Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool! Might I venture so far as to say "sweet"?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's a great tower there. Plenty of room to thrive in that bee castle.

Mid March I saw a guy in Walmart buying every bag of sugar they had. A whole cart full. He was wearing a CT Bee Keeper Association t-shirt. He said this winter was brutal on his hives and the bees were starving and freezing. Thought I'd share that so you know you weren't alone facing such a horrific winter. Good luck. Soon they'll be having a feast at the apple orchard.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Love seeing the bee progress, Vin! Maybe a little honey for breakfast in July?:D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Here's a good video of bee birth

https://video.nationalgeographic.com...50415-ngm-bees

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Nice Vin...good work on honey! ...BTW, is that your hat on the ground in front of the hive in the last pic? :tf

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

There's a ton of bees around my neighborhood, I wonder if someone has a hive nearby? The next two towns to me are both big apiaries. There are signs everywhere not use pesticide because of bees.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

How far away are those other towns? Bees travel surprisingly far for food. Also, if they are close it's pretty natural for those hives to swarm, which could help them slowly spread out.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Just playing around with my camera and got this shot of one the ladies returning to the hive with her pollen pants on ...

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1753/...016257a5db.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

is that like the 7:00 am, pumps in hand, mussed up hair, long hallway "walk of shame"? :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Panties in the purse? Nice pic Vin.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Grace & I did a hive inspection over the weekend.


Finally grabbed a decent pic of the queen.
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1730/...33b181aa9a.jpg


Inadvertently broke open some honeycomb while pulling frames, and the ladies went right to work making repairs. Clean up on aisle 3! Close up on the right shows bee tongue. :)
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1759/...f97bc63e19.jpg https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1753/...5167bff04f.jpg


This shot shows the bees packing pollen into cells. You can see some of the bees going head first into the comb. They basically pack the pollen in by head-butting down into the comb.
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1759/...661ab14e_z.jpg


Good times!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Amazing what goes on in nature. Great pics!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool, Vin!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very nice. Glad that the bees are cooperating and that you have a good long summer ahead for them to build out the hive and prep for next winter.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

MMM.....bee tongue.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Take heart brother, losses in northern states like ours are averaging near 50% across the board. That goes for little guys like us and big commercial guys (as in the professionals). I lost all my hives last year (only 2). The year before I lost 5 of 6. This year I have 7 going. I should have a lot of honey to sell even though many of them are drawing out foundation. At least two are working with fully drawn comb.

Just a word of advice, be careful with queen excluders. Sometimes the workers won't draw out new frames above it. Other times they will. Sometimes, it can give them a swarm trigger as they feel like there is not enough space since they don't want to work through it. That said, there is a saying amongst beekeepers. If you ask 10 beekeepers the same question, you'll get at least 12 different answers. Do what works for you. I just offer when I've learned from others and from what I've learned on my own.

Also, if your hives are in the woods, like mine, at some point you'll likely start seeing some small hive beetles. I'm not sure how well established they are in your part of the country. 5 years ago they were unheard of in Michigan and were considered a southern states issue. Not anymore. SHBs aren't the end of the world, just make sure their larva aren't tunneling through your comb. Typically SHB are just a nuisance to a normal bee colony but if the colony is weak for whatever reason, the SHB can take over and ruin your comb and honey (making it unfit for human consumption).

Anyway, keep the pics and info coming. I love to see other folks beekeeping.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

this is my favorite thread....

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

We're going to have HONEY!!

Grace and I have been peeking into the hive every ten days or so, and while we noticed a few more bees in the honey super, they didn't seem to be actually doing anything up there.

Until yesterday when we opened the hive and saw this ...

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/927/4...cb606307be.jpg

The girls were clearly hard at work in the honey box, and we were delighted to find they are steadily drawing out comb and filling it with liquid gold.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1785/...4aa360642f.jpg

I find the honey making process to be fascinating. Basically the bees gather nectar and bring it back to the hive for processing by other bees. If I understand it correctly, these other bees mix the nectar with enzymes in their little bee bodies and then deposit the mixture into the comb. At this point, it's not yet honey. Instead, it's simply a very wet nectar syrup of sorts. The bees then fan the open comb with their wings until the water content gets down to around 17%. How do they know it's 17%? Well, back in the old days, it was a hassle for them to measure the humidity, but now there are any number of very accurate hygrometers that can be picked up on Amazon rather inexpensively. :) I have no idea how they know, but they know. The wonder of nature and all. And now that the mixture has been evaporated down to 17% water content, voila - it's honey!

Once the bees get it to honey, they cap the comb with wax to keep it securely stored.
You can see they've started capping this frame.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1822/...2b2a9e2fec.jpg

Next step is for us to wait until they've filled and capped all the frames in the honey box, and then it's harvest time. No idea how long that will take, but boy would it be cool to have fresh honey for my herf later this month!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool, Vin!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Wow! Very cool and a great post. I think that I picked up on your excitement as I'm in "go bees, go!" mode right now.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's awesome! Nice job, Honey! :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Wicked cool!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Almost there ...

About half my frames look like this:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1768/...3de624ee_z.jpg

Once the rest do -- maybe by this weekend? -- it's honey time!:noon

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Very cool, Vin!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

HONEY TIME! :wo

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Are you going to put the CA logo on your honey? :)

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Lookin great Vin! If you want to trade some honey for some honey bbq sauce made with it you know who to call :)

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Can't wait to smear it on my...#vinsherfnounderwear....:D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

:lr

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Fingers crossed for herf honey!! Looks like they just need to cap a couple frames, and we should be able to harvest this week!
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Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

this thread is awesome.....man I am jealous

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Awesome, Vin! What's a few stings and a hoard of agitated bees compared to making your friends happy and honeyed. :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Grace and I removed the honey super this evening. I wish I had somebody taking video of the process because it went so much better than I could have imagined. The ladies were downright docile as we removed the frames and brushed them off.

Tomorrow Grace is taking the 10 frames to have the honey extracted and by tomorrow night we should have a butt load of honey. The box must weigh 40 or 50 pounds. Take away what little weight there is to the pine box plus the plastic frames, and I have to believe we have 30 to 40 pounds of actual honey.

Hoping that we can get some pictures of the extraction process. With the herf this weekend, I don’t know if I’ll be able to post much in the next few days, but I’ll get the thread updated as soon as I can.
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Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Well is that all honey or is a lot of that weight the actual wax is used for a ton of good stuff too. In Dublin the hotel we were at had this wood box at an angle with a plexiglass lid and in the box was raw honeycomb and you used a knife and just got fresh honey that way, it was pretty freaking cool

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

:noon It looks like you are really good at this. Very satisfying when a lot of work pays off.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

OK, so after breakfast with me, you, Dom, Keith, Roger and Christos, there should be at least 2 or 3 pounds left? :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

So much super bee coolness went on today that I want to go on and on and on yadda yadda yadda about it all. But I have a herf to prep, so I'm just going to leave this here:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1803/...c2e5a8a5_z.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

you gonna sell any?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

woot!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hate to say it but Sweet! ;) Perfect name for it!:tu

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Probably not this first round -- gifting most of it to family friends -- though a jar may find it's way into the next troop auction. ;)

There's a second honey flow in the fall. If things go well, and we get another good-sized batch, we may look into selling some. There's an orchard right next door to us, and they have a farm stand. Our bees almost certainly have been working their flowers all spring & summer, and I think they might see the value in taking some honey on a consignment basis.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Nice job, Vin! Your hard work in keeping the hives thriving is paying off.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Roger killed on of the bees Friday. It was horrific.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

A few photos from the honey extraction ...

Grace brought our frames to a local beekeeper who has a serious set-up. Here's one of our frames being readied. You can see the ladies did an excellent job fully capping the whole frame.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1829/...c45fa5954e.jpg


This is the same frame that's been uncapped. They use a heated knife to shear the wax away and it collects in a bin at the de-capping station. We get to keep the wax which can be used down the road for a variety of things from soap to candles to lip balm and more.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/940/4...2db642929b.jpg


The frames are then loaded into an extractor which is basically a big stainless steel centrifuge that whirls them around to spin out the honey. The honey comb largely stays in tact during this process mostly because of the style frames I use. This is great for the bees -- less rebuilding of comb means more time can be spent making more honey.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1768/...4591836b47.jpg


The honey pours from the extractor and is strained into a food grade 5-gallon bucket through a couple layers of steel mesh to filter out the bits of wax, bee parts and other assorted detritus.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/942/4...52beba009f.jpg


We ended up with just over 30 lbs of honey. (The bucket weighs about 2.5 lbs)

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/934/2...d84130e6ee.jpg


This was our honey filling station in the kitchen. You can see that 30 lbs is about half the bucket.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/852/2...ba2873b445.jpg


That 30 lbs was enough to gift everyone at my herf an 8 oz jar with plenty left over for family and friends. We'll see what the fall honey flow brings, and maybe I can make some available here.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Wow! What a cool process, Vin. I love the idea of you having a honey filling station in the kitchen.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

397!!!!!!!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

:dr:dr

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Great stuff Vin. That first batch of honey really is special. "Fall" honey is unique. You likely will have large amounts of goldenrod blooming in August. If the weather is right, it can produce large amounts of slightly darker honey. It's got a little stronger flavor as well. I love it. Keep the pics coming. If you can spare a half-pint or pint size jar of honey, I'd love to trade you jar for jar from my apiary. Every batch is different even from neighboring hives and I like tasting the different varieties. I'd love to try some New England honey if you're interested in some Michigan honey.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Would love to trade if we get some additional honey in the fall. This batch is just about tapped after my herf and hooking up neighbors, family, co-workers, etc.