Swarms and Storms

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

We have our first 2019 swarm capture! Swarm might be an overstatement, but while we were adding and removing supers yesterday, Hubby went to grab some frames from a hive I’d baited with Swarm Commander and found a fat, active queen with a handful of bees in the center of the brood box. We’d just split a hive, so we ended up doing a newspaper introduction to the queenless hive as the poor girl didn’t have enough attendants to get her through a 38 degree night. Hubby just took a peek in the hive, and all looks good. He didn’t remove any frames, but the bees are very calm and clearly bees have broken through from the very full bottom box to where their new sovereign is housed.

Hubby purchased two Rapid Bee Feeders to try, so we gave that hive and a weak hive one each. We like the Pro Feeders, but we’ve also experienced some robbing with those when we’ve used them in a weak hive during a dearth. It’s tough to keep the girls fed when temperatures fluctuate as much as they are currently doing. Our goal is to build strength first and foremost this year as we have to get the hive beetles under better control than last year. We’ll move hives out of the lower apiary and into a sunnier area just as soon as we can install more hive stands. As any beekeeper knows, there are more things on the to-do list than there are hours to get them to-done at this time of year!

As for storms: a couple of months ago, we had such a loud clap of thunder that the dog sat on my lap shaking like a leaf for almost an hour afterward. The weekend before last, Hubby and BIL wandered around in the woods and came across a red oak that has clearly been struck by lightening, probably that night. One piece of the tree is splintered, but still attached, while other “splinters” are in concentric circles around the tree. The largest of these is about 12 feet long and was flung 100 yards into the woods. That’s certainly a tree we need to keep an eye on and not one to take a walk close to on a windy day.

The recent floods have also moved sandbanks around in the creek and washed soil away from tree roots, so there are a couple of large trees down in the creek that also look precarious. Even so, it was such a joy to walk the property boundary and watch the dog play in the creek yesterday. Sometimes we have to just put work aside and enjoy our home.

Talking of work, in anticipation of the new raised beds this spring, I’ve filled the greenhouse with seed trays! I have a few types of heirloom tomatoes and some heirloom carrots. The carrots are in a grow bag as I anticipate them being ready to eat before the raised beds are ready. The strawberry plants are in bloom, the blueberry bushes have been relocated to a better spot, and boysenberries have been added to that bed. We have a new pear tree to replace the one that died, although we don’t know which one survived as its tag disappeared. We had two varieties so that they could cross-pollinate — now we either have two different trees or two Kiefer pears. We’ll figure that out sooner or later.

Other than that, we’ve been busy with teacher stuff! Oh – we’re also making progress on the workshop. Did I already blog about that? Looking back, I guess not! I’ll snap some more pictures and blog about that next time we have a sunny weekend.

It’s amazing what a difference both of us living here makes. We’re able to accomplish so much more and I’m already envisioning jars of fresh honey and baskets of tomatoes in May. Of course, we’re also both happier living in the same city. Eighteen years and one day since we met and we still love spending time together –life really is good!

Bee Stings · Construction · Gardening · Honey · Lazer Creek Apiary · Pests - Bees · Queen Bee · Storage

Slowly Moving West

April 29, 2018April 29, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

We have started taking plants and boxes of household goods to the farm — just what will fit in the vehicles each time and what we have had time to pack. Most of the bee stuff is down there now, which makes getting around in the 40-foot container challenging! Still, the bees are rapidly going through the frames we’ve built, so empty totes come back to the city with us in time to be refilled.

Building the shop has become a priority so that we have more space to put things and so that we have a clean space to sling honey this summer. As we want to sell in Georgia, we need to be certified in Georgia. Hubby spent most of the weekend leveling the shop site and was working on trenching to install conduit last time I talked to him. (I came back early to get laundry done for the week.) Our neighbor has been a great help, both in terms of giving advice and helping on the tractor. His company will be pouring the slab next week and then the construction can start. It’s exciting!

Spring border — Daffodil, iris, crinum lily, and other spring transplants.

Even though there was a lot to get done, hubby was still willing to help me get spring bulbs transplanted. They’re all looking rather sad right now, but I know from experience that they’ll look great next spring, if not before. The grass and wildflower seeds are doing well, and I added some clover seed and fertilizer yesterday. If we can just get enough growing to slow down the erosion, we’ll have a less muddy driveway when we get those Southern downpours! The drainage ditches hubby, my brother-in-law, and I have cut are making a huge difference, and plants will just be the final touch we need.

Of course, we didn’t neglect the bees this weekend, even with all the other tasks we needed to accomplish. We had to replace the bellows on one of our smokers, and we love this new Pro Bellow from Mann Lake. There’s a nozzle at the bottom that blows air directly into the smoker, and that has made it easier to get the smoker lit. I’ll let you know how it holds up, but for now I’m sold!

I intended to just check the queenless hives, but we ended up checking all the hives for space after seeing how much nectar the bees have brought in over the past week. Two hives have already started capping honey, and I only saw three small hive beetles all day. There were no new wasp nests started in lids, but there were enough cockroaches on top of inner covers to keep the hair on the back of my neck standing up! Talking of hair — if you have short hair, don’t pull your hat too tight — hubby got stung on his head through his cap yesterday!

Bricks on hives to indicate which hives have queens, and which do not.

We continue to use a combination of methods to track what’s going on in hives. A flat brick indicates that the hive has a laying queen, and an upright means that the hive is queenless. In addition, I write notes on the lids with a Sharpie. We have three hives with queen cells that have hatched since last weekend, but I didn’t see a queen yesterday, so I like having that history at my fingertips when I go to recheck. Then we have a spreadsheet in which we track hive inspections, treatments, and mite counts. That’s becoming quite time-consuming and I’m working on automating some of the reporting and tracking, although I probably won’t get much done until summer. As my new school starts the new year 3 weeks earlier than South Carolina schools, and we need to get this house on the market, and build the workshop, and move my work clothes, I may not find much time to refine the database while keeping up with a growing apiary! It’s a good set of problems to have!

We’re looking forward to May’s Mid-Carolina Beekeeper Association meeting on Tuesday. Has it really been a month since the last meeting? Time flies in spring, which is why we all have to get hive equipment ready in winter!

Enjoy the (finally) warmer weather and take time to smell the roses.

Lazer Creek Apiary · Natural Food Sources · Nature · Pests - Bees · Queen Bee

The Return of the Hives!

April 21, 2018April 21, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

One good thing about this time of year is that I can perform full checks of 18 hives in just a couple of hours! While I’d hate to see so few bees and no honey come June, it sure is nice to be able to knock out half the bee yard before lunch without even breaking a sweat.

My feeling about the blackberry bushes is the reverse. Right now, I’m happy to see all the flowers because they are such a good nectar source and our bees are bringing in lots of lovely nectar and pollen right now. However, as soon as the blackberry bushes stop blooming, I’ll get hubby to hook the cutter up to the tractor and I’ll mow down all the ones that are growing like the weeds they are along our trails. They are quite welcome to keep growing off the trails for now — at least until after I make another batch of blackberry-apple jam.

The bees are doing great and so far there are very few small hive beetles in the new yard. Most of the hives are beetle free, but 3 had wasps starting nests under the lids. Two were yellow jackets and one was a red wasp — I’m not sure which I like least. Well maybe I do — I like the ones that are gone!

The new bees that hubby bought in Jesup are very friendly. Some of the hives are outgrowing their space, while others are just plodding along. The packages he bought all still have their queens and they are laying, but some of the queens he bought separately are nowhere to be found. We’re pretty sure that not being able to install them right away contributed to those losses, but at least the remaining ones are making up for lost time. We tried introducing a NUC with an weak queen from last year to a hive that had become queenless this spring, but that failed. The hive itself is incredibly strong, but no queen — unless she’s out on a mating flight. It seems to me that they would have preferred a weak queen to no queen at all, but bees don’t always make sense.

Yellow Columbines — Columbines grow so much better in the clay here than in the sandy soil back in the city!

It’s nice to be back and see the grass seed sprouting along the driveway along with what might be wildflowers from the seed my friend sent for my birthday. I also have spring onions growing and one lonely squash plant. Last week, hubby thought something had been snacking in the temporary vegetable beds, so that plant might not be even there next weekend — or it may be surrounded by other plants. We did get to eat one strawberry each this afternoon and are looking forward to more in years to come.

It still seems a little surreal that I will be here full time soon. For now, we’re bringing one or two boxes of stuff with us each time we drive down. I don’t think either one of us wants to think about packing up the house until we get to the end of the school year, but when the mood strikes I do gather stuff to take to Goodwill. We are both pack-rats, but as we’re downsizing some things just have to go. Maggie, the dog, is just so much happier here so I’m sure she’d pack for us while we’re at work if she knew how.

It’s been a productive and tiring day, but I’ll be going to sleep stress free and with a big smile on my face. Every trip reaffirms that buying this land was the perfect decision for us and our future. Happy spring, everyone — it seems like it might be sticking around this time!

Gardening · Lazer Creek Apiary · Natural Food Sources · Queen Bee · Supplemental Feeding

Cooking with Gas – April Updates

April 5, 2018April 6, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Today we got a very large propane tank to power our tiny home! This will be the tank that provides propane to the house eventually, but it’s worth it even now — both for the convenience of having a reliable source of heat and hot water and for the cost savings. We ran out of propane one of those well-below freezing nights over winter break, and we don’t want to make a habit out of that! Getting up in the dark and the cold to drive 10 miles to get a tank of propane is not fun. Well, it wasn’t bad for me as I turned the electric blanket up and waited for hubby to return, but it was no fun for him.

We’ve made other great progress this week. Hubby has leveled the site for the future workshop. He had to take down some trees and scrape off the top soil to get down to clay, so I now have temporary raised beds made from those trees and the soil for this year’s veggie garden. I’ve also planted more grass, clover, and wild-flower seed to reduce erosion along the driveway while providing for the bees. The bees are still very interested in the syrup buckets, so I’m impatient to see some nectar plants start supplying them with what they need.

For some reason, the well filter keeps clogging, and I wonder if the tree clearing across the creek has anything to do with it. We ended up removing the filter after the third after-dark trip to the well house one night, but now silt clogs the sprinklers so they don’t turn off. That made for an interesting shower last night — five sprinklers were running and I got to wash shampoo out of my hair with the left over trickle. After that, walking across the slick clay to turn off all the faucets in the dark was a challenge, but then I looked up at the beautiful night sky and the challenge turned into a blessing. It’s been too long since we walked down the driveway after dark. I love the electric gate opener, but I didn’t realize how much I missed our evening walks to go lock the gate.

The really good news is that most of the bee packages and splits we made are doing well. Bees moved out of one of the hives that took a long time to release the queen, but the rest have eggs and/or brood in various stages and all of the queens are fat and active. The hives in the old location are still battling small hive beetles, so we’re trying beetle traps made of Borax and Crisco paste in CD covers for the first time. We’ll let you know how that goes. The hives in the new, sunnier location have far fewer problems with beetles so far.

More good news is that I received a job offer for next school year, so I’ll be living at the farm full time after June. That moved the workshop up the priority list as we’ll need somewhere to put all the tools from the garage, but at least we’ll no longer be moving carpentry projects up and down I-20! I’m enjoying spring break, so I’m trying very hard to not think about packing up everything else in the house and getting the house on the market. It’s much less stressful to think about being able to monitor the bees on a more consistent basis.

Blue bells – another childhood favorite of mine.

Bees · Lazer Creek Apiary · Queen Bee · Relaxing

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…..

Beekeepers Associations and Groups · Lazer Creek Apiary · Pests - General · Queen Bee

Getting ready for spring

February 11, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Frames - February 2018 — 400 Frames waiting for foundation!

The weather hasn’t been conducive to trips to the bee yard the past two weekends, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking of our bees. On days when the temperature in the garage has been above freezing, Hubby has been busy putting frames together in preparation for another year of growth in the apiary. I’ll help with the foundation just as soon as I get a break from grading, but as soon as I finish one batch of essays, students write the next batch. This will be the story of my life for the next couple of months, but I will go visit the bees next weekend!

Hubby has been reading a book about rearing better queens and one of the suggestions is to include frames with starter strips as comb that the bees draw “freeform” apparently leads to bigger queens. Old comb with all the cocoon remnants in cells can also negatively affect the size of queens — or the bees have to extend the queen cell out and float the egg into the larger area in a sea of royal jelly. All in all, we’re going to try some new things this spring. We’ve also been watching many videos on YouTube to get a variety of ideas. One guy we really like is Ian from Steppler Farms in Ontario. While he clearly has different weather conditions to us, his experiences are relevant most of the time. We missed this month’s Mid-State Beekeeper meeting this month because of a conflict with work, but we also really look forward to getting to the next one and learning more from people in our area. January’s presentation about fire-ants was enlightening and fascinating — and it will change the way we apply fire ant chemicals.

I’ve always noticed the first signs of spring, but now I notice them differently. That red haze around some maple-trees — that now means pollen and nectar! A dust of pollen on the car means bee food in addition to allergy flare-ups. Bee-keeping does indeed change us.

Before beekeeping, I would have seen the newly leveled area along our driveway as prime land for daylilies and maybe a rose bush or two. Now I have dreams of buckwheat and clover to provide early food for the bees. Instead of having a greenhouse full of tomato seedlings, I currently have basil, rosemary and lavender growing. These plants repel moths, mosquitoes, house-flies, and some beetles, so I plan to plant them around the new hive stands. Of course, they are also nectar and pollen sources and the rosemary and lavender repel snakes. That alone shows how much I’ve changed — protecting the hives has become more important than keeping snakes at bay. Of course, we haven’t seen a rattlesnake in a while, so my priorities might well change with the next sighting!

I don’t know which of us is more impatient to get out of the city, but I doubt the dog will need any more encouragement than the two of us next weekend. All the hives were active a couple of weeks ago, but we have no idea what’s going on inside them. My new pollen feeder was popular, so hopefully the queens have been ramping up production and all those frames in the garage will disappear into the new boxes that await paint. Spring is just about here and I can’t wait to get back to the bees!

Hive equipment · Lazer Creek Apiary · Queen Bee · Supplemental Feeding

Pollen Substitute and Regicide

July 28, 2017July 28, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

I guess I need to start by telling you that the pollen substitute did not cause the regicide — I was an accessory to that crime, but I have no idea of how hubby actually disposed of the evil queen once I helped catch her! We have another hive that has just become more and more unreasonable over time, and they now go straight for the upper thighs when we even approach them, never mind get started with a hive inspection. We had purchased a new queen — one that was purported to be from a calm strain and also a strain that is very good at dealing with Varroa Mites. After we removed the old queen, we waited 24 hours to re-queen, placed her in a queen introduction frame, sprayed the frame and the frames in the hive with Honey B Healthy to mask her pheromones — and they still killed her. Talk about frustrating. We’ve had other evil hives turn nice, so we haven’t given up on them yet, but I have had quite a few choice words for them over the past month.

The production of new brood has fallen off in all of our hives over the past month, and we really want to build them up before the fall flowers (Goldenrod and White Milkweed, mainly) start to bloom. We’ve noticed that all of the hives have a lot of nectar and honey stored, but very little pollen, so we decided to give the pollen substitute another try.

Now, when we put this stuff out in spring, the bees showed no interest whatsoever. This time, they are flocking to it like the dog to canned food! We already saw an increase in bee bread in the frames of hives we inspected yesterday. I placed the first batch in bird feeder that gave the bees plenty of access at the bottom, but provided shelter from rain. I only put a small amount in and the bees crawled through the holes, through the inch high pollen, and became trapped in the feeder. I understand why a little better now that we’ve watched them roll the powder around, roll around in the powder, and generally behave like little dung beetles rolling the powder up into little balls which they then take home with them. By the end of the first day, they had moved all the remaining powder to one end of the cookie sheet — and there was not much remaining.

Of course, my English hive has to be different and they are showing little interest in the powder that I laid out in a tray especially for them up in their private garden! I did experiment with some supplement with sugar water and giving them a protein shake — they loved that. Maybe they are just spoiled. Maybe they like soup. They were in the supplement dish this morning trying to get to the rain water-supplement mush.

When we were updating our hive inspection spreadsheet last night, we started a new page to track available resources by date. Hubby had noted last year that the pollen death starts around the same time that the pink and white Crepe Myrtles bloom in our garden. There was also a nectar dearth last year because of the drought, but this year the bees keep bringing in nectar, but not enough pollen. We now know to watch for this next year and maybe get the pollen substitute out sooner.

We continue to battle small hive beetles, but we’ve cut the brush back from around the hives again and we know that helps. I plan to put some landscape fabric down to minimize what can grow back, and we’ve also discussed relocating the hives over time. The area right behind the hives is so very uneven, with trenches that are above knee-height, that we can’t bush hog in there until we do some leveling and clear some of the timber-harvesting debris. We can’t continue to weed eat that much, but that’s what it takes to keep the blackberries and vines at bay. The hives that are coming back from the sunflower field we definitely be in the other cleared lane and we’ll put some DE and landscape fabric down under the hive stands before we even go get them. There is still so much to do and there is so little summer left — we really need to spend some time panning for gold down at the creek so that we can stay here forever!