Winter Reading

Just touching base so people know I'm not hibernating like my bees. I am still very much active in my beekeeping hobby.

Up until last week the winter we'd been having a fairly mild winter up here in Edmonton. Things took a change for the worse as we were hit with a foot of snow and some cooler temperatures. I was planning on checking in on the bees sometime this month but seeing as my car is having troubles getting around the city I hardly think country back roads would be kind to me.

To pass the time I have been reading forums and checking out Phil Chandler's webpage. Phil specializes in top bar hives. A few months back Patty approached me about setting up a top bar workshop for everyone in Edmonton she could find that would be interested in starting some top bar hives. Top bar hives haven't really been used in North America since most commercial operations use Langstroth hives. With the increase focus on natural beekeeping many new beekeepers are looking at top bars as a way of bucking the trend, regardless of benefits or draw backs. Currently Eliese with ABC in Calgary has been really promoting the top bar hive and the response has been great. With beekeeping being "legal" in Calgary many beginner course has been selling out as people are drawn to this new hobby. Hopefully Patty and I can start getting things rolling here in Edmonton.


In November I received "Natural Beekeeping" by Ross Conrad from my in-laws for my birthday. I had heard about Ross while browsing around forums, so I had put the book on my list. After finally getting through it, I had only been reading it during my Saturday work shift, I am extremely glad to have done so. Ross is very straight forward to his ideas on organic beekeeping, while not being too pretentious or sounding too granola. He presents both sides of the story with pros and cons of both. His personal experimentation and trials are very well explained and illustrated. I would highly recommend this book to anyone considering trying to go organic or even just more nature friendly.

Along with preparation for a top bar hive workshop this winter I also still have to get around to making my beeswax lip balm. I'm such a procrastinator.

Winter Storage Issues

My lord it's been a long time since my last post. Things really do slow down for beekeeping with the onset of cooler weather. I hesitate to say winter yet because we here in Edmonton have been fortunate enough to not have any snow!

My bees have been nicely put to bed for winter. Mario had some extra winterization material so he graciously let me use it. Basically the hive is first wrapped in some roofing paper and a piece of 2" thick Styrofoam is placed on top. Then Mario has made some custom sheaths that provide a protective entrance that slips over the top of the hive. Once all of this is placed onto the hive it gets a final wrapping of bungee cord to ensure nothing blows away. Here is what the final winterized hive looks like:


Although there isn't much to do with the hive during winter there is plenty of other things to keep me busy. Some of the issues that beekeepers face during winter is storage of all the extra frames of wax and supers. Because I crushed and strained my frames of honey I'm glad that I don't have any extra wax frames. Large producers have to be concerned with pests that like to use these frames for food or nesting. Wax moths can make quick work of destroying nicely drawn frames. Ants are always a pest and I have even had to ward them off in my garage. I wasn't however prepared for mice. Mice like to make nests in stored supers and also in active hives. If you don't reduce the entrance of the hive mice will take advantage of the warmth generated by the bees. The bees are too concerned with keeping warm to chase the mice out, as the mice get comfortable they will start chewing up all the wax.

While organizing my equipment I found this


I would assume it was either trying to find some place to sleep or was trying to eat the spilt honey. Unfortunately I think it got entombed in the honey and subsequently died there. I will save everyone the tale of removing a soft squishy mouse encased in taffy like honey.....it wasn't pretty. I've since properly stored my equipment to hopefully avoid such death traps.

I'll try to update everyone with any interesting information about beekeeping throughout the winter.

Accidental Winner

Thanks everyone for your tireless photo scanning abilities as well as your multitude of guesses. So what was the magical winning number? It was 13 and a large number of people came very close to the answer. The one thing that people seemed to forget is that free loading men aren't exactly ones to follow orders. The thirteenth drone was this one stubborn guy who just had to get back into the hive, and he was furiously working on that goal. All you could really see is his very large thorax and abdomen. Here is a picture in which I have placed a red dot on each drone in the picture.


The winning guess was 13 actually done so in a humorous, non-serious manner saying there were 13 as proven by a submitted photo shopped picture but, unbeknownst to them, they were actually right. I'd like to congratulate Goran for his humorous, yet accurate guess. He will receive my last full mason jar of honey. Mmmmm mmmm good.

People are always curious as to how my bees are doing. I did a quick inspection on Thursday when the weather was nice and am happy to report that taking full advantage of my feeders and have filled the entire upper box with capped winter stores. It appears that they should have plenty of stores for winter. With the future forecast looking very good, I believe it will be a while before I actually get around to having to wrap my hive with roofing paper and putting some insulation on top. I also need to decide whether or not to move my hive into city limits.

Last Guessing Day

Just a shout out to all those looking to win my last jar of free honey. You have one more day to submit your guess. I will close the polls at 8PM MST. Enter in any of the comment sections of the last 3 posts or email me at newbees@telus.net

Hints and Deadline

OK, so I've already gotten a few guess for my last jar of honey. It appears it's a bit easier for me than for someone who hasn't had any sort of beekeeping experience. So I'll clear the guessing slate because the first few where on the high side and I'll provide a few hints to help people improve their drone hunting. Also when I clicked on the picture to make it larger it wasn't as large as the original file so I'll provide a link to my full size picture. That will allow all you guessers a chance to zoom in and look for the details. Onto the hints!

1) As already stated, drones have large fly like eyes. They cover almost their entire head.

2) Also stated was that drones have very large bums that are squared off. This means they are quite a bit larger than worker bees.

3) One can than assume that because they have bigger bodies, they have bigger wings.

4) Drones make up a small portion of the hive population, around 11%.

5) Because they are being forced out, they aren't allowed near the entrance to the hive.

Hopefully that will be enough to help all you out. Below is the link to the full size picture, remember to make the picture bigger if Windows automatically reduces it to fit in your browser window.

FULL SIZE PICTURE

The deadline for the contest will be Thursday October 8th, make sure to get your guess in before then!

Acclimation

I'm a bad blogger. Either that or I've become use to being stung, I believe it's the later. I bring this up because I have totally forgotten to update my sting counter to 4. It happened back when my parents were out and we were harvesting my 2 frames of honey. After I had completed everything I was standing around waiting as my Dad discussed beekeeping with Mario, apparently one of my girls had gotten up my pant leg and gave up trying to find a way out. She stung me on my calf much to my surprise, and the irony lies in the fact that I had specifically changed out of my shorts and into pants for harvesting because I thought it would be better. Had I stuck with my shorts I most likely would have been fine.

Yesterday I went out to setup my fall feeder. It's a really simple setup, much like a hamster water bottle. You fill up a 2L jar or ice cream pail, punch a few holes in the lid, then invert it. Eventually the vacuum that forms because of the air pocket will keep the syrup from completely flowing out and the bees can then take it at their leisure. The syrup that drips out during the process also lets the bees know there is a food supply nearby. Around the feeder you put an empty super and seal it off, this prevents bees from other hives from coming and robbing the feeder. In really bad situations, after they are done with the feeder they will start stealing honey stores if the hive is too weak to defend itself.

I'm getting more comfortable with my bees so I'm working without gear.


How the feeder is setup inside.


The third super provides the empty sheltered space for the feeder.

This is also the most satisfying time of year for all the female beekeepers out there. As my readers know, all the worker bees are female and do all the work in the hive. All the drones are male and do absolutely nothing in the hive except go out to mate. If they aren't out flying they're getting fed and groomed by the workers. As winter approaches though winter supplies becomes an issue and having a bunch of freeloaders hanging around doesn't help. There's only one solution, the freeloaders have to go except they don't really want to. This leads to the worker bees literally dragging and attacking drones out of the hive. The front entrance of my hive was full of drones trying to get back inside.

You can handle drones because they don't have a stinger. You can identify drones by their very large, fly like, eyes. They also have a very blocky abdomen with a squared off bum.

Now that you know what a drone looks like it's CONTEST TIME! I have one mason jar of honey left and due to my small harvest I don't have enough for everyone who wants some. So if you want a shot at my last jar you need to tell me how many drones are in the picture below. (The picture below is a full resolution shot, so it may take time to load the larger version when you click on it.) You can submit your guess in the comments below or by emailing newbees@telus.net

Three's A Crowd

Hello Everyone!

So I've been agonizing over what to do with the third super still on my hive. The problem is that the bees have only really drawn out a few frames and of those frames the honey is only about 50% capped. With the chilly weather starting to move in I really wanted to get it off, so yesterday I went out and took it off. I tried using a method where you take the box off and lay it perpendicular on top of the hive. If you do this after all the scout bees have gone home for the night it won't cause other bees to come steal the honey and nectar in the box. After a few hours of sitting there the bees that are in the box realize that something isn't quite right and will migrate back into the hive. Well when I went back Mario had decided to speed up the process and brushed the bees onto a wooden ramp he had set up leading towards the entrance. I arrived at about 9:30pm it was pretty chilly out and the bees had started to cluster up to keep warm, the only problem was they weren't anywhere near the entrance, so I took a stick and brushed them on top of the entrance. I hope they managed to find their way back in.

This is what it would look like, but without the use of a bee blower. You naturally let them go back in the hive.

When I got home I decided to see if I could scrap off only the capped honey into my straining rig, all of the rest I put into a separate bucket to feed back to the bees later. It seemed to have gone well, but when the honey filtered through by the next morning I was a bit concerned. Apparently I didn't do a good enough job at scraping because this honey was extremely thin. I also think that since Mario had started his fall feeding for the past few days there was a lot of sugar syrup rather than nectar. Rather than distributing thin and artificially sweetened honey I went ahead and added the bee feed to the straining rig as well. Once it's all strained through I will put it in some smaller buckets and take them out to feed back to the bees. (pictures to come)