Natural Sculptures and Happy Holidays

I'm really glad I decided to wrap the hives this year. We had a nice, warm November but December has been brutal! It has been cold and windy and just plain nasty weather so I hope the wrap has given the girls a better chance of making it through the winter. The end of this week we might actually get warm enough to take a quick look and see how they are doing.

Winter certainly isn't my favorite time of year but I do like going to the mountain when it is at least 40-45 and calm. Working keeps me warm and this time of year has a beauty all its own. It may not be the most colorful time of year but to me it is beautiful because it is peaceful and silent. Sometimes nature give you a little surprise and I wanted to share the surprise from this day with you. These little ice crystals form when the conditions are just right; the ground has to be wet enough but not too wet, the temps have to be above freezing during the day but below freezing at night, there has to be ground that is clear of vegetation, and the soil has to be dense enough to force the crystals upwards. And then you have to get outside early enough to actually see the show before it melts. When all these things happen this is what you get and these pictures are my Christmas present to you, my readers. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

All wrapped up

The weekend after Thanksgiving I put some bee candy in the hives. I decided I was going to wrap them this year. It has been such a tough year for the poor girls I wanted to give them every chance I could to get them through the winter. But I forgot the staple gun and couldn't wrap them and tie them with twine at the same time so I had to wait for help. I probably could have if I would have thought about ratcheting the tiedowns around them, but I didn't so I was out there in the cold struggling to get the tar paper around them.

Last weekend Michele came with me and we were able to get them wrapped. It was at best 40 degrees and the GA bees were moving around and were on the candy. I figured they would be clustered. I really don't know why they weren't. The CA bees were in a nice tight cluster down deep in the hive with the faintest buzz and breath of warmth coming up. I know it was really too cold to have the hive open but I wanted to replace the hive bodies on top that I had used to cover the feeders with a smaller shim and it wasn't supposed to get warmer all week. But I had the inner cover open for only seconds so I think the trade-off was worth it. And now they are wrapped and snug with some nice candy for the winter.

Peaches

With the honey we harvested this year we gave some away, sold a little, and we have cooked with some. It's really good with fish and some herbs. I found a recipe for Honey Packed Peaches on the National Honey Board web site. You can find it here. One day on the way home I stopped and got the peaches and a couple days later we whipped up half a batch. Peaches, honey, and vanilla; what's not to like! They are soooo good. But actually unless we didn't cut the recipe in half correctly there was a little too much vanilla. Next time we make them we will use a little less.

Rush Hour

Yesterday was a beautiful day in the VA Shenandoah valley. It was bright and sunny and 60 degrees. Just after noon I went to feed the bees what I thought would be one last time since the cold weather is coming. It is the end of November after all. I figured 60 degrees I would see a few bees out for cleansing flights (aka pooping). Above on the left is the picture of the GA bees from the package I installed this spring. Not a whole lot of action going on there. On the right is the nuc I got with the Northern CA queen. Wow! Look at all the activity going on there. They were literally fighting to get in and out of the mouse guard. Bee rush hour, I suppose. Take a closer look and see if you can see the real interesting thing. Check out the girl in the picture below. Pollen?!? Where in the world are they finding pollen? Sure it was maybe 1 in 75 bees coming back with some, but still, it is November 20th!

So I unzipped my hood and took a few steps back and tried to see where the beeline was going. I thought I got the general direction so I started walking. I eventually found 1 thistle with 3 blooms but with no bees visiting it. I also found one small aster, again with no bees. I gave up after 10-15 minutes. They could have been flying all the way across our hollow for all I know. Or I could have picked the wrong beeline. They are obviously better at finding flowers than I.

It is an interesting thing these bees. My last article was on genetics and how the CA bees seem to be all over the place genetics-wise. If anyone has read since the beginning you may remember that from the beekeeping class they recommend getting 2 hives so you can see if they are both doing the same thing or if one is definitely stronger or weaker than the other. But that is generally two hives from the same source. This year having two hives with queens from different geographical locations has been quite interesting. While they both appeared the same during the summer, once the weather has cooled the CA bees have been consuming the sugar syrup at a greater rate, putting more weight on the hive, and are much more active during the warm part of the day. I still have to see how the winter turns out but it looks a lot like the CA bees are going to make it, at least by how active they are and how many stores they have. The GA bees are not as active and have fewer stores going into winter. Certainly the GA packages were a lot cheaper than the CA nuc but if they don't survive the winter I miss the early spring nectar flow which really cuts down on the honey harvest.

Genes

Nothing like genes to make things interesting. This picture is from the hive that started from a nuc this spring. The queen came from somewhere in northern California. Most of the summer the hive acted pretty much the same as the hive that started from the Georgia package. But while the package bees are all the "normal" 3 banded Italian golden yellow color check out these bees. There are bees the color of 3 banded Italian, one near the lower left has the black body of a Caucasian, and there are the grayish bees typical of Carniolans. All these different traits from one queen. Amazing. Hopefully this nice diversity will translate to a nice strong hive that is going to make it through the winter just fine. The last week or so it has been 50s during the day and 30s-40s at night and these girls are still more active than they GA bees. They also have put more weight on while I have been feeding them. Ain't genes great! (Click the image for a better look.)

Winter Prep

All the hives have been light so I am feed them all trying to beef them up for winter. The two at the mountain are getting heavier and will hopefully have enough storage for winter. I'm putting a gallon of 2:1 on them every week, which is as often as I can get out there. But they both have a lot of bees so I am hopeful on both of them.

The one at my in-laws house is a little more shaky. They haven't been putting on much weight even being fed. Today I went to feed them and they had barely taken any of the syrup and did feed heavier. Since they had basically nothing put away a few weeks ago I took the top hive body off and an trying going through winter with two. There are a lot of bees in this hive so I am really hoping they put on a bunch of weight in the next few weeks before it gets too cold. This is the hive that has the small hive beetles so it has a few factors working against it.

All the hive have had their fumagilin treatment and have mouse guards on. It looks like the ventilation is good and I'm not seeing any condensation in them.

Will it Melt?

Finally here are the pictures. The container with the balls of wax with the seat cover wrapped around the pan for insulation was put in the back of the truck while I was parked at work. The third picture shows the scum left over. It is weird there is so much. The wax looked so clean before.



These two show the finished cake of wax from Friday. It is about 2 - 2.5 oz. I have done this process again and got another cake of about the same size. One more to go.


If you are interested, and since this is my historical log, here is what happened during the days:
Thursday:
11:40 softening up, the balls are flattening, but no actual melting.
12:40 soft but still not melting. I think the pot is at a point where it is radiating as much heat as it is getting. Maybe if I had a dark paper towel it would push it over the edge.
6:00 got a couple of drips so the concept is close, but not quite working.

Friday:
Today I wrapped the pot in a layer of black fabric with foam in it (an old car seat) to act as insulation.
11:20 actual melting happening! Today it is several degrees cooler than yesterday and the wax is melting before it did yesterday.
12:30 drips are coming through and most of the wax is melted! Looks like success is close.

Big Balls o Wax

The wax melting experiment didn't work. But I was gone all Sunday when it was out so I don't know if it was because my setup didn't work or it didn't get enough sun to heat up correctly. Thursday I think will be the next try. I will drive the truck to the top of the parking garage and put the pot in the bed. It should be nice and sunny and I can check on it during the day. We'll see what happens.

Wax Melting

Well I'm finally getting around to dealing with the wax cappings from honey extracting day. I looked at several web sites on solar melting and it all seems to be about the same - rinse and dry the wax, make little balls and put it on paper towels over a plastic container of water, put the whole thing in a box that has been painted black and has a glass cover, and put that entire thing in the sun. The sun should heat the box and wax hot enough to melt and as the wax passes through the paper towel it gets all the gunk filtered out, eventually solidifying again at the bottom of the container. Then at the end of the day we pop the wax out and voila! clean beeswax ready for some other task.

In the true spirit of beekeeping, where you ask anyone their opinion and it will usually end with "but you can do it anyway you want" I am doing it differently. I don't have a glass covered box handy, but I do have a nice black canning pot in which I make my jams. (Oh man we made some really good sour cherry jam this year!). And I have a plexiglass sheet that I can use as a cover. Hopefully it is close enough to actual glass to work. I am going to give it a go tomorrow and/or Sunday.

Invasion!

My hives have all been free of disease and pests until now. Last Saturday I found Small Hive Beetles in the hive at my in-laws house. Such a drag. But at least I only saw 4 or 5. The problem with the Small Hive Beetle is that its larva stage are little worms that will eat their way through the brood comb leaving a mess of the place and causing any honey in it to ferment. They are from Africa, I think, so there are no natural predators here. The most you can do is try to keep them at bay so they don't kill the hive.

So to do that I found trap plans on various web sites that use thin CD cases with a soy powder bait. There are a few varieties if you Google for them, some say to use roach poison and some say to use boric acid powder to kill the beetles. Yeah, I'm not going to put any kind of poison in my hives. And I have a ton of Megabee in the freezer still so I am using it for bait and tried coating the CD case with vegetable oil to try and trap them. Hopefully that works well or well enough. Since there were only a few beetles hopefully I have time to experiment a bit before they take over. I did squish one with my hive tool so I'm already down one! Wish me luck.

Honey Extracting

I was on vacation the last couple of weeks. The weekend before we finally got the reward for all this time and effort, OK mostly the bees time and effort. I went out and the girls had finally finished capping off the honey so I snagged the super, brushed all the bees off each frame, brushed all the bees off each frame, and brushed all the bees off each frame (they really didn't want to go and when they finally did they came back quickly). Then I put the super with the brushed off frames in the back of the truck and drove over the hill and then stupidly went to pick some berries. When I came back 20 minutes later there was a swarm of a couple thousand bees buzzing around the truck. I didn't think they would find the honey that far away that fast but an important lesson was learned; if I have more than one task do them all first and THEN do the honey harvest. So I grabbed the other bee suit out of the trailer, put it on, jumped in the truck and took off down the road as fast as I could. Luckily the truck windows were closed so there weren't that many in the truck. When I got to the paved road most of the bees had been lost so I got out took the suit off and got the last few bees out of the truck. One bad decision can really screw up a day - no potato or garlic harvest, only a few berries picked.

That Sunday I called my buddy Tom and my wife and I drove over to get his extractor and other equipment. My sister-in-law came over with extra bottles. The first time with the uncapping knife I dug into the comb pretty deep. Most of the others I actually did pretty well. Then I loaded up 3 frames into the extractor and fired it up. Since it was my first time I didn't know how fast to turn it up and how fast to let it go. I guess I might have done it a bit too fast because we had a blowout! On one frame a big section of comb broke loose from the frame and wires in the foundation that are there to support it. Bummer! I uncapped another and put it in and started it slower. We saw a bit of honey was on the side of the extractor but nothing was coming out the bottom. So I uncapped 3 more and started them going. Finally honey came out. Man that was so exciting! The next thing was we had two sieves to get the wax out. It took forever for it to start going through the first sieve and then it seemed like even longer to start through the second one. Finally all 8 frames were done. It was quite the experience. 2.5 gallons of honey from this one hive! Then we had to clean up everything. There was probably at least 2-3 cups of honey stuck on the sides of the extractor, maybe more. It is a big, heavy stainless steel tank and cleaning it and everything else for 8 frames of honey is not very time effective. Next year when I have 3 hives of honey to extract (hopefully) it will be more efficient. Pictures coming soon...

Beautiful Honey

Thursday I had the day off work and took a drive out to the mountain to check the bees, see how the one honey super was coming along, and do some other work; mowing, pick wild black raspberries, etc. I ended up working Memorial Day weekend and it was my last chance to use the saved holiday. Yikes! It hit 100 degrees in Washington! Perfect weather to pull on a thick denim bee suit! The talk around here is that it has been so hot and dry the nectar flow has all but stopped and while my girls are putting the honey away slower than a month ago there still seems to be some coming in. The honey super on Hive 1 is beautiful, almost white comb and a light colored honey. I wish I had a picture but it was so hot I was minimizing the time in the suite and I still had to mow inside the electric fence. I guess the next step is figuring out how to get the bees out of honey super and then extracting it. I hear that is a messy, sticky, good time!

I also made a couple of nuc bodies. Nothing fancy but I figure I can make them (without counting my time) for about 2/3 the price of ordering them and save all the shipping costs. Plus I buy a 1 x 10 and rip it down to medium body size so I used the ripped pieces to make shims or other things. And that is my with my typical screwing up measurements that make a piece of 1 x 10 into a piece of firewood. Measure twice, cut once. Or as I do it - measure twice, cut once, wonder why the pieces don't fit together correctly, realize my mistake, measure twice again, and cut again. Good thing I don't do this kind of stuff for a living. This time I lucked out on my mistake in that I was cutting the side for a hive body, but when I cut it too short I could still use it for a nuc side, so I only wasted a couple inches of wood. No fancy dove tails, but they are cheap and this can be an expensive hobby if you do more than a couple of colonies. Check out the jig I made to help me at Ed's Experiments and Stuff. Now I can always cut the long sides of the hive bodies correctly!

Liquid Gold

A few week back Hive 2 seemed to be queenless - there was no brood, only a few capped brood, and no queen found. Then I had a couple bad weeks at work, a good trip to West Virginia to see my in-law's family, and so on the drive to the mountain today I was wondering if there would be a point in getting a new queen or I should just merge Hive 2 to Hive 1. Well there weren't many bees coming out of the hive, which just added to my worry. And when I get up to it I see some guard bees wrestling another bee to keep it out. I was too late to get the video! Darn! So now I am thinking, great robber bees. The hive must be dying. Seeing that I decide to do Hive 1 first so that the bees will be a little disorganized from the inspection so they would be less likely to start robbing Hive 2.

I don't know about other folks around but it seems like it has been a pretty crappy honey year. During the big nectar flow of spring there were so many cool to cold days followed by rain, then a hot day or two, repeating the cycle again and again. I put a honey super on Hive 1 a few weeks back but they have been so slow to build any wax my hopes for honey this year have gotten slimmer and slimmer. I cracked the top and pulled the outside frame. Yeah, still not much wax against the outside but the inside of the frame was about 2/3 drawn. I pulled the next frame and it was pretty well drawn out and had a bit of honey but nothing to write home about. But, the two inside frames looked pretty good. They were totally drawn out and starting to get pretty heavy with honey. Nothing capped yet, but pretty heavy. Sweet! So I threw on a queen excluder, put the honey super back on and sealed it up. Check out how pretty this new wax with shiny honey in it is.

On to Hive 2. I popped the cover and low and behold there are quite a few bees! Hmm. So I start pulling frames. Lo and behold capped pupa! And larva! Was it a fluke? I pulled a couple more, each more full of larva and pupa than the other. Well this is just weird! I pulled that box off and looked at the one below. Again more larva! I'm not sure where this queen came from but there is certainly one there. Whew! Since I thought this hive was going to be dying out I didn't bother bringing another box, plus it is probably too late to super now anyway although I could probably get some wax drawn for next year. I will have to think about that for next time I head out.

Nuc Expansion

I did my first 2 nuc installs a couple weeks back. I was able to get 2 nucs from a local guy. Old Hive 2 never kicked into gear but since the bees are a grand experiment I decided to put them into a box off to the side and see if they ever try to build up when it gets warm or continue to struggle. Plus I didn't have the heart to kill off one of my first 2 queens. So one of the nucs is in Hive 2. The good thing is that they are on drawn comb so they don't have to expend the energy to make a bunch of wax. Instead I can super them and hopefully get some honey this year. Wish me a good nectar year with good foraging weather!

The other is in my brother and sister-in-law's back yard. He used to have big gardens with tomatoes and peppers and they canned really good Italian peppers. After a bunch of years he decided to put a garden in again. Th owner before them had bees and they seemed to do well there so since I didn't expand my electric fence in time it was good to have another place to put a hive.

Which goes into my planning. Man, I thought I did a good job of planning for this year, at least as far as equipment went. But once I started to get some bees coming in I realized I didn't do a very good job. The hive bodies I have started making, and have managed to squeak by on how many I will use this year, but I am also running low on frames and foundation. At my property I am only limited by how many hives I want to have, not the usual circumstance around here where you are limited in suburban yards by zoning restrictions. After having gone through a year and realizing how much I liked beekeeping I should have expanded my electric fence, ordered a bunch of bottom boards, inner and telescoping covers, frames, and foundation to get ready for this year. So now the electric fence is bigger. Now I will be able to go up to 10 or so hives. Not that I think I will expand that fast, but at least the fence will support it and that part of the future plans is taken care of.

Update

It has been a few weeks since my last post so it is time to catch you up. I ended up being able to get a package from Georgia to replace Hive 1 and installed it a week and a half ago. Last weekend the queen was released and the foragers were out and about bring back pollen and nectar. Unfortunately no eggs yet but it is still early. This year I think I will replace the queen with a local one. I was hoping to try to overwinter a nuc in the back yard but my homeowner's association is giving me some problems so I'm not sure that will happen. Oh, and of course when I was setting up the hive I forgot a couple of frames. I had to put one in that didn't have any foundation. A week after install it was about a third built out. It is interesting to see the natural process of building without foundation.

Hive 2 is still struggling. The queen just won't start laying. As my last try I dumped a few hundred bees from the package into Hive 2 thinking a little extra coverage for the brood might spur some new egg laying. Nothing doing. Same small area of capped brood there has been since winter. I just need to find a queen before they completely die out. Can I count this colony as surviving the winter? Hmm.

Fun For All Playground

I won't do this often but occasionally something comes up that that is not bee related that I will support through this forum. There is a great accessible playground that will be built in Warrenton, VA. This playground is specially designed for special needs kids with features like:

• Barrier free ramp system which will allow a child in a wheel chair to reach the highest points
• Bright colors to help children with vision impairment
• Different textures to stimulate sensory development
• Swings and spring toys with hand holds and back supports

The goal is $300,000. As of March 20th they have raised $209,000. Please visit the Fun For All Playground web site and if you feel inspired, make a tax-deductible donation. All kids deserve a fun, safe place to play. Let's get it built!

Hive 2 Survived

I was out to the mountain yesterday. It was a beautiful day; 70 degrees, sunny, blue sky. The foragers are out and bring back pollen, mostly a cream colored pollen. I hiked around some and didn't see anything that looked like it was nectar producing yet. But the important thing is they are still alive. Not only alive, but they appear to be thriving now. They sucked down all the sugar syrup I had put in less than two weeks ago.

The bad thing about the bees being so far away is that I don't get to see a lot of what happens in the hive. It is really too bad because I could sit and watch these little creatures for a lot longer than you would think. At this time of year only a few spiders, the bees, and some flies are out so it is nice to go out there in that regard also. This time I got to see something I thought was kind of funny. The flies were trying to get into the hive and the guard bees were trying to keep them out. Watch the 21 second video here.

Hive Postmortem

I started going through the dead hive Saturday. It was a cool, rainy, depressing day so it seemed appropriate. But as I started into it I actually felt better. Maybe it wasn't me. There was quite a bit of honey left in this hive. Now I think what happened is that the cluster got locked in a position that when it turned really cold and we had the big snows for a couple of weeks they wouldn't break the cluster to get over to the honey and basically starved and/or froze in place, still covering the brood. You can see in the picture there is a small but well filled brood space (the picture that shows a spotty pattern was the outside of the outside frame. The others looked better.) that was covered with bees when I pulled the frame out. The other frame I left the bees on for the picture. The queen was still present in the middle of the cluster. You can see the marked dot on her back. Also notice a bunch of bees at the top all the way in the comb trying to get the last bit of honey in them. A couple inches back from the brood the honey begins. It is like this on all 3 of the frames the brood was on with the honey starting in the exact same point like they could eat back that far but not get over to the ends. The brood and cluster are pretty small. Since this is my first year I don't know if this is normal size or not, but this is the time of year the population is at its lowest.

It is impossible to say now but maybe the other colony was better positioned within the hive to be able to get to honey or maybe their genetics are such that they could survive a few degrees cooler. Also, there is a ton of pollen in this hive. Way more than they would use by the time the flowers would have started. If the other hive has a bunch I might think about putting a pollen trap on the hive and capture some of it.

Alive and Kicking

My wife and I went out to feed my one remaining colony again. It was a nice day today; 50+ degrees, beautiful blue sky, and the snow is even melted away in some spots. I was so worried that this colony would be dead when I got to it. But I took seeing a bee fly in front of the truck on the dirt road to our property as a good sign and it was! I could see bees flying around, it was alive! A quick pop of the telescoping cover showed that one of the feed bottles was not quite half empty and the other was maybe a quarter empty. I topped them off and closed it back up. It is supposed to be in the 50s during the day and 30s at night all week although rainy at the end of the week. I sure hope a little warmer temperature will take some pressure off the bees and allow them to cover the brood a little more loosely. Then they can cover a larger brood area with the same number of bees. I'm still worried that the number of bees may be too small to get them through to spring and warmer temps but at least they are still alive now.

Sad, Sad Day

What I have feared happened. I have lost my first colony. It is weird because it isn't like loosing a pet. They are just insects after all. But they are my insects that I have put a ton of time and effort into. Worse yet, I might have been able to prevent it. I did a quick look and most of the frames are totally empty. There are a few spots of honey but nothing substantial. The weird thing is that there aren't a bunch of bees with their heads in the comb, as I have heard it would be with starvation, and there was a bunch of bee candy they didn't touch. I didn't take the hive totally apart because I want to see if a more advanced beekeeper will go through it with me. I want to do this because if it was starvation I can reuse this comb. If not, what was it? And is it safe to use the comb? It would certainly help the next colony if they didn't have to start building comb from scratch but I don't want to put another colony on this comb just to have them die out from some disease.

I'm not real happy about Hive 2 either. They are still alive and there is enough heat coming off of them so I know the queen is laying but the cluster is pretty small. There might not be enough bees to keep the brood warm. It would help if it warmed up around here but that isn't supposed to happen at least this week. All I can do know is feed and hope the warm weather comes quickly.

So there are some things to learn from this for me and for you. Location is important. Very important. My property is off the beaten path, which is good for a lot of things (nobody messing with my hives, reduced threat of pesticides, lots of wildflowers) but when we get record snows it is not so good. I couldn't get back to them for the last couple of weeks. If I had maybe Hive 1 would still be alive.

The bigger thing is to watch the honey stores closer. Going back to last fall I was suspect that the honey store was low. If this had been a mild winter maybe that would have been ok. As one of the coldest and the snowiest winters we have ever had they needed even more than usual to get through. So now I am going to go every weekend until our nectar flow starts and hope to get Hive 2 through March.

Winter Check

44 degrees, sunny, 5 inches of snow on the ground. No pictures this time since I was alone and working as quickly as possible. This entry is posted late. The visit was on Feb. 4th. The next day we left to Florida for a week vacation. Thank goodness! The snow came and came and came. We had to dig out of if today when we got back but the vacation was fun and watching the last nighttime space shuttle launch was amazing!

Normally I wouldn't have gone out and disturbed my girls but at the last beekeeper meeting I had talked with my mentor about my bees and she was concerned that they were already at the top of the hive. The theory being that they have eaten their way through the honey in the middle hive body and have now eaten their way through the center of the top hive body. You aren't supposed to disturb the cluster in the winter so it is impossible to see what is going on in the frames they are clustered around. My mentor recommended making some 1:1 sugar syrup to feed to them in case the honey was all gone. So I worried about them for a week and a half until I could get back out to them.

One word of advice - in the class they recommended picking a location for the hives that you could get to in all kinds of weather. Because of the topography of my land the options were limited but I thought, "Ah, this spot is pretty good. I can get here except when there is a ton of snow or it has been raining a lot." And guess what happened this winter in the Washington D.C. area? Uh huh, record snows.

So here I am trudging through 5 inches of snow with my bee bucket, my bee suit (bees apparently don't like the cold, more on that later), two hive bodies, two bottles of sugar syrup, and some bee candy. Maybe I need a second bucket to carry this other stuff. I get to the hives and there is very little activity. In fact, I first thought I might have a dead colony, but when I got closer I could see a handful of bees flying around. Still alive! I started with hive 2 this time. I typically move all my stuff in position and then put the bee suite on. As I am moving all my gear from under a pine tree, where there was no snow, to inside the electric fence I noticed more and more bees flying around. It seemed odd because there were only a few bees flying around when I got there and now they all seem to be attracted to me, and more of them. Once everything is staged I crack open the outer cover. I could see the cluster through the hole in the inner cover and could see there were quite a lot of bees. Another good sign. Then I took off the inner cover. Oh boy they didn't care for that one bit! Now bees are everywhere, landing on me and flying everywhere. I had been working without gloves the last couple of times and so I didn't have any on this time either. Naturally I get stung the first 20 seconds I have the inner cover off. The way they were behaving this particular trip I quickly decided to put gloves on. I might have to think about some other feeders for the winter so I can skip disturbing them so much.

I needed to see how much honey was left. Before I started I did the "heft test" and it seemed like the hives were still fairly heavy so I figured there was some honey. The cluster was on one side of the hive so I could pull a couple frames on the other side to check. Yep, honey. That's good. They hadn't touched the bee candy I put in last time and, in fact, they weren't even crawling on it. I put a full frame back against the cluster. The one I had taken out was empty on the side that was facing the cluster so I put the empty side against the hive body. My worries have been alleviated at least for the time being. Once the queen picks up her laying it may take some effort to keep them well fed.

Snow Bees

Here are the hives a few weeks after our record breaking December snow. The hives are on on the back side of a slight rise so the sun doesn't hit the ground there full strength. This day was beautiful, 54 degrees when I went into the hives, clear, sunny, and no wind. When I got to the hives there was just a little activity. Still I only had the top open for about 3.5 minutes each hive. It was just a quick trip to see if both colonies were alive (they are!), feel the weight of the hives doing the hive tipping method (they were both still fairly heavy but definitely lighter than November), and put in some bee candy and pollen substitute. Hopefully the queen is laying but I don't know if there is a way to tell. There were a couple handfuls of dead bees in the snow but it didn't seem like that many so I guess that is just normal die off.

I can see why the call the bees a "cluster" in the winter. They were packed into the smaller area across these 5 frames instead of being spread out across all of them as they were during the summer. Hive 1 they were even tighter spread across 4 frames. Maybe Hive 1 has a smaller population at this point. It is hard to tell without being able to pull frames or view them for a longer period of time.

The ventilation problem I had before appears to be resolved. The inner cover was nice and dry. Another month or so until the earliest trees start blooming!

Frame Building

During January we can't do much in the apiary so instead we do inside work; make plans for next year, build and repair hive bodies, make frames, that kind of thing. Since I haven't finalized my plan for next year I haven't placed my order for hive bodies yet. But I do have a bunch of frames that need to be made for this coming year so here are 11 easy steps to build a frame. Once you get the hang of it you can do 2 or 3 at a time. Or find or make a frame jig and with a air compressor and brad nailer you can make 5 to 10 at a time.

Step 1 - The Parts
There are 4 pieces to a frame: the top bar, bottom bar, and 2 end bars. I use wedge top bars and grooved bottom bars. There are other types but these were recommended in the class I took and are the only kind I have made. Before doing anything else get a top bar and run a pocket knife or X-Acto knife down the wedge and break it off of the top bar. In the picture you can see it is already removed. There will be little pieces left where the wedge splits off. I like to shave those down with the knife as much as possible so the foundation fits better. I do a bunch of these at a time so this step goes faster.

Step 2 - The Tools
The list of tools you will need: knife (mentioned above), wood glue, small square, a junk piece of wood block, pliers, stapler, rubber mallet, tack hammer, small (5/8" I think) and large (1 1/4" x 17) brads. I also use a glue bottle holder that I made. When the bottle gets half empty or more it keeps the glue at the tip so you don't have to keep shaking it down. It is a 6 inch piece of 1x4 with a 30 degree cut one inch from the end that goes half inch deep through and a piece of thin scrap wood (mine was from a clementine box). If you want one and don't have access to a table saw or don't know how to use one let me know and I might be able to whip one up for you. They are handy whenever you use glue.

You will need a top bar, bottom bar, and 2 end bars to make each frame. You don't need to put the foundation in until you want to put the frame into the hive body but when you do you will need a piece of foundation, 4 bobby pins (for medium frames like I use, 8 for deep frames), and 3 or 4 staples.

Step 3 - Side Bar Holes
The very first time I made frames I made probably 24 or so and then put in the foundation. What I didn't realize is that the holes in the end bars that you put the pins through are almost never drilled out very well. So this is my secret step you won't find in other instructions. Take a nail that you would use to put together a hive body, grip it in your pliers and push it through each hole in the end bar. Twist it around a couple of times and then pull it back out. Remove any slivers that are left around the hole. As in removing the wedge from the top bar, I do a bunch of these before actually putting the rest of the frames together.

Step 4 - Glue Together
Take your wood glue and put a generous amount in the notches in the top and bottom of the end bars where the top bar and bottom bar will fit into it. Use a generous amount of glue. It will leak out when you put the pieces together but the bees won't care and the frame will last longer. Put the top bar upside down on your work place. Push the end bars onto it at the end notches. Put the bottom bar into the notches in the end bars. The wedge in the bottom bar should be facing the top bar. I like to tap it with the rubber mallet to make sure the top and bottom bars and well seated.

Step 5 - Square It Up
Place the frame top bar down. Now take your small square and make sure the frame is 90 degrees on both sides of the bottom bar. Every now and again the notches in either the top or bottom bars are not cut correctly and the frame will not come out 90 degrees. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do about that. Being square will make it easier (especially in deep bodies) to lift the frames out of the hive bodies without killing bees that happen to be on the sides by scraping them against the hive body as you pull it out. It is bad enough to kill a few bees, but if the queen is scurrying away and you squish her you may loose the colony.

Step 6 - Nailing the Bottom Bar
While the frame is still sitting with the top bar down take 2 of the longer brads and nail them through the bottom bar into the end bar. Make sure to place them in the center of each side of the divider split of the bottom bar. The wood used to make the frames are generally pretty light pine. Occasionally you will get a more dense piece or really unfortunately have to nail through a knot in the wood. The brads can be pretty easy to bend in these cases when you hit them off center. If you do this you have 3 options depending on how far the brad is bent and how deep it is before it bent. These are: straighten it out with the pliers and try to continue nailing, pull the brad out with the pliers, or if the brad is most of the way in just pound the bent portion down as far as possible. The last option should be your last resort as it will result in a less sturdy frame.

Step 7 - Nailing the Top Bar
Now turn the frame over an rest it on the bottom bar. Nail two of the long brads through the top bar into the end bars. In this case if the brads bend you have one more choice - since there is more area in the top bar you can nail a third brad.

Step 8 - Providing Extra Strength
To make your frames last longer you can give them a bit of extra strength by nailing a short brad through the end bar and into the top bar at approximately 45 degree angle. Make sure to get it in from the edge far enough so you don't split the end bar or top bar but not so far that you drive it into the empty spot where the wedge is taken out of the top bar. These little brads are harder to hold to get started. I know when I am done making frames for the day when I hit my finger and thumb as much as the brad! Concentration is key not only in the apiary but also in the workshop.

Step 9 - Adding Foundation
Now peel the paper off a piece of foundation and position it into the frame. Notice which way the wires are bent at the top of the foundation and be sure to place it such that these wires will be positioned where the wedge has been removed. I find it is easiest to get the bottom of the foundation into the slot in the bottom bar first so that it will go down far enough to sit comfortably in the frame. Make sure it is nice and flat with no waves.

Step 10 - Staple Foundation Now get the wedge piece and place it back where it was removed from the top bar. Push it back as far as possible so it will be flush with the rest of the top bar. Again position the frame on its top bar and with the stapler put 3 staples into the wedge to hold the foundation.


Step 11 - Pin Foundation
Since you have made the holes in the end bars nice and clean back in step 3 you can more easily slide in the bobby pins without tearing the foundation. Don't worry that they stick out a bit. The bees will build cells over them anyway and usually on the sides they will be filled with either honey or pollen so they won't mess up the brood area. Even if they do, it will only be a few cells per frame.


You're done! The frames are ready to be put into the hive bodies. Make sure and space them correctly. If they are too close the bees will build comb between two frames and you will screw up the honey comb or kill brood when you have to separate or pull them out of the hive body. If they are too far apart the bees will try to fill the space by building another piece of comb between the two frames, again causing loss of honey or killing brood. Plus when the bees are building comb where it is not supposed to be they are wasting energy when they could be doing something more productive. Take your time and do things right. My first year I have done things bad enough that hopefully I have learned at least a few lessons for next year.