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Club Apiary Journal for 2013

by Caroline Abbott

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October 12, 2013Today was our last field day of the year.   We had about 20 people in attendance. Our purpose was to prepare our hives for winter.  The day before the field day I had gone out to the hives to start preparations just in case the weather wasn’t good on Saturday.  The weather man was wrong, as usual, and it turned out that the weather was beautiful for the field day, but I couldn’t be sure, this is October in Michigan, after all.  When we approached the long hive on Oct. 11th, there was a lot of unusual activity, bees going in all the upper entrance holes from the inner covers.  When we got up to the hive we saw way too many dead bees on the ground and lots of wax particles all over by the entrance and on the ground.  This was a very bad sign and we knew immediately that something was very wrong.  The next clue was yellow jackets entering the hive at all entrances without challenge.  My heart sunk, these are tell-tale signs of robbers who have completely taken over a hive that is no longer alive, or at least not viable anymore.  So, we opened the hive to see how bad the damage was.  It was the worst case of robbing I have ever seen.  Every single frame was completely empty, even the four frames I added for winter “insurance”.  So sad!  I had 24 hours to think about this before the field day to evaluate what went wrong. First of all, I believe I created too much area for robbing by putting the notched inner covers on two weeks earlier.  This gave the hive too many holes to guard and the robbers were able to overwhelm the hive.  But, even so, if the hive was strong to begin with, it could have fended off the robbers.  So the reality was the hive was weak.  Beekeeping is part detective work, so you have to look at the clues.  This is why I keep this journal and also a journal on my personal hives.  It is a good habit so you can go back and figure out what went wrong so you can prevent it the next time.  You  may not always figure it out, but keeping notes will be a help.  A month ago they had two frames of capped brood.  Was that enough, or not?  Ten days later when we opened the hives with the K-College students the brood was emerged, but there was no open brood, meaning eggs or larva.  I assumed it was due to the lateness of the season, but in hindsight, there probably should have been some open brood at that point.  The bees were in a good mood, which I thought meant they were queen-rite, but, then again, they are Carnolians, which are gentler, and they may have been too weak to even be agressive by that point.  All this means the hive could have gone queenless as long as six weeks ago.  We could have accidentally killed her during a hive inspection, or who knows what.  The presence of varroa and small hive beetles on the bottom board was probably a warning sign that the hive was weak for some reason.  I believe these pests are opportunistic and are a symptom of a weak hive, not the cause of it.  Most likely the hive became queenless and weakened, then couldn’t fend off these pests which are always around waiting to attack weak hives.  So, what caused the hive to weaken, I am not sure.  Did we accidentally kill the queen and not realize it?  Again, I am not sure.  I am sure that creating more holes in the hive speeded up its demise because the robbers came in and completely emptied it out.  Here are the four medium frames that had been full of honey that I had added to the hive.  The two with holes chewed through them are foundationless.  This severe damage was most likely from yellow jackets.  There is good news about all this.  If we hadn’t discovered this hive was functionally dead, we would have prepared it for winter and would have thought it didn’t overwinter due to the hive design or some other factor.  This way, we know it died before winter and we just took precautions to protect it from mouse damage and then closed it up to preserve what comb is left to re-use next year.  We figure it will get colder faster outside than in a building, so wax moth damage will be limited.  My preference is to attempt to split the other hive if it overwinters well and re-populate this hive with that rather than bringing in new bees again, but of course, that is completely dependent on how the other hive overwinters.  Life is a learning experience and you can’t learn if you never experience any failure, but it doesn’t make you feel much better about it!

The vertical hive, however, looked very good.  The top super is mostly full of honey, not fat combs, but the one below is completely stuffed with ten, fat combs, so we are confident it has enough honey for winter.  We turned the notched inner cover, which we had modified with six notches total, upside down, so the bottom of the inner cover sits on the top bars, making the bees have to go through the hole in the inner cover to enter.  Since we wanted to put some kind of insulation in the top, we needed to put a regular inner cover on top of the notched one to create air flow and space for the bees to enter and leave, or else the insulation would have blocked the holes.  On top of the regular inner cover we put a spacer about 2″ high that had been cut from a deep hive body to make it into a medium.  We put an insulating blanket in the hive.  If we had put a window screen on the bottom of our spacer, we could have used wood chips or other absorbant material.  Although the idea of two inner covers seems awkward, it is more stable than our old system of leaving sticks under the top cover for ventilation, but gives the same effect.  It also makes it more mouse protected.  Lastly, we stapled 1/2″ hardware cloth over the entrance of the hive to keep mice out.  The hive, all ready for winter is pictured at the right.  We do have a rather large upper entrance hole from a previous year in the second super down from the top.  We may put a piece of 1/2″ hardware cloth over that if we think mice might be able to enter through it.

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September 28, 2013We went out to prepare the hives partially for winter, we will do the rest on the next field day.  Today we put notched inner covers on both hives for ventilation and upper entrances for winter.  We put a spacer the same size as a hive box (a long one for the long hive, a regular one for the vertical hive) over the inner cover.  The spacer is around 2″ tall, and has enough room to place an absorbant blanket to insulate and absorb moisture.  We will wait to add that until the weather gets colder.  We took a regular notched inner cover and added extra notches for air flow, a total of six on each inner cover.  We think it will be fine for the vertical hive, but may be too much for the long hive, since it has a total of three inner covers.  We will assess that at the next field day and change out the inner covers if neccessary.  We stapled a canvas cloth onto the top cover of the long hive to protect it from weather and make it more winter ready.  We also gave the long hive four frames of honey from another hive, just in case we had taken too much.  We put them directly behind the last frame with any significant amount of honey in it.  The frames were mediums, two were foundationless, but straight, two had plasticell under them.  We thought the frames were getting a little bit curvy the further out they went, so having a few straight frames to guide off of might help with that. On the next field day we will add mouse guards and add the blankets if we think it is cold enough.

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September 24, 2013

Today Ann Fraser’s entomolgy class from Kalamazoo College came out to the club hives for a special field day.  It was a beautiful day for it, considering the lateness of the season.  It was around 70 degrees and sunny.  The smoker was going good, which meant the bees would be calm, and they were.  We opened the vertical hive first.  The top box was mostly full of honey, with only the outside frames empty.  The combs were not fat, but did have honey in them.  The smell of goldenrod was very strong.  We took that box off to look below at the next box down, and it was completely full of goldenrod honey, each frame fat and packed, all ten frames.  That satisfied us that that hive is ready for winter.  It certainly has enough stores.

Next we opened the Long Langstroth hive.  We checked in the back where the mouse nest had been started the last time we opened the hives.  We found a nest of baby mice, all but one dead, with dead bees all around them indicating the bees had stung them to death.  One frame was damaged, completely chewed through by momma mouse.  We pulled the baby mice out and replaced the frames.  We continued with the inspection of the hive and while we were doing so, one person saw the bees actually pushing another dead baby mouse off the front entrance porch.  That was four feet across the hive floor from the mouse nest!  We found the bees had packed more honey in since the last field day, and also that all the capped worker brood we saw then had fully emerged and they were backfilling those combs with honey.  It looks like they have enough for winter, but just to make sure, we will add a few frames of honey from another hive just in case they don’t have enough.  After closing up the hive, we checked the front bottom board and found it did have a lot of varroa and some hive beetles and a few wax moths on it.  After seeing what they did to the mice, though, my thoughts are that this is an indication that they are hygenic bees because they are vigorous and healthy and we haven’t seen any of these pests in the hive itself.  Our next step is to put better inner covers on that have ventilation too small for a mouse and to raise the lid with a frame that has no openings in it for mice to get in.  For winter we will place a blanket for moisture control and insulation in the frame on top of the vented inner covers.  We will also put some 1/2″ hardware cloth over the entrance to keep the  mice out.

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September 14, 2013We had approximately 18 people in attendance at our September field day.  We had another great day for weather, inspite of a cold morning start, it was close to 70 degrees and sunny, very pleasant when we opened the hives.  Caroline Abbott and Ken Hoekstra opened the hives and discussed them with the group.  We first opened the hive that had swarmed and found it completely empty, not even any honey, all robbed out.  Wax moths had already moved in, which gave those in attendance an opporutnity to actually see a wax moth, the wax moth tunnels in the comb and the webs.  It was very educational.  We took that equipment down and stacked it by our empty equipment.  We know the wax moths will certainly do more damage before it gets cold enough to freeze them out, but it is mostly plasicell foundation, which can be scraped down to the foundation.  We also hope to start fresh with foundationless frames next year in our club hives, so we are not going to get too concerned about it at this point.

We next opened our split hive which is in traditional, vertical equipment.  The top box was completely empty with empty foundation.  We took it off and stored it in our storage pile.  The next box down was almost completely full of honey, which we left on for winter stores.  We did not look in the three brood boxes below.  We will save that for next month when we prepare for winter.  Our goal is to not have to feed any sugar water, but to have enough honey on the hive for winter.  We will install mouse guards next month.

Next we opened our Long Langstroth hive.  The bees had not expanded any further in the hive, but that is to be expected this time of the year.  They are contracting down for winter.  The three drawn combs we extracted and returned to the hive last month were examined.  All three had been strenghtened and repaired where there were cracks from extracting.  The furthest back from the brood nest was empty, the next closer had evidence that brood had been raised in it since we returned it, but was empty.  The closest one to the brood nest did have un-ripe nectar in it, mostly filled back up.  We noticed some debris in the bottom of the hive in the back third and upon investigation decided a mouse had entered the hive and started gathering materials for a nest.  We cleaned it out and made sure we put flatter ventilation sticks in so hopefully there wasn’t room for a mouse to get in again.  The top cover needs to be better prepared for winter.  Ken Hoekstra suggested we cover it in canvas for a temporary fix.  Since we don’t have another cover to place on the hive while we fix it, it has to be something we can place on the hive in position.  He also is going to cut a solid plastic sheet for a more stable bottom board for winter.  We will be able to slide this in on the groove that is in the bottom board with no disturbance to the bees.  We decided to pull out the front bottom board under the brood nest which is under a screened bottom board just to check for mites.  There were a lot of mites on the board, but none visible on the bees or drones or drone brood.  The mites were an accumulation from the entire season because we had not checked it previously.  Since we don’t do mite counts on the other hives, we are not sure if it is significant or not.  The bees looked healthy and strong and had a lot of capped worker brood in preparation for the winter generation of bees to cluster.  Caroline will go back in a few days to a week and check the bottom board again for a comparison.  When we check next month, if we are at all concerned that we took too much honey off the long hive for it to overwinter successfully, we will put some honey from another hive on it for additional stores.  The weather is already cooling off, and although there is a lot of goldenrod and aster blooming, there has already been one light frost, so we are not sure how much viable forage is left for them to collect.

After finishing at the apiary, we went back to Caroline’s garage and discussed wax rendering.  Three different methods were discussed and demonstrated.  The club has two wax molds available for rental for a minimal fee if anyone wants to borrow them for their own wax.

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August 10, 2013We had about 25 people in attendance at our August field day.  Ken Hoekstra and Caroline Abbott opened the hives.  We checked the weak hive that had swarmed first.  We found it almost completely empty, with just a few bees still thinking there was some reason to be there.  We will just let it go.  It doesn’t even have any honey to rob out.  At least someone somewhere got a nice swarm out of it, so they helped to strengthen the genetic pool in our area.

The other overwintered hive looked great.  We had collected 10 frames of honey off it last month.  We were able to collect nine more this month.  The tenth frame wasn’t drawn out on the side toward the wall, so we turned it around and gave them empty foundation to draw out so we have some nice, clean comb for next year.  We did not put foundationless frames in that hive yet.  We will wait until next season since it is midway through the season now.

The Long Langstroth hive looked good, but had not moved out any more since last month.  After the field day was over, it occured to me that I had removed the bottom board in the back to give them more ventilation.  They had not moved into that area at all.  There was also some mold on the top cover in the back over that area.  Looking back, I realized they probably had it too open and moisture had crept in from all the rain we got.  To correct that situation, I went back out a couple of days after the field day and replaced the bottom board so it is closed off again.  The bees seemed to appreciate that.  We collected six full deep frames of honey, completely capped, all natural comb.  We sold one as a full frame of honey, we cut two up for cut comb honey, and the other three we SUCCESSFULLY extracted without the comb falling apart.  When I went into the hive to replace the bottom board, I also returned the empty comb to the hive.  The bees seemed very grateful!  It will be interesting to see how it looks next month.  Now we have club cut comb honey available for sale which is completely natural, no foundation at all.  It is really pretty to look at.  We also have liquid honey in one pound containers for sale.

 

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July 18, 2013Update on the foundationless frames:  We took three foundationless medium frames which were attached on all four sides.  We successfully uncapped them with an uncapping knife, and, YES!! we successfully extracted them without damaging the comb!!!  We discovered that if we spun slowly, then gradually increased the speed, left it at a steady speed while extracting, then gradually reduced the speed until it stopped was less stress on the frames, and we were able to spin them as fast as frames with foundation if we used that method.

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July 13, 2013

We had a beautiful summer day to open the hives today.   There were around 20 people in attendance.  Many were brand new to beekeeping and had never attended a field day before.  Ken Hoekstra and Caroline Abbott opened the hives.  The first hive we opened was the overwintered hive to the north, which had been split and made its own queen.  Both Ken and Caroline noticed that it had very little activity on it before opening the hive.  We found no brood but a few drone cells, although the bees were not terribly grumpy.  We suspected they had swarmed.  As we dug further, we found several queen cells.  We did damage two of them, but noticed more that were undamaged and fully capped, so we closed the hive up and left it be to see what happens.

Next was the other side of that split, which last month we found queen cells in and expected it to swarm.  Well, the bees don’t read the books, and apparently the other one swarmed and this one went to work making honey!  The top box was empty plasticell, but the next box down which had empty drawn comb last month was full of honey. It was not capped, however, so we looked down further.  The next box was completely full of honey and completely capped, all ten frames.  We removed them one by one and brushed them and put them in a box to take back and extract.  The next box down still had some brood in it.  We put the empty plasticell box down by the brood nest and put the full super that needed to be capped on top and closed up that hive.

Now, the Long Lanstroth hive!  As soon as we opened it, we could tell the bees were already just beginning to move out to the final third of the hive.  We removed the middle inner cover and counted how far they had progressed.  They were working on the 24th frame!  We took it out to look at the bees working on the frame, and began to carefully detach the combs and lift them out to look at them.  The honey combs were attached on both sides, full of honey – very heavy – we estimate around eight pounds.  There were around ten of these full honey combs.  None of them were 100% capped, so we left them all for now.  We will eventually collect some, we will determine how much to leave on for winter and only take the extra.  It appears they have only a little brood left in the frames at the back of the brood nest, which we assume they will fill up with honey when the brood emerges.  We put everything back in the same order we took it out and closed the hive.  We then removed the bottom board in the back third of the hive which was blocking the screened bottom board, to give them some more ventilation. This is the same amount of ventilation the other hives have, the equivalent of one normal bottom board.

After the hive inspection, we went back to Caroline’s garage and uncapped and extracted three of the frames which we had collected.  We also cut natural comb out of a foundationless frame from Caroline’s hive and set it to drain for cut comb honey.  Everyone tasted the honey, which we know is Basswood honey because of its distict taste.  The comb honey was also very light, indicating it was pretty much pure Basswood.  As an experiment, Caroline is going to attempt to extract a few foundationless medium frames from her hives to see if they can withstand the extractor.  She will use only the ones that are fully attached on all four sides of the frame.  Stay tuned for the results of that!

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June 15, 2013Today was our club field day for June.  There were around 17 – 20 people in attendance, including several children.  Ken Hoekstra and Caroline Abbott opened the hives and explained to those in attendance what we were seeing.  We opened hive #1 first, the overwintered Carnolian hive that raised its own new queen.  It had three medium brood boxes stuffed full of brood and a completely empty super of plasticell foundation on top.  We removed the empty super and replaced it with a super of empty, drawn comb.  The Carnolians obviously do not like plasticell, and will refuse to draw it out.  Hive #2 was in exactly the same state, with the exception that since it had the advantage of the laying queen when we split, it had already progressed to the point of having several queen cells in progress, with larva inside, but not yet capped.  We removed the empty plasticell super and added a full super of empty drawn comb to that hive, too, but it likely will swarm anyway because the queen cells already have larva in them.  We have empty equipment set up with drawn comb near the hives, we hope that will serve as a bait hive if it does swarm, but the bees will make up their own minds about that!  There is not much we can do to prevent the swarming at this point.  It was a great educational moment because all in attendance could clearly see all three types of brood cells – worker, drone AND a queen cell, so they can tell the difference and identify them in their own hives.

Now, for the moment we had all waited for – to open the horizontal hive and check its progress.  The bees had begun to work on the 14th deep frame.  The hive had a LOT of adult drones, which we think is a good thing, because they will flood our area with their good genetics, and since this has been an active swarm season, there are a lot of virgin queens out there that will be mated, hopefully by our good drones.  This brood frame at right is already in at least its second setting of brood.  The worker brood is on the sides with the drone brood in the middle.  This is the way the bees have decided to arrange their brood on these foundationless frames.  All in attendance were able to see the comb building process, with the bees chaining together to make new wax.  The further back combs were filled with uncapped nectar.  The bees start small combs in about four places along the top bars, then connect the combs together as they build them down.  This leads to an interesting pattern of cells that are not uniformly lined up like they are on foundation.  Also, with the lack of foundation, when we hold the frames up to the light, we can see through them.  Several members of the club are now quite interested in using this type of hive in the future.

We are going to try to sell our remaining, unused medium depth plasticell frames for $2 apiece, which is what we paid for them, and use the money to buy medium depth foundationless frames to put on the regular Langstroth hives in the apiary.  The bees have shown us they don’t like plasticell, and we don’t want to use wax foundation because of the possibility of contamination by miticides because the wax used to make the foundation comes from large, commercial beekeepers that routinely use chemicals to control varroa mites in their hives.  This gets into the wax, and then is in the new foundation we put on our hives.  Since we don’t want this, we will try natural comb on our regular hives, too, since the bees have demonstrated how much they like it on the horizontal hive.

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May 25, 2013

Today Anneliese, Caroline and Elizabeth Abbott and one bee club member came to check the club hives.  We checked the horizontal hive first.  The bees have gone out to the eighth frame with comb building.  They are building all their combs nice and straight and in the frames.  It is really incredible to see.  Frame #2 and Frame #3 were drawn comb with foundation in them.  Those are solid packed with capped brood.  The natural comb is more varied, with drone cells in the middle, storage around the edges and worker brood also. They are making a lot of drones, which makes us happy because these are terrific bees and we want their genetics spread throughout our area.  We didn’t spot the queen, but we didn’t look too hard for her.  Her evidence was very clear, so we were satisfied.  Next we opened hive #1, the split that was queenless.  We added a box to give them more room.  There was pollen going in, everyone was calm and we found new eggs, indicating a new, laying queen!  We didn’t feel we needed to disturb them further to spot her since we found eggs.  Hive #2 was busy, full of bees and lots of new pollen going in, so we just checked it from the top and left them.  Everyone was so calm we did not need the smoker.  We will leave everything alone until the next scheduled field day.  We may be ready for honey supers then!

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May 16, 2013It has been nine days since we installed the package in the Long Langstroth hive.  It was a beautiful day.  We went out to the club apiary and added a super to each of the splits from the overwintered hive so they have plenty of room.  They looked great and had a lot of bees.  Now, for the moment of truth, to see how the bees are drawing out the foundationless frames in our Long Langstroth hive.  We put two frames of drawn comb in with one empty frame in front, so frame #1 is foundationless, #2 and #3 are drawn comb, #4 is foundationless and so are all the rest.  This picture is frame #4.  That is all natural comb, completely straight and in the frame!  The bees have almost attached it to the bottom of the frame.  From the top, it looks exactly like comb built from foundation. Frame number one is almost as full.  Frame #5 is half full, so is six and they have started on #7.  We did not add any sugar water to this hive, they are doing all this on natural forage.  We plan on waiting one week and checking around the 23rd – 25th to see how things are progressing.  We may be able to see if our split has successfully raised a queen by then.  We did notice they were not nasty at all today, we didn’t even need the smoker, which is a good sign that they have or are indeed raising a queen.  Anyone interested in coming out “unofficially” to help with that inspection, contact Caroline.

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May 7, 2013

Caroline Abbott, Elizabeth, Laura and Tim Abbott and nine club members attended our first scheduled field day of the year.  We had one Carniolian package from AWS bees to install.  We chose to install it in our new Long Langstroth horizontal hive.  In the hive we had two drawn brood combs and all the rest of the frames are the foundationless frames from Walter T. Kelley Co.  Before the installation the attendees assisted in leveling the hive to make sure the comb the bees make in the foundationless frames will be straight.  We then opened the front third of the hive with the two drawn combs in it to install the package.  The bees had encased the queen cage in so much comb we had to remove the side screen from the package box to get the queen cage out.  We dumped all the bees into the hive because it is up on a tall stand. We direct released the queen, she ran right down into the hive between the top bars.  We felt this was safe because she had been with the bees for several days, and they had built so much comb for her, they must have accepted her.  Since the dandelions are in full bloom and there is a lot of other bloom going on right now, we opted to not artificially feed.  We started at 8:00 pm, so our observations of the other two hives were limited because they were not as active at that time of day.

Hive #1 – the queenless hive in the original position of the overwintered hive had so many foragers trying to get in for the night, the entrance was stuffed with bees.  They look really good.

Hive#2 – The split with the queen had foragers returning with lots of dandelion pollen, indicating that she is busy rearing brood.  That hive looked good, too.

Future plans:  We will check in the horizontal hive in a couple of weeks to see how the comb building is coming along and to make sure the queen has a good laying pattern.  We will try not to disturb the other two hives until the next field day to allow them plenty of time to raise a new queen and get her mated and started rearing brood.  We will keep an eye on them from the outside to make sure everything looks good.  If we think the queenless hive needs more room, we will add a box, since the foragers were stuffing the entrance at night.  The next field day will demonstrate a routine hive inspection.

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Date:  April 27, 2013We called a special field day on extremely short notice because the weather was exceptionally good and we needed to thoroughly check the hive that had overwintered.  We had been told that Carniolians can build up really fast and need to be watched closely in the spring.  Only one person was able to join us for the inspection, but that was OK, we needed to take advantage of the weather.  We had set up the long hive yesterday and got it leveled and ready to go for the package when it arrives.  We added two drawn frames of comb to it today to help the package draw out straight comb and to give the queen somewhere to lay when they first come.  We also thought it might serve as a bait hive just in case our other hive or any others nearby decided to swarm.  We checked the over-wintered hive and found it very strong, with drones and queen cups started, which indicated it was ready to split.  We set up a bottom board and hive stand for the split and started looking for the queen.  Fortunately after much searching we found her!  We put the queen in the split and made sure she had plenty of extra room and an extra box of brood.  We left the queenless hive in the place the hive originally was so all the returning foragers will go there.  We put a frame of young brood with eggs in the middle of the brood nest with three cells with eggs notched so they will raise their own queen.  We will not open that hive for four weeks, allowing them to raise a new queen and for her to mate and begin laying eggs.

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April 16, 2013Today the daffodils were blooming and the sun was shining and it was around 55°.  We apologize that we did not schedule an official field day to check the hives, but since we have only had one sunny day in the past nine or so, we had to take advantage of it and do it when the weather cooperated.  As we expected, hive #1, the Italian overwintered hive from last year was dead.  However, the surprising part was that there were very few dead bees in the hive, even on the bottom board.  This suggests to us that the silly bees must have swarmed late in the season, because it was a very strong hive in the summer with a large population.  There were two full supers of honey and one partially full.  Hive #2, the Carniolian hive looked very good.  We removed the wood chip box, and there were a lot of bees busy about their work in the hive.  We added a box of mostly empty comb to give them some room until the weather gets better and we can really check them thoroughly.  We also gave them one of the full supers of honey from the dead hive.

We do not think the wood chip boxes were necessary because they were completely dry, which suggests that our other ventilation was sufficient and that the wood chips were not neccessary to absorb excess moisture.  It was a good experiment, but we will probably not repeat it next year.

We plan to install the Long Langstroth, horizontal hive in the club apiary on the next field day.  We will install our Carniolian package in that hive.  We will probably use honey from the dead hive instead of sugar water when we install since we have it.  We have received a total of 50 foundation-less frames to use in this hive.  So far we have assembled ten, but will have enough ready to start the hive when the package arrives.  We will use some drawn comb to help them make straight comb, and to give the queen a place to start laying right away.  There is a total of four boxes of drawn deep comb in the club apiary, so we can use as much as we want.  We will probably use ten, and then mix in the foundationless frames to encourage straight comb building.

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March 23, 2013A group of beekeepers with a special interest in top bar beekeeping met at Caroline Abbott’s home.  We discussed top bar beekeeping and Caroline introduced a horizontal Langstroth hive, or a Long Langstroth hive, which was built by club member Ken Hoekstra.  The hive is four feet long and will fit 42 Langstroth deep frames.  It will be managed the same way as a top bar hive, with the exception of using frames instead of just top bars.  We have ordered special “foundation-less” frames with wood starter strips to guide natural comb building by the bees.  It is our intention to install this hive in the club apiary and install a package of Carniolians on our first field day in April.  The purpose of this hive is to help those wanting to keep top bar hives, by using similar techniques in the club apiary.  Also we are experimenting with this hive for two specific reasons:  To encourage natural comb building to avoid contaminants in foundation and also to make a hive that is easier to manage for those who are not strong or physically able.  We want to increase accessibility to beekeeping to those who may not be able to handle lifting heavy supers off vertical hives.

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March 7, 2013Hive #1 & 2

Condition of hive: Hive #1 is the Italian hive which overwintered last year, originally a Georgia package. It was cold today, but mild, so we did not do anything but observe from the outside. Hive#1 had no visible signs of life, i.e. fresh dead bees in the snow in front of the hive, and no discernible buzzing when listening close to the hive body. Hive#2 is a Carniolian hive started from a northern California package last April. Hive #2 had evidence of life, i.e. fresh dead bees in the snow in front of the hive and we could hear buzzing in the hive when we listened closely.

Activities done to the hive: Since it was cold, we did nothing to the hives, but we are making an assumption right now that Hive#1 did not survive the winter, but so far Hive #2 seems to be doing well.

Notes on future hive needs: We will keep an eye on the hives. When the weather warms up we will determine for sure who is alive and who is dead. The Carniolians are darker, so it should be easier to see if any activity on the Italian hive is just robbing, or not. We will not attempt a complete hive inspection until the daffodils bloom.

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Apiary Journal 2012

by Caroline Abbott
Location: 1327 108th Ave. Otsego, MI  49078

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October 20, 2012

Activities: Due to rainy weather we met in the shelter of Caroline Abbott’s garage.  We discussed overwintering techniques and built two wood chip boxes to place on the club hives on a nicer day. Club members stapled window screening on the bottom of the boxes and filled them with wood chips.  We decided the screen was stretching from the weight of the chips, so we took the pieces from cutting down deeps in to mediums, and plan to use those as spacers to keep space between the bottom of the wood chip box and the top bars of the honey super.  We discussed ventilation and that it would be a good idea to put an upper entrance hole in the spacer.  We also decided to keep the ventilators in between the inner cover and top cover.

Notes on future hive needs: The wood chip boxes – the purpose of which is to provide moisture absorption and insulation – will be placed on the club hives.  Also when the weather gets colder, ½” hardware cloth entrance screens will be stapled on the hive entrances to keep mice out.  The swarm trap needs to be taken down and put away for the winter.

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September 15, 2012

Hive # 1 & 2 :

Condition of hive: Both hives looked great and had a whole full super of honey in the top box. Both boxes has some capped worker brood left in the hive, but the empty brood combs were being filled up with honey. There were still drones in the hives, but that is normal for this time of year. Activities done to the hive: We checked the first two boxes of hive #1 and checked all the way down on hive #2. Since all looked good, we left them as they were. We took down all the other equipment from the failed splits and put them away in the pile. The one has a mouse nest in it already, which was cleaned out and the mice sent scurrying.

Notes on future hive needs: In October, we will place mouse guards on the entrances. We do not need to check for honey stores because there is already enough. We will do a cursory check to make sure all is still well before bedding them down for the winter.

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August 4, 2012

Hive #1,2,3,4:

Condition of hive: First we checked hive #4 which was the failed Buckfast queen hive. We determined it was queenless and had about three frames of poor little bees who hadn’t figured that out yet, so essentially dead. Next, we checked hive #3, which was in about the same condition, maybe even less bees. After this, we checked hive #1, the overwintered hive, it was looking great and was full of honey. Hive #2, the Carniolian package was also doing well and had lots of honey. Activities done to the hive: We left the two queenless hives up for now, waiting until the poor bees die out, we don’t need the equipment yet. Hive #1 we collected 18 frames of honey off of. We re-filled the supers with empty comb. Hive #2 we collected 9 frames of honey – these were fat frames in a nine frame holder. These were also replaced with empty comb. We extracted nine frames of honey and left the rest for another day or field day.

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July 7, 2012

Hive # 1, 2, 3, 4:

Condition of hive: We lost the Buckfast queen. It is very sad. There was no evidence of her. The hive attempted to make a supercedure cell, but they apparently failed. There are not enough bees in the hive to survive. The other split is in a similar situation. Apparently they did not make a queen with the first split and by the time we notched the frame, the hive was too small to be able to successfully make a queen. Both Hive #1 and hive #2 are doing well. Activities done to the hive: It was extremely hot – over 100 degrees, so we did a very quick hive inspection and returned to Caroline’s garage to answer questions in the shade with lemonade and ice water.

Notes on future hive needs: Hives 3 & 4 will need to be taken down. We will check for any honey next month on the other two.

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June 9, 2012

Condition of hive: The Buckfast queen was not present upon inspection of the hive. We found a supercedure cell, so decided to wait to see if they successfully re-queen or not. We are not hopeful. The other split did not successfully make a queen from the queen cups in the split. We realized the queen was left in the original hive, not in the split, so it was very weak. Hive #1 looks good. Hive #2 , the package is looking good, too. Activities done to the hive: We used Mel Disselkoen’s “on-the-spot” queen rearing method, taking a frame of brood from hive #1 that had eggs and young larva in it. We notched three cells with eggs in them and placed it in the split. We are concerned that the hive is very weak and may not have enough bees left to successfully make a queen.

Notes on future hive needs: We will assess whether the Buckfast hive or the split successfully make queens, or whether both are too small to be able to do so. The other two hives look good.

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May 3, 2012
Hive # 1 , 2 & 3:

Condition of hive: Hive #1 was very active, but calmed down since we had given it more room, it had not swarmed. Hive #2 – the new package was acting good, looked like all was well. Activities done to the hive: We placed a new pallet on the ground by hive #1 and split the hive. There were queen cups with eggs in them in at least two boxes. Because of the strength of the hive, we made sure there were frames with queen cups in both halves of the split and gave equal parts to each side. We labeled the split hive #3. We left the swarm trap in place in case they swarm anyway.

Notes on future hive needs: Since the queen cups only had eggs in them, we figure they won’t attempt to swarm for about two weeks. Therefore, we will check them around 5-17 or 18th to see how they are doing and check the swarm trap. We will schedule a field day in early June to do a routine hive inspection and see how our new package queen is laying.

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May 1, 2012

Hive # 1 & 2:

Condition of hive: We received one package of Carniolian bees from AWS bees. We installed it in hive #2. All went well, we released the queen immediately because she wasn’t in an introduction cage. Hive #1 was so strong it was ready to split. We had put another box on top to give them some extra room the day before, and with club members’ help we put another box with only foundation under that to keep them occupied until we could split them. For extra insurance, we place a swarm trap in a small tree near the hives in case they decided to swarm before we had a chance to split the hive.

Notes on future hive needs: As soon as possible, we plan to split hive #1.

Club Apiary Journal for 2014

by Caroline Abbott

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October 23, 2014
Today our new shed arrived in the club apiary! It is an 8 X 10 wooden structure with an attached floor. The bottom boards are treated and it is painted with special paint that absorbs into the wood to make it last. It was fully assembled and was unloaded and placed by the company we bought it from, so it was fully functional immediately. We moved the pile of empty equipment that had been sitting on the concrete pad into the shed. We also added to it all the equipment that had been stored at Caroline’s house. Now all the club equipment is right there, so if we need anything on a field day, it is at hand. We also can clearly see what we have, so we don’t go out and buy equipment we don’t need. Best of all, it is all safe and dry and protected from all the elements. If you have a chance, thank the members of the Bee Club Board for approving this shed for our use.

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October 11, 2014
Today was a beautiful day for finishing up the winterizing for the club hives.  We leveled the hive that Irene Day had insulated with the foam insulation.  We then wrapped the middlehive with reflectix and put a layer of tar paper over that.  We reduced its entrance and flipped the inner cover over so that it had a top entrance that was not blocked by the insulation we put in the top.  We put an absorbant blanket in the top.  We used a 2″ spacer board to create the space for the blanket.  We put a wooden entrance reducer in the entrance. We made sure we had a heavy rock on the top.  Although we had worried this hive had gone queenless last month, we were happy to discover it felt much heavier this month.  We leveled it, so we felt its weight.  We did not choose to feed, however.  We saw many bees entering the hive with full pollen baskets, too.  So, we got it ready for winter and if it survives, great.

We added a layer of tar paper around the long hive to cover the reflectix for two reasons:  We wanted to cut down on the reflection so the bees wouldn’t get confused and miss the entrance in the winter, and we wanted to put another protective layer on the outside.  We flipped the front two inner covers on that hive so they had ventilation from the top.  We then put a blanket in the top of that hive, also with a spacer board, for insulation and water absorbtion.  We stapled a 1/2″ hardware cloth piece over the larger part of the entrance of the long hive to keep mice out.

The Club Board has approved and purchased a storage shed for us for the club equipment at the apiary!  It will be delivered sometime in the next two weeks, so we can get all our equipment stored away before winter sets in.

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September 13, 2014

We had a cool but dry day for our September field day.  It was very appropriate weather for our scheduled topic – preparing for winter.  Our one hive was already winterized as described below with foam insulation.  We added the entrance reducer to prevent robbing. We also took off the top super which they had stored more honey in since we added it, and then we put it on the hive that was robbed out for now.  My thinking was that if it could help that hive at all, it would and if not, the other hive would rob it back out and put it in the existing five boxes, so we wouldn’t have a six box tall hive going into winter.  I may still move it back, I will decide on a nice, warm sunny day.

We skipped over the hive that is robbed out for now, and went to the long hive.  We had a roll of Reflectix insulation – 16″ high by 25 feet – $13 at Menard’s.  We stapled it on the side of the long hive.  According to the package, it has an r-factor of 6 at only one layer.  The foam insulation only has an r-factor of 5.  We doubled it over when we stapled it because the hive was only 10 inches and the insulation was 16″.  We think this should be sufficient for the sides.  We placed a 3/4″ solid board under the long hive because it has a very thin bottom board.  We will not further reduce its entrance, but later on in the season will staple 1/2″ hardware cloth over the larger opening.  Also after danger of robbing is past, we will flip one of the inner cover boards so there is a vent out the top.  We will also put a blanket of absorbent material in the top and possibly a sheet of the Reflectix on top of that.

After finishing up the insulation we returned to Caroline’s garage for a discussion of other options for overwintering.  Next month we will finish up and if we think the one remaining hive is viable, will winterize it.

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September 8, 2014

The two vertical hives were sitting on very old and deteriorating wooden pallets, so it was necessary to remove the pallets and place something more sturdy underneath.  Not wanting to raise the height any more than necessary, we decided to get 24″ square patio blocks to put underneath each hive.  The original package hive that Irene Day had insulated had a rotten bottom board, also.  Since the weather was pleasant today, we decided to take advantage and move the hives off the old pallets and onto the patio blocks.  First we approached the smaller split hive.  I noticed several things immediately that did not look right.  1. – There were a lot of bees going in the inner cover upper entrances holes, 2. There were a lot of dead bees in front of the hive entrance, 3.  There were yellow jackets gaining entrance to the hive.  These are all signs of robbing.  This time of year it indicates queenlessness and a hive too weak to defend itself.  So, we opened the hive and began to unstack it.  Each box had abnormal activity, meaning the bees were scattered about the box, not working in an orderly manner as they should be in a queen-rite hive.  Then, the tell tale sign – each box as we lifted it and took it off was light, extremely light, as in robbed out of all honey.  So, we went through the motions of taking down the hive, removing the pallet, replacing it with the patio block and setting the hive back up in order, but it is only an exercise.  That hive is gone, dead, empty.  So, what happened?  Well, remember back when I attempted to mark the queen in the spring?  I got her covered with paint.  I worried then that she wouldn’t survive.  Well, she may have for awhile, then she died, I don’t know.  They were putting up honey even up to last month, so maybe something else happened.  All I know is that there is nothing salvageable left in that hive.

Fortunately, the hive Irene worked so hard to insulate looks extremely strong.  I am sure a lot of that honey from next door ended up in that hive.  So, now we had to take down that entire booming hive and replace the bottom board and hive stand and put the patio block down.  So, we just dived in, what else could we do?  We worked as fast as we could, being careful to only pry the hive bodies on the very corners so we didn’t damage the insulation.  We took the pallet out, placed the patio block down and put a new hive stand and a good solid bottom board down.  At this point we should have leveled the hive before stacking it back on.  Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my leveling tools.  At this point in the season they will not be building new comb, so it is OK that the hive is not level (and it certainly is not level!).  I don’t want to tear that wonderful hive down again this year, so we will wait until spring when it is lighter and smaller and level it then.

I didn’t want to check inside the long hive because I didn’t want to expose them to any attempt at robbing.  We will insulate the long hive at the field day on the 13th, and will discuss how we would have insulated the third hive.  We may still demsonstrate it next month on that hive even though it is dead, just for practice.

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September 3, 2014

Club member Irene Day volunteered to prepare hive boxes with polyfoam insulation according to the method invented by Robert Williams.  We decided the easiest way to do it in the club hives was for Irene to take home empty equipment and prepare it there, then bring it to the club apiary where we would transfer one hive into the prepared equipment.  Today was a nice day to do such a delicate task.  We had to remove every single frame from a very strong hive and transfer them one by one into the newly prepared equipment.  We tried to get our smoker going, but it really didn’t want to cooperate.  Irene’s beesuit got tested early on, and she discovered she had left some small opening in her veil.  After fixing that, we had no further incidents, though we both agreed it would be a great lesson to those who think it is a good idea to work the bees without a beesuit!  We first tore down the hive, placing each box backwards – top box on the bottom, then the next on that, etc.  We made sure the whole stack was carefully placed on the upturned top cover to prevent losing the queen in all this.  When we got to the bottom board we realized it was in very poor shape.  Since we need to take the hive down one more time this season to place a solid cement block under it, we decided to leave it for now.  There is a much better one in storage that belongs to the club we can put down before winter.  Irene put the first of her newly prepared boxes on the bottom board, then we moved the box that was now on the top of our stack, but was the bottom box on the hive, over next to our new box.  Working quickly as a team we took each frame out of the old box and placed it in the new, being careful to keep everytihing in the same order it was in.  We repeated this with each of the next four boxes – the hive had five mediums on it.  There was a lot of honey and it was full up to the top box, so we added a rather shabby top super with newly extracted combs to give them some more space for now.  That will not be left on for winter, so it is OK that it isn’t insulated and doesn’t look as nice as the rest of the hive.  We then added a special inner cover that has an upper entrance built into it.  Then we added the top cover that Irene had modified so it is now insulated.  The bees finally calmed down a little after we got the hive closed!  We knocked the bees out of the newly emptied equipment and stacked it on the cement slab next to the rest of the empty equipment.  We then collected one full frame from the horizontal hive to sell to Dale Anderson of “Confections with Convictions” out of Kalamazoo to make comb honey bon bons with.

August 9, 2014

We had pleasant weather again for our August field day.  About 20 people were in attendance.  Many had come for the first time.  The first hive we opened was the original package hive.  Last month we collected six frames of honey from this hive and added an empty super.  In the empty super we put a mixture of foundationless frames and empty frames with plasticell foundation.   When we opened the hive we found the bees completely avoided the plasticell, to the point of forming comb up from the frames below into the foundationless frames.  They had completely packed the super below which had six empty frames three weeks earlier.  So, we removed all the empty plasticell and found some drawn comb in our empty equipment to replace those frames with.  We collected six more frames of honey from this hive.  There was a full ten frames in the second box down, but we wanted to be sure not to take too much right now.  We replaced those with drawn comb from our empty equipment.  Our conclusion is that at least this season the bees do not like the plasticell and will do everything they can to avoid drawing it out.

We checked the other vertical hive next, which is the small split which made its own queen.  We found the exact same situation there, the bees were avoiding the plasticell.  So, we again removed all the empty plasticell frames and replaced them with drawn comb from our equipment stack.  We were able to collect three frames of honey from this hive, which is quite remarkable considering it started from three frames of brood and the returning foragers from the other hive.  We were conservative there, also, we could have collected more, but wanted to err on the side of caution and also to have an even division of three frames for extracting.

Next we checked the long hive.  They had completely replaced and filled the three frames we had collected last month.  We put the three empty drawn combs back in at the back of the hive for them to fill up.  We did not collect any more from that hive, wanting again to be sure that we leave enough for winter.

After finishing up at the apiary we went back to Caroline’s garage to uncap and extract our nine frames of honey.  Each medium frame yields about 3 pounds of honey, which is about a quart.  We uncapped all nine frames and extracted them.  Several people tried uncapping and we discussed various methods for uncapping, using a cappings scratcher, a hot knife, cold knife and a roller.  We also discussed crush and strain and the options available for making comb honey if one doesn’t have access to an extractor and only has a few frames of honey.  We then bottled a few one pound bottles, discussing and demonstrating Michigan labeling laws.  Attendees immediately bought the bottles to take home.

Next month we will discuss and begin winter preparations.  Our plan is to insulate all three club hives.  We will make plans on how to do that, the horizontal hive will have different challenges than the vertical hives, but we already have some good ideas from people who are attending the meetings.

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July 19, 2014

We had another gorgeous day for a field day, temps in the low 80’s and lots of sunshine.  All three hives looked nice and busy when we arrived, which was a good sign, and a relief to me, that our clumsy marking of queens last month didn’t do any damage.

We first checked the vertical package hive.  We found the top super completely full of honey.  The outside four frames were uncapped, which may have been because they were completely full and didn’t want to cap those in case they needed to use those cells to put more honey in.  We collected six fully capped frames, replaced those with empty frames and then added a full super of empty frames on top so they have plenty of room to store honey.  Sometimes when they are full they won’t swarm, they will just quit working and not store any more honey, especially as the season progresses past normal swarming season.

Next we checked the small split.  It was doing wonderfully.  It had its super about half full, but not capped.  We added another empty super on top so it would have plenty of room, since we usually only check those hives once a month during field days and the honey flow is on right now.

We moved on to the long hive next.  It had started working on the 24th frame out of 32!  Very impressive.  We took out three very full frames of honey and replaced those with empty frames.

We took the six medium and three deep frames back to the garage to extract.  We uncapped and extracted all the frames, getting around two gallons of honey.  We bottled up 18 one pound bottles right there and labled them so they can be sold immediately.

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June 21, 2014

We had a beautiful day on the first day of summer for our field day.  The clouds quickly gave way to a sunny sky and pleasant temperatures to check the bees.  We were anxious to check the split to see if it had successfully made a queen.  The top box was an empty super put on two weeks ago, the second box had honey in it.  The next box down was the one we were interested in.  It had the brood.  We found lots of brood, young and capped, then we saw her!  A beautiful, big Italian queen.  That was interesting since her mother was a Carnolian, but obviously her father was an Italian.  Since we had a marking kit with us, we were able to get her marked, although it was a little messy due to my inexperience at marking queens.

Next, we opened the “mother” hive.  It’s top box was mostly empty, but the next box down was completely full of honey, although it wasn’t capped yet, so not ready for harvest.  In the next box down we found a lot of brood and our lovely, Carnolian queen!  We decided to mark her also, since it would make it easier to spot her on field days.  The pen was messy, and she was moving, so we got some paint on her wings.  One of the ladies attending said she had read that the attendants would clean that off if it was still wet, so we quickly released her and hoped that it didn’t cause her any harm.  We decided not to check the last box, since everything else looked so good, so we closed up that hive and moved on.

Then we opened the horizontal hive.  The bees had propolized the screen on the first two inner covers. They had filled out to the nineteenth frame.  There were around four or five completely full, capped frames of honey, then in front of that the frames had brood, lots of brood.  Since it was looking so good, and we didn’t want to disturb it too much, we passed around one of the full frames of honey, then replaced it all and closed up the hive.  We figured we had already found the queen in two hives and that one was obviously there and doing her job well, so we didn’t want to disrupt it more than necessary.

Lastly,  we all cooperated and scraped and cleaned up all the frames in the empty equipment.  There were several families of mice and a lot of ant colonies that got displaced by our efforts.  We had moved a slab of concrete over earlier in the day, which we were able to stack the cleaned equpiment on.  We sealed up any openings large enough for mice to enter with tape.  Hopefully the equipment will stay in decent shape in this arrangement.

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June 6, 2014

Prior to leaving town for 10 days, I added a super to each of the Langstroth hives.  Both the split and the “mother” hive look good.  The “mother” hive, which was the one we rubber-banded the comb into had several rubber bands pushed out the front entrance!  I removed them.  I didn’t look inside, just put a super on, so we can look inside on the next field day.  There is a lot blooming over in the club apiary and the bees were busy. The long hive had activity out to two-thirds of the hive.  There wasn’t a lot of new comb building, but they had drawn comb built out that far already, so apparently didn’t need to build more yet.  It looks really good, though.

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May 24, 2014

Sorry no pictures, today, just an update on the hives.  We decided to do a split like I discussed at the last field day, using C. C. Miller’s method.  We went into the vertical hive and found one frame with eggs.  We notched three cells with eggs in them and placed that in an empty medium box.  We checked very carefully to make sure the queen was not on the frame.  Then we found a frame of mostly capped brood and put it in the box, too, also making sure the queen was not on it.  We decided the hive was strong enough to be able to give up three frames of brood, so we took another frame of capped brood, again making sure the queen wasn’t on it.  This was the hive we rubber-banded the burr comb into the empty frames.  They had attached the burr comb and built it out somewhat.  They had also built new comb in the adjacent frames, one of them was 3/4 full of comb and had drone brood in it.  The bottom box was completely full, even out to the 10th frame, so after moving the brood nest back together and adding three empty frames on the outside, we moved the hive over to a new location, added a top, empty box, and closed it up.  We then put the new split on the location of the original hive, which gives it the returning foragers.  We also put an empty box of drawn comb on that hive.  Since our next field day is not for a month, we wanted to make sure there was plenty of room for them.  We chose today to do this because:  Our next field day is not until June 21st, which is the summer solstice and marks the end of the time of year for making splits.  I like to leave these splits a whole four weeks before checking, just to make sure they have time to raise a queen and for her to get mated and start laying.  Right now is optimum forage and perfect time for raising a new queen and for the hive to build up adequately to produce honey this season.  So this way we will be able to check this hive at the next field day to see if they successfully raised a new queen.

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May 10, 2014

Today was a beautiful day for a field day, right around 70 degrees and mostly clear and only a light breeze.  This is the first field day since installing the bees, so we were going to check their progress and remove sugar water cans because the dandelions are in full bloom as well as a lot of other things, so there is adequate natural forage for the bees at this time.  First we opened the regular hive.  Apparently we had not given them enough space for the queen to lay eggs!  Here is a picture of the burr comb they produced to give her more room.  It is very curved because they attached it to the sugar water can and it was coming up from the brood box below.  We had mixed empty drawn comb and honey frames in the bottom box, so the honey left no room for brood rearing, and we had not put an empty box on top for them to move up into.  So, we got some empty frames and rubber bands and cut the comb out and put it in the empty frames secured with the rubber bands.  Thank you to Mel Church for giving us a demonstration of how to do this.  Even though it was a small amount of comb, it did have some brood in it, and we thought it was a valuable skill to demonstrate, so we put the comb in a couple of frames.  We then put those frames in the center of an empty box, with three other empty foundationless frames with them.  We then put empty drawn comb with foundation on the sides to help them make straight comb and placed the box on top of the brood box the comb came out of.  We removed the sugar water can, of course!

Then we checked the long hive.  The bees had pretty much worked out the first third of the hive and had a lot of capped brood.  Not wanting to disturb things too much, we did not carefully check for the queen or for young brood because we didn’t want to keep the frames out of the box too long, or remove them too far.  We think that is how we lost the queen last year.  We removed the 2/3 cover board, the deep super that housed the sugar water and the sugar water can.  We placed notched inner covers on that had a total of 13 notches for ventilation.  Because our ventilation system last year allowed mice and robber bees to enter, we stapled window screen over the center holes in the inner covers so air could flow, but mice and robbers could not enter the hive.  We then replaced the proper top cover on the hive.  We were able to clean up the area, putting our displaced deep frames back in the boxes we had used to house the sugar water on the two hives and we got them all neatly stacked, safe from the weather.

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April 16, 2014

We received two packages of Carnolian bees from AWS on the afternoon of April 14, 2014.  The weather was very winter-like and the forecast for the next two nights was lows around 22 degrees.  We orginally had planned to  install the bees in the club apiary on the evening of the 15th, but the wind chills were at 17 degrees during the day and we had high winds and snow on the ground.  The bees were in an un-heated garage and had a rough first night, so I put them in a brooder tank with baby chicks with a heat lamp to wait it out until we installed on the evening of the 16th.  The high for the day on the 16th was around 48 degrees and it was sunny, but still windy.  We waited until 8:00 pm to install the hives.  I had gone out earlier in the day and prepared the hives for installation.  I mixed the frames in the brood chambers with drawn comb and honey frames.  However I wasn’t confindent we had enough honey to keep them until we have enough natural forage, so I prepared to feed sugar water.  I found empty hive bodies to place on top of both the regular vertical hive and the long hive.  When we designed the long hive we cut a 2/3 piece of wood to use as a temporary top cover so we could use a regular hive body on 1/3 of the hive with a regular top cover to feed sugar water.  So I set it up in that way.  I wanted everything ready so we could quickly install the bees because it was cold, especially by 8:00 pm.  Right at 8:00 pm we started.  We opened the first package, removed the sugar water can and the queen cage.  The queen looked lively.  We popped her cork, placed her on top of the frames, still in her cage, dumped the bees in the package on top of her, put some crumpled up newspaper in the empty box along with a can of sugar water.  The paper was to discourage the queen from going up and the bees building comb off the roof.  We finished the regular hive, closed it up and moved on to the long hive.  We repeated the process there.  The bees were a little livelier, so we had to pound the box pretty hard to get them all out.  We wanted as many as possible inside the hive because it was too cold for them to crawl in by themselves.  We shut it up and hoped for the best.  I will check them on a nice day in a day or two to see how everyone settled in.  We will leave the sugar water on until there is adequate bloom for the bees to forage on their own, hopefully dandelions before too long.

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April 3, 2014

Well, going into winter last fall we knew our long hive was dead, so we didn’t have to worry about getting it through the winter.  Our one remaining live hive was a traditional vertical Langstroth hive.  We had one of the coldest, snowiest winters on record.  We did not wrap the hive, and at one point it was buried in snow up to the third box from the ground.  The long hive, pictured at the right was buried up to its entrance which is three cinder blocks high.  The winter was too much for the live hive.  The bees survived for awhile, as evidenced by travel stains and some dead bees at the top entrance (the bottom entrance was buried all winter in snow).  All winter it was impossible to get to the hives except on skis.  In early March I skiied out to the hives and discovered the remaining hive was indeed dead.  On March 31, 2014 I was able to get to the hives by walking down to them, the snow was melted.  I took the hives apart and cleaned them up to prepare for packages coming in a week or so.  There was very little mold in the vertical hive, which was a great relief.  I cleaned up the few dead bees I found, there were not very many.  The cluster was very small by the time it died, it eventually just got too small to survive the cold.  There is about a box and a half worth of honey still on the hive, these were in the second and third boxes from the bottom.  I will go back before the packages arrive and set up:  1. A bottom box with drawn comb and maybe an empty frame or two 2. A full box of honey (or mostly full) to place on top of the empty brood box to feed the new package. 3. a spacer so I can lay a queen cage on it if I decide to do that.  I may direct release the queen if I feel it is safe.  AWS doesn’t use introduction cages, so it is easier to direct release the queen if we feel the bees have already accepted her.

I took apart the long hive and cleaned off the bottom board.  There were dead bees and a lot of wax particles from the robbing that occurred in the fall.  Under the screened bottom board and on top of the sliding solid bottom board a mouse had taken up residence.  I unceremoniously dumped her and her nest on the ground.  I left the solid bottom out for now so she won’t move back in.  I put it under the top cover for safe keeping for now.  Otherwise that hive was clean because it was unoccupied all winter.  I will put honey frames in it to feed the new package from the other hive.  Last year there was adequate forage when we installed so we didn’t need to feed, but that will not be the case this year.

 

Occasionally, speakers at our club meetings provide further information. Please utilize as you desire.

MSU Suggested Resources

MSU Beekeeping video on purchasing bees

MSU Beekeeping video on installing a package

University of Minnesota Bee Lab video on installing a package

University of Minnesota Bee Lab video on inspecting a recently installed package

MSU Beekeeping video on installing a nuc

MSU Pollinator Initiative

MSU Beekeeping webpage

List of recommended resources for beekeepers

Michigan State University Beekeeping Facebook page

Michigan Pollinator Initiative Facebook page

Heroes to Hives Facebook page

MSU Bee Blog

Ask beekeeping questions to MSU through Ask Extension

Other Resources

Honey Processing, Clarence Rudat’s Presentation 10/22

Keith Nichols’ Overview of Equipment

Terry Kane, DVM’s Biosecurity Checklist

Daniel Weston’s Bee Relocation Presentation / 2022

Daniel Weston’s Swarming FAQ / 2022 (PDF)

Recommended Beekeeping Equipment List / Keith Nichols / 2021 (PDF)

Comb Honey Guide / Laryssa Kwoczak / 2021 (PDF)

Brood Evaluation / Rich Wieske / 2021 (PDF)

Brood Evaluation / Colony Inspection Datasheet 2021 (PDF)

Overwintering Resources:

What We Do to Successfully Overwinter in SW Michigan / Charlotte Hubbard (PDF)

Greatest Generation – Preparing for Winter / Meghan Milbrath / July 2020 Article from American Bee Journal (PDF)

 

Apitherapy / Ross Conrad / October 9, 2019 Handouts

Apitherapy Handout – Bee Venom Therapy Introduction (PDF File)

Apitherapy Handout – Bee Venom Therapy 2 (PDF File)

Apitherapy Handout – Honey (PDF File)

Apitherapy Handout – Pollen (PDF File)

Apitherapy Handout – Propolis (PDF File)

Apitherapy Handout – Royal Jelly (PDF File)

 

Products from the Hive / Sheldon Schwitek / January 2015 Presentation

More Products of the Hive (PDF File)

Salves, Lotions, Lotion Bars and Soap (PDF File)