Photo's from week ending 4/29/07

I know this little one is new, see how fuzzy she is, but she was guarding the hive, which surprised me. Usually this job is done by a older bee.
When you open up a box this is what you like to see. Bees and more bees.
This is a close up of the drone laying queen hive after we brushed the bees off and they found their way back home. See they actually knew where to go.
This is another shot of the queen laying hive, we took this about 10 minutes after we had brushed all the bees off.
See how pretty this fram looks. All the capped brood in the center. That means more bees on the way soon. This queen is a keeper.

Last Week Update

Good Morning! The sun has already risen here and it promises to be a beautiful day. I've got to head outside early and get some yard work done, but I thought I'd put the weekend news online first.
I went back to market on Saturday. Too bad I was pretty much alone there. Don't get me wrong, there were a few other farm folks there but when I got there I found out the market doesn't start until this week. Great. . . . so I stayed anyway and made a whole $8.50. Hardly worth my time, but I did manage to catch up with some of the folks who did show up, and yes I made a couple of new friends as well. I only stayed until 1:00 and then came home. I know there is always a good side of things, and mine will be that I don't have to do a thing to go to market this week, I'm pretty much ready.

Sunday Jim and I went into the hives, we have a pretty good schedule going now. One week its the new hives the next week its the older hives. That way we aren't in them tooo much and when we find problem we mark the hive by putting an extra brick on it so that we check on it during the week.

This weekend we tackled two problems:

One was a drone laying queen. I knew she was there but we just hadn't been able to take care of her, and when I went to pick up the bees a few weeks ago someone there told me to take all the frames away from the hive and head to some brush making sure I put some distance between the hive and the bees and brush them all off the frames. The drone laying queen wouldn't be able to make it back to the hive and the bees would go back to the hive by themselves. So if I didn't plan on ordering a queen today and putting a new queen in as well as a frame of new bees I could have left the hive alone and let them raise a new queen on their own. I have no idea if this will work, that's why I've got the hive marked. I'll check on it throughout the week and let you know just what happened.

The second thing we noticed was a new queen cell that should be emerging any time in a hive we had been worried about. We equalized it anyway by giving it a frame of new bees and hope that the queen takes off and does well.
It never seems to end. I'm going to upload the pictures from this weekend on a separate post. That way I can tell you what to look for in each picture.

Releasing the Queen

Kinda funny something came up in a conversation yesterday that I forgot most people don't realize, so I thought I'd share that with you. My friend Amy called and I told her that I'd have to call her back because I needed to go release some queens. Her end of the conversation came to a complete stop. "What are you talking about?" she said. Well I explained that the queens were in little cages and we needed to make sure that they got out. Boy did that send her mind spinning. She still didn't get it . . . so here goes, the explanation of the release of the queen.

What happens is the packages, (boxes of bees) arrive and in them is a cage that holds a queen. At one end of the cage there is a tiny cork. When we install the packages, (put them in their new homes) we have to remove that cork and put some "candy" (sugar mixed up about the consistency of either frosting or fudge) in the end to replace the cork. The theory behind that is that the bees, while getting to know the queen will gradually eat away the new candy cork and free her. That gives the bees time to get to know her so that they don't just kill her. Now I don't want you to think that bees are out to kill queens, it's just that it's a very special society and they have to get to know her first. It's kind of funny but when we went in to check all the cages to see if the queens had successfully been released the only noisy rammy and angry hive was the one where the queen still had not been released. All the other hives had already started to get on with what they needed to do. Jim opened up the end of the cage, (the bees had made a dent in it but hadn't gotten it completely gone) and she scooted right out.
So that's what happens when we release the queens. . . .

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The Honey Tree Adventure

So the day started pretty normal. Jim went to work and I took care of stuff at home. We agreed to go back out to the Log yard to see what we could do and as soon as Jim got home we headed out there. After looking it over, Jim decided to try to cut an access in the log where the hole was. He was hoping not to damage too much comb.
He wasn't able to get to all the comb so he ended cutting the end of the log off and when he did he pulled out as much of the comb as we could. The log company didn't want the bees there anymore, I think they were a tad concerned with someone getting stung. They had heard that bees were in danger and decided to try to call someone about removing them rather than just trying to kill them. You really have to give them credit for that, but I don't know just how much we were able to help.
The bees were flying like crazy as soon as the chainsaw started and we ended up leaving a box there with comb in it from the hive, hoping that they ended up there last night. We have no idea if we got the queen. There was way too much stuff going on to figure that out. When we arrived home Jim set up the box behind the garage and when he checked they were all balled up on the inside corner of the box. Hopefully they will stay, but only time will tell I suppose.
Here are the pictures that go along with the story.

Bees are all the Buzz in the News

Wow, every time I turn on the TV there is something new about what the bees are going through. It's great that people are finally seeing how valuable the bees really are, but it's also really hard to watch. We did have a cold snap here, but the only really good thing was that while it was warm we managed to get feeders on the hives and they took about a gallon of feed each. So I think that should help tide them over while we go through this cold spell. As a beekeeper so many things go through your mind when you think about what you need to do to keep the bees happy and healthy. If it wouldn't have been for Jim stepping in while I was sick I don't know if we would be in the position we are in. He brought the hives down to one story and put feeders on all of them. By doing that it will cut down on the space they need to heat and hopefully they were able to store up a little more feed. I did see some pollen go in the hives on the nice days, I just don't know how much actually got stored.

Bees in Trees

Yes, Bees do sometimes live in trees. In nature just the way they were meant to live. We got a phone call from a local logger (boy I hope that's how it's spelled) and they had a problem with a couple of logs that they brought in, along with the logs came bees. It turned real cold here but we went out to see if there was something we could do and because it's too cold to risk trying to remove them, we took a few photo's and told them we would be back the end of the week.
I told you I'd upload some pictures so here they are.

So just in case Winnie the Pooh is watching I want him to know that we found the honey. . . . . .

Brrrrr - Baby it's cold outside

There are times like this week that remind you that you live in Michigan. On Tuesday the weather was 76 degrees and absolutely beautiful. Last night and today snow was spitting down from the sky. . .It is so cold that we have had more than a 40 degree drop in temperature and that's not taking into count that there is a definate wind chill going on.

The Bees are really having a rough start to spring. The only good thing is that they actually had feed on the hives for the last couple of weeks. Thank goodness Jim jumped in and got things going in the bee yard early. I think it's going to really make a difference in how things work out for us this year.

Jim and I are headed out to try to help someone out and remove some bees from their property. They got some logs brought in and found out that a couple of them had bees inside. Now I was pretty clueless on how this was ever going to happen. I mean what do you do? Do you reach in and take it out comb by comb, or do you cut out the log and try to get as much of the hive as you can? So as usual the Uncle Ted phone call happened and he gave Jim a couple of suggestions. One of them was to cut the log portion of the hive out and put it underneath a hive box and see if they won't just go up inside. (I can't imagine that it's going to be that easy but we will see.)

I'll take the camera and upload photo's later.

In the meantime stay warm:)