It’s Friday

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Jason

Well it’s Friday again. This week has been fairly stress-free and hence the “frustrative” juices just haven’t been flowing so I am not going to rant about anything. Instead I figured I would shed a little light on some of the other activities that are being juggled around here with the 21 + or – beehives.

Some Black Soldier Fly larvae.

The Black Soldier Fly (BSF) composter is churning out chicken feed, a.k.a – larvae. If you have never heard of BSF composting you are in for a treat. If you have chickens, fish, or any other animal that may enjoy fly larvae it is a great way to turn spoiled food and garden waste into something useful and nutritious. BSF larvae display an interesting behavior that makes them self harvesting. When they transform into their last larval stage they do not have mouth parts or a digestive system. At that point they lose interest in the putrid pile of whatever they have been feasting on and try to crawl away. I have a commercial unit that has a ledge on an incline going up the sides of the composter. Once the larvae make it to the top of the incline they reach a hole that drops them into a five gallon bucket. My chickens love them, though they haven’t gotten to eat a lot of them yet. I have been turning most of the larvae loose in hopes of getting their numbers up more in my immediate area. These things are HUGE and the flies they turn into are large as well. There is a lot of information about BSF on the Internet, and one thing that I read was THAT THESE THINGS ARE ABLE TO KEEP A COMPOSTING PILE OF FILTH FROM STINKING. My wife and daughter will attest that this has not been our experience. 🙂 I am hoping that as time goes by more and more BSF will be living natively around me and they can actually keep the smell down. Continue reading →

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We have a LEANER!!!

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Jason

This beauty is an example of what I am dealing with.  I must thank Holly for helping me get things steadied.

Earlier in the year I had mentioned that I was using a new type of hive stand.  I never want to recommend anything untested and this new stand is an example why.  I still like the stands and with some tweaking they will be great, BUT I am having leaner(S)!!!

On the first year hives everything has been great.  Most of these are at two deeps.  A couple may have a single honey super on them.  Where I am having problems is in my second year and older hives.  Many of these are sporting 3-4 deeps along with anywhere from 2-5 supers.  I am finding as these hives pick up weight the 4 x 4 legs of the stands are beginning to settle into the ground.  It would be fine if they all settled evenly, but the problem is they DON’T DO THAT!   Continue reading →

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Saturday Morning Cutout

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Jason

This is what things looked like when we initially arrived at the scene.

On Saturday 7/28 I helped a couple of friends with a cut out.  It was at an old abandoned house about 25 minutes South of me.  I am not a huge fan of removing established feral bees, but this house is going to be torn down before this winter.

We arrived at the house at approximately 6:00 a.m.  Some of the loose siding boards were removed first.  The guard bees let all three of us know that they weren’t interested in leaving.  Though all of us were wearing protective equipment we each took quite a few stings.  Continue reading →

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Foundation

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Jason

I have seen some bad reviews of plastic foundation lately on some other blogs and feel the need to put my two cents in.  Earlier this spring I pulled and photographed some frames from some dead-outs to show the building results on different types of foundation as well as on foundation-less frames.

Wax foundation frame.

First I will show wax foundation.  The bees built well on this.  They provided themselves nice worker sized brood comb.  They also made pass-throughs on the edges of the comb as well as a hole in the center.  I have seen this configuration in several cutouts.  They will provide themselves passageways through the comb.  I would make the assertion that this must be more natural than using plastic since they have no way of constructing pass-throughs. Continue reading →

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What to do?

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Jason

This year has been busy thus far.  Things were hot and heavy through May and June, but now there aren’t as many pressing issues until extraction time.  There are some laggard hives, but for the most part all the production hives were supered and now I’m just waiting on them to finish some capping.  Extraction time is being planned for sometime mid-August.

Mold growing on Quilt Box burlap.

It is during times like these that scheming begins.  This year there is going to be an overwintering experiment.  I have an issue with the quilt boxes I use for overwintering, too much moisture.  Last year when they were removed all of them had mold growing on the burlap.  I know it is growing because the moisture is being retained in the burlap, which in one way is good.  Better the moisture be there and retained than to be dripping back down on a cluster of bees.  I don’t like the idea of mold growing on the inside of the hives so I need to think of something. Continue reading →

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Rubber bands

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Jason

The pieces of comb were held in by these rubber bands. The bees remove them.  You can see them here at the entrance to the hive.

It has been two weeks since the “Double-wide Cutout”.   There still has not been a good rain.  The bees have been left alone in the hopes that the queen made it into the bee vacuum.

Yesterday (7/22/12) this hive was minimally inspected.  Since they have been removing the rubber bands I was afraid to move any of the combs.  Mainly this inspection was to put a top entrance on the hive and to see how the bees responded.  I can normally tell the queen-right nature of a hive fairly quickly once the hive is opened.  Continue reading →

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Sunday Morning Cutout

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Jason

The spoils. This all had to be dealt with and cleaned up.

Mike arrived at my house promptly at 06:00 on the morning of the cut-out. I had everything loaded in the truck and was ready to pull out the drive. We were at the double-wide by 6:15. We set up the generator and bee-vac and I removed the access door to the crawl space.

The goal was to use the vacuum to get as many bees off of the combs as possible prior to cutting them loose. Having done this several times before I can tell you I will never attempt another cut-out without a vacuum. I try to be very careful, but anytime you are removing bees form a structure there will be losses. Bees get killed so easily whether smashed between combs or drowning in honey that begins to run when you start cutting. The vacuum makes it easy to remove as many bees as possible to decrease the number of fatalities. Continue reading →

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Chicken Feed :\

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Jason

These birds will assist us with wax worm removal today.

Recently a friend of mine noticed a drop off in activity of a hive.  I visited it about 2 weeks ago.  There was definitely a problem that needed attention, but there were a ton of people around.  I did not want upset bees taking out their aggression on fellow July 4th party goers.

On 7/13 I finally made it back over there to take a look at what was going on.  Sadly it was too late.  Wax worms were crawling all over the place.  There were probably only 100 or so bees left inside the box. Continue reading →

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Prepwork the Nightwork before a Cutout

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Jason

An entire week has already passed since I did a cutout on 7/8/12. This was a fairly easy one but it was still a lot of work. In today’s post I am going to discuss preparation for this cut-out. The most important part is to plan ahead. It is not good to leave a job like this in the middle to get more tools, water, or some other forgotten item.

Preparation –

These are always big jobs, the more prep work you do the better off you’re going to be. The day before I visited the house to take a good look at the site and form a plan. I took a camera so that I could review the images once back at home. That way I could mentally go through the cutout while viewing the pictures. The colony was under a double-wide trailer in the crawlspace. Access was easy, but quarters were going to be cramped and there were a bunch of bees in there.

Continue reading →

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Hive types

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Jason

It’s Friday! Soooo……..  Let’s have a serious discussion about hive types and lets all try to remain civil. I don’t understand why people get so hung up on this subject. It has all the makings of a battle between religions. It is my belief that bees don’t care what their hive type is. They will attempt to live anywhere they get the opportunity. I’ve seen pictures of hives setting up shop in a cluster of branches totally exposed to the elements, under houses, in walls, soffits, concret block walls, and trees. I did a cutout of a 10 inch column on the front porch of a house this morning.  I probably missed a couple but you get the point. None of those are exactly like any of the commonly used hive designs used here in North America. Currently I use Langstroth hives for several reasons. Continue reading →

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