Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Been negligent in keeping this thread updated. Probably deliberately negligent because our hive from last year, the one we got our first ever honey from, and the one I felt was suitably strong heading into the cold weather months, didn't make it through a rather mild winter. I know they didn't starve because there was still plenty of honey in the brood boxes when I discovered their demise. Like the prior year, they were all clustered tightly into a ball. Very much dead. Frozen.

I'm convinced I need a wind break, and while I'd prefer a natural one like a hedge, I'm researching temporary options.

Fortunately for me, I had another nucleus of bees already on order as I had planned to start a second hive this past spring. Had that not been the case, very possible I would have thrown in the towel.

Glad I didn't because this spring & summer have been a lot of fun with the new bees. Here's the new queen.

https://i.imgur.com/2gTcSmgl.jpg

She's "marked" with a green dot both for ease of identification and to determine her age -- all queens born this year are green-dots; next year's will be blue & the following white. In this way, bee keepers who manage to overwinter their hives can determine how old their queen is. I haven't had to worry about that yet. :(

Summer came somewhat late to New England as the spring rains didn't really end until mid-June. Flowers were late in blooming which actually help my new hive because I didn't get the bees until late May. I missed most of the apple tree bloom in the orchard next to our neighborhood, but otherwise there were plenty of resources for the ladies to pick from. Grace & I spent most of June and early July watching the bees come back loaded up with pollen.

Got a real treat during one of our hive inspections when we saw a few baby bees eating their way out of their honeycomb cell and taking their first steps. Have seen it in video & online, but never when I was holding a frame right in my hand. Was pretty damn cool, and I need to figure out how to link the little video we have of the event here.

With the hive doing really well & its population strengthening, we put our first honey super on at the very end of June. The day after my herf was about the three-week mark, and icehog watched from a safe distance as Grace and I found the super to be packed with honey; much of it already capped. We added a second honey super that day to give the bees some additional room to work.

That was two weeks ago, and I just peeked in the hive today. The second honey box is well on its way to becoming full. Another week or so, and we'll need to pull the boxes for extraction. My guess is we blow away last year's initial harvest of 35 lbs, and may even top our total take of 52 lbs with this first extraction.

And because summer's not complete without me getting stung, here's what a pulled out of my ear a few weeks back. It was left there after some rando bee decided to fly straight in my ear while I was minding my own business in the yard and sting me. That bee was an asshole.

https://i.imgur.com/yhRorOOl.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Well you are welcome here of course but there aren't many venues to book you. WE do have three Churches, two of them meet every Sunday and the other one is what's known as "Primitive Baptist" but usually called Hard Shell Baptist. And one run down country store. LOL

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O8kRTVkjEI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZqUkk6fVuQ

Greg, I am afraid my humor would not play well with the Baptists. :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Well done Tom!:r

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Probably not, but the Hardshell Baptist Church is so old I believe it still has holes in the floor to spit your tobacco out of.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Amazing what difference a year makes.

I was stung by a honey bee once on the tongue. Didn't know about it until a few hours later when it came loose in my mouth. Hope that yours was an equally non-plus event.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGaaQG5sTeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHFqcYN3nc

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

You could have quite the cottage industry going there!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

bee-utiful!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Almost 78# from one extraction, looks like those ladies are really working well for only being on your 3rd year! I'm guessing you didn't have much die off during last winter? Also how many frames did you spin on this extraction?

Great Work!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Thanks -- this hive is brand new bees as we failed (again) to overwinter. They had a huge head start though since they didn't have to make much comb.

We're ecstatic with the results so far but a little anxious too knowing that there's still more to come later in the season.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

wow

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Vin sorry to hear that you keep experiencing severe winter loss. Do you know why they aren't making it through winter, is it the cold, mites, starvation, or other damage? Glad to see this brood working out and hopefully you can find success through this coming winter after your second harvest.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Congrats on making a new record. That has to be exciting.

Sorry about those beetches from last year didn't make it.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

https://i.imgur.com/8sAXZE6l.jpg

A bit darker than I was expecting, but still super delicious :noon

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Once you go darker... wait what!! LOL

Looks good.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Trying to render some of the wax that we had the people doing the extraction save for us.

Got a good sized colander full of wax cappings that I rinsed as best I could to get the excess honey out. This weighs about 8-10 lbs but the wax won't weigh nearly that much.

https://i.imgur.com/zlHsN0zl.jpg


Put some of it in the solar melter I made last year

https://i.imgur.com/05bShRfl.jpg


The results were meh -- too much detritus made it's way through the paper towel filter. You can also see a little bit of honey in there -- no issue: it rinses right off.

https://i.imgur.com/Rae4EtPl.jpg?1


But it did trap a lot of the gunk ...

https://i.imgur.com/N68dYTHl.jpg

I still have loads of wax, and I'm going to try to use a different rendering method using a double boiler. I just need to find a double boiler Grace won't mind parting with because anything the wax touches can no longer be used for food prep. Not 100% sure why, but that's what the internet says, so it's clearly gospel.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Wax Rendering Redux: Double Boiler Method

Mickey Moused a double boiler out of a couple mis-matched pans, and melted a good amount of the wax down.

https://i.imgur.com/0czUrUKl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Kr64OIIl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/A4jaXPTl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/hQnpWlvl.jpg?1

The solids in the last pic did break up somewhat.

Cut the top off a creamer carton and covered the opening with cheese cloth I doubled up to catch the impurities.

https://i.imgur.com/LkoZjQOl.jpg

Then strained the melted wax through the cheese cloth. The junk that's too big to pass through are bee parts, propolis and other non-wax impurities.

https://i.imgur.com/STxipk0l.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

What passes through the cheese cloth is the wax and the honey that remained stuck to it.

Looks like a dirty mess at first

https://i.imgur.com/M4cdsTKl.jpg

But as the liquid cools, the heavier honey & any impurities sink to the bottom, while the wax rises to the top and solidifies.

https://i.imgur.com/ACErhk9l.jpg

Cutting away the container, and rinsing the residual honey on the bottom of the solidified wax, I'm left with this:

https://i.imgur.com/muC18vjl.jpg?1

Going to add that to my stash of beeswax from last year, and with the remaining wax I still have left to render, we might be able to get a couple beeswax candles out of it.

Interesting tid-bit I found while researching the various wax rendering methods: the wax cappings I started with are only about 13% actual wax. The rest is the honey and other impurities which is why starting with so much wax is needed to yield any decent amount of pure wax.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Wow! The second rendering really got out a lot, Vin. Have you made any candles yet or are you still collecting wax?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Still collecting wax. No idea how to make candles, or anything really. That's next up on the reading list. Although, grace was saying she might want to try making lip balm.

My house smells nicely of warm honey throughout. :)

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool walkthrough of the process, thanks for all the pictures. Very curious to see the final products of the wax

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I guess you really do mind your own beeswax. :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's very cool indeed! I like how calmly you said "or bee parts", at least i imagined it being said calmly but yah at risk of sounding foolish... ew.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Cool stuff to read about. My neighbor and I talked about a hive - or at least starting with 1 of those hanging housing things to promote more bees/pollination of our gardens

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool Vinny.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Massphatness, can you save the propolis or is it a pain trying to render it out?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Not sure on this one. I don't know that I would have a use for it or if the bees can re-purpose it. The stuff is literally like cement. It's made from sap and other sticky compounds, and I think mixed with beeswax. The result is a glue that's pretty tough.

I did put the cheese cloth strainers I used during the wax rendering out by the hive. I had read that the bees will clean them up and take whatever they can from it. And they did! The cheese cloth that I had originally used to wrap up the wax was sticky with honey. A few days out by the hive and there was nothing but bits of dried up wax on it. I should have grabbed a photo. At one point, there must have a few hundred bees on working away on it.

Once the bees were done with the cheese cloth, I rolled them up and used them as a fire starter in our fire pit this past weekend. Beeswax & propolis are super flammable, and make a great fire starter.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I have heard the propolis is good for you/things.

https://www.healthline.com/health/pr...ancient-healer

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

It opened right to Cold Sores & Genital Herpes ... go figure

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

:hy:p

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Mickey Dees is also into bees!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=lng4n3FI7SQ

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

We pulled the honey supers off a couple weeks ago. I think I got over-excited about our honey haul from earlier in the year, and I put three supers on after we had extracted instead of just going with one and adding as needed. The bees ended up working a little bit in one box, a little bit in another and a little bit in the third. As a result, we only ended up with about 12 lbs of honey. Most of the frames were only partially built out. No biggie. I don't know what I would have done if had gotten a lot more honey anyway.

The previous couple years I haven't done a fall feeding and thought I'd give it a try. I know the bees haven't starved out the past two years because there's been a good amount of honey in the frames when I've popped them open in the spring. Had the colony died of starvation, there wouldn't be anything in the frames. Still, better safe than sorry. The feed is a sugar syrup in the ratio of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. (Interesting tidbit: a container of water weighs about the same when it's filled with sugar; not exact but close enough to make the syrup.)

At a 2:1 ratio, the syrup promotes honey production which will give the ladies extra food stores for the winter. In the spring, the ratio is 1:1, and that promotes brood rearing. No idea why.

I'm using an entrance feeder. The feed drips into it & the bees crawl in to slurp up the sugary goodness. Will be interesting to see how quickly they go through it.

https://i.imgur.com/5AXv7RYl.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool. Thanks for the update.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Slurping up sugary goodness.

Bees got a good life. :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

.....though short-lived at Casa Stolo....

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

is it keto-friendly? :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Littleton? :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Whoa! Major shrinkage. :noon

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hey Vin, any colonies make it through the winter? I'm 0-fer again. I had 5 going into fall, 1 I was certain had no chance but I didn't want to go through the trouble of combining it with another. All but 1 was dead by December 1st. That one died before it warmed up in late January. I don't have any packages on order yet. I might take this summer off.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Bee killers!!!!


You two are like the NYC of covid for bees.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

True but, it's not just us. Northern states lose 30-80% of colonies annually thanks to Varroa mites and the 2-3 dozen pathogens they introduce to the bees, not to mention the parasitic feeding itself damages them.

Northern bees hatched in October have to live until April or May before they can bring in new pollen and nectar, which is needed to raise new brood. Southern "winter" bees only have to live from Nov/Dec until Late Jan or Feb. So they suffer the same parasitic problems but their winter bees don't have to survive as long so their losses are much less. At least that's the prevailing theory.

My friend who has been keeping bees in Michigan since the 70s told me losing 1 of 20 colonies was unusual, worthy of inspecting to see if you could find out why. Once varroa mites showed up everything changed.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hey Vin, I wanted to resurrect this thread to see if you have any bees this year. I took 2020 off then had them again for 2021 but got super busy with the prep and sale of our house. My neighbor finished things up for me, harvested what there was and still has a few of my hive boxes.

I was hoping you had bees for 2022 and might be willing to share some news/pics. Once we find a place to settle I'll be getting my hives out of storage to start up again.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

The bees started committing suicide in the truck on the way to Vin's as soon as they realized where they were heading, better to do it quick and get it over with.