed a NUC, dropped it off by the swarm and and ran to the shipping container as fast as my tired legs and boots would allow to get the spray bottle and bee brush. I splashed some more Pro Health into the sugar water because bees like the smell even more than I do and hurried back to the swarm. I had plenty of frames with drawn comb because I’d already reduced some of the hives down to one brood box, so I set up the NUC, sprayed some sugar water with Pro Health on the frames, gently brushed the bees from the branch and watched the workers crawl down into the frames. The queen soon followed and then the bulk of the remaining bees followed her. I slid the inner cover across and then went to get my phone, giving them time to settle in. When I returned, there were still some bees flying around, so I just put a cover on and left them there until the end of the day. Hubby suggested that I put a frame of brood in the NUC, and the next hive I inspected had plenty to spare, so that worked out too.

The hive next to the one on which they’d bearded turned out to be empty, so I think that’s where they came from. There were only 3 frames of bees in there last check, but I couldn’t collapse them down to one brood box because it was too cold to remove frames that trip — that’s a disadvantage of stapling the bottom brood box to the bottom board. There were quite a few small hive beetles in the frames, so that may be the reason they decided to go elsewhere. There were no dead bees in the bottom of the hive or around the hive, so swarming seems to be a more likely than a dead out.

With temps in the low seventies, I was able to collapse all the other weak hives down to one brood box and make a couple of splits from the strongest hives. I was soon surprised to see the sun disappearing below the tree line. I had two hives to go, but with daylight fading and temperatures dropping I resorted to simply putting another brood box on the mean hive (yes, I’d left them to last) and trusting that the other hive still had plenty of space. All in all, it was a productive work day and I just hope the splits survive the cooler temperatures this week.

The English hive is also no longer leaning — the bottom board had actually slipped off the stand, so I did have to tear it all the way down. One of the video bloggers we follow puts a queen excluder above the first brood box with the rationale that the brood will hatch in time to free up cells for the queen to lay more eggs. That wouldn’t work with my hive as the queen had most of the two deeps and two mediums full of brood! That’s our top producing and gentlest hive. If I’d had more time, I could have made two splits out of it instead of just one, but I only had one NUC with me up at the garden.

We hope we can make it back to the farm next weekend as the swarm risk remains for at least two hives. Hubby has been sidelined with a muscle sprain, so we’ll have to see how he’s doing by Friday. I may have to make another trip on my own. It was a beautiful drive back, and the dog no longer gets car sick, so all in all it was a great weekend.

Hive equipment · Lazer Creek Apiary · Relaxing

My favorite time of year.

March 3, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Little evokes as much childlike joy in me as the sight of the first crocus or early daffodil. I think it has a lot to do with the long winters of England and Germany those first 27 years of my life. A daffodil pushing up through the snow and blooming bright yellow was always such a welcome sign. I’m not sure that people in warmer climates can ever quite grasp just how long and dreary winters are in other regions!

Not only are daffodils blooming at the farm and in the city, the buckwheat at the farm is sprouting with its promise of nectar for the bees. Of course, the blackberries are too, but I’ll forgive them for snagging my pants so long as they feed the bees. I see many colors of pollen coming in right now, but the bees are all over the syrup buckets now that I’ve tipped them so the remaining syrup can drain out. I guess that means nectar is still in short supply out there.

According to my phone, it’s only 58 degrees, but the bees are very active despite that. Of course the hives in the sun are more active than those in the shade. I plan to check for space and the likelihood of swarms this afternoon, but it’s not quite warm enough yet. I’ve spent the morning staging equipment for inspections and possible splits and doing the tedious job of scraping propolis off frames and wood ware. That’s not a job I relish, but it’s sunny and the sky is blue so I’d rather do that than sit inside. (Unless of course I’m grabbing another cup of coffee and blogging.)

I’ll start the inspections with the hives that had the lowest numbers of bees first just to make sure they haven’t experienced a population explosion and need another brood box. By the time I finish that, it should be warm enough to check frames on the hives that I suspect are running out of space. We had to limit ourselves to putting an additional box on top of the English hive last trip because, although they were jam packed, temperatures were starting to fall and we didn’t have time to do anything else. That hive is also no longer centered on the bottom board and the second box is tipped a little, which is making the rest of the hive look precarious. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and re-stack the whole darn thing. It’s tempting to start with that one, but it’s always been our strongest producer so it’s the most likely to need to be split.

It’s 60 degrees – time to head back outdoors, enjoy life and keep myself busy until it’s warm enough to do what I really came here for!