Crazy Tuesday

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Jason

Tuesday morning started out awesome.  We got our first rain since 5/7/12.  I was up working on a post about record keeping.  Holly came in with word of a chicken suffering from a leg problem.  We removed the bird evaluated it and came up with a plan.  We are gaining experience with a growing list of chicken maladies.  Talking over some of the different conditions we have gotten chickens through, Holly said, “We need to be writing this #$%^ down!”.   Record keeping……  We were on the same wavelength!

Then the dog disappeared.  Turns out his wireless collar went dead and he went for a stroll.  After Jada found the dog I returned to the computer to find it off.  I tried to restart it and it would not boot.  This time the symptoms are different than when something similar happened a couple of weeks ago.  I built that machine in 2005, those components are older than most.  Whether it is planned obsolescence or just bad luck that machine is down for a while.  A light in our utility room then quit working.  All of this and it wasn’t noon yet!

I didn’t get the post done yesterday.  I did however put up a summary of My Hives.  It is a portion of my record keeping documentation.  I am up an running on an Linux machine so there may be fewer videos and pictures for a while.

I will be working on things to get them up and running.  There may be a couple of days without a post, but I am not going anywhere.

Posted in What's going on.. | 4 Comments

First bee education experience

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Jason

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to Jada’s 4-H group about something I like to talk about.  Holly said something months ago about meeting the group for a basic introduction to bees.  Time passed and I had not gone to a 4-H meeting.  As with all things “beekeeping”, I didn’t know what to I was getting into, and as usual I got more out of it than expected.

Poster on the life cyle of bees.

I was a worried about speaking to a younger group.  I guess the ages ranged from 6 to 14 years.  I was afraid of being above the heads of some, while being too basic to hold the interest of others.  I have been accused, correctly I might add, of lacking patience.  So teaching anyone, let a lone young people gives me the opportunity work on it.

I don’t know why I was concerned.  They were all very respectful.  When we started they were at attention seeming generally interested.  I kept it simple, with an overview of the queen, drones, and workers and all their jobs in the hive.  We worked our way through the hive, importance of pollination, and what bees are up to during each of the seasons.   Continue reading →

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What is Natural Beekeeping?

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Jason

Well it’s Friday so am I going to ruffle any feathers?  I hope not.  I just am looking for the answer to, “What is natural Beekeeping?”  I read and hear of natural beekeeping all of the time.  Normally it is on some forum where someone is touting a specific hive design over another.  I will admit, though it is one of my tags, I cannot claim to be a natural beekeeper.  What I do with my painted boxes and frames is inherently un-natural.

Neolithic cave painting of someone harvesting honey.

Here is a picture of what I call NATURAL BEEKEEPING!  These guys are what I call HONEY LOVERS!!!.  No one would think it a good idea to go around and decimate wild colonies to fill the world’s honey demand.  I think that would be a horrible idea, but it would be natural no doubt.

Personally I would have loved to been a fly buzzing around as one neolithic guy said to the other, “Hey man I have an awesome idea!  Why don’t YOU climb way up there and get us some honey and brood to munch on!  Here is a torch we can’t keep lit, go on… everything will be fine!”  Back then nobody would have been ashamed of having a crazy uncle.  They would have HOPED they had one!

So if true natural beekeeping is something we cannot practice with any sustainability perhaps we can do some things to mimic it.

I have seen bees living in trees, crawlspaces, overhangs, block walls, wood walls, old car motor compartments, as well as several different hive designs.  They seem to make a pretty good go of it anywhere they decide to call home.  So why the big fuss over hive design?  Every design will have its own pros and cons.  How bout instead of labeling a certain design as more natural or more commercial we focus on trying to keep our bees alive and sharing information.  I hope to dabble in alternative designs in the future.  I might just learn something.

Can you tell me what natural beekeeping is?  Leave me a comment…

I am going to be working bees most of the day today and I have my tripod at least “rigged” together.  So hopefully next week I will have more content about what is going on with them.

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Inspiration from across the pond

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Jason

There are many facets of beekeeping.  Some are fun, exciting and rewarding while others are tedious and boring.  This year I have assembled and wired hundreds of frames already and need to do about a hundred more.  It makes me a little stir crazy.  While doing this necessary (tedious) work I often times listen to podcasts about various subjects that interest me.

Phil Chandler

This week I finally got another installment from The Barefoot Beekeper Podcast by Phil Chandler.  This episode was audio from a talk he gave earlier this month, What can we learn from bees? Talk at Trill Farm, Dorset May 11 2012.  Mr. Chandler is a champion of the top bar hive.  I don’t run that system, but hope to give it a try some day.

At one point in his presentation (~23:45) he begins to talk about natural selection in bees and how honeybees over time adapt to certain geographical regions.  He continues about the British Black Bee a native race that was highly adapted to the weather and climate of Britain .  He speaks of the shortcomings of importation of bees and goes on to say “local bees are the best bees by and large.  The bees are adapted to the local climate.”

Continue reading →

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Another observation on swarming behavior

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Jason

This trap picked up a swarm on 5/31/2011 waiting to be deployed. Note that there is another trap in the background.

I am becoming more and more convinced about another observation in swarm trapping.  Last year (2011) I began the spring with only three hives.  They were all relocated to Hive Site 01 (HS01).  I had just began trapping and did almost all of the hiving of trapped swarms here at my home (HS02), so I never had a really large strong colony here for very long.  Once a hive was determined to be queen-right I would relocate it to its permanent home.  There always seemed to be at least two or three loaded traps around  waiting for deployment.  Consequently in 2011 four swarms of bees were trapped right here in traps that were just laying around.   Continue reading →

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Top Entrances

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Jason

Last winter I read a lot about top entrances on beesource.  If any one has seen my earlier posts they are probably aware that some of my hive sites are prone to high grass.  I am always looking for ways to work with nature as opposed to fighting it all the time.  I view cutting grass as fighting nature as well as a HUGE waste of time and gasoline.  Allowing the bees to do their work without mowing and weed eating is a goal of mine.

As with a lot of things I “read”, I feel the need to try them on a small scale prior to just diving right in.  In February I made 10 top entrances for evaluation.  The construction was quite easy.  Materials consisted of 1 sheet of 3/4 inch plywood and some shims from Menards.  They were made so they could be used with the current telescoping covers already present on all of the hives.  The goal was to create a 5/16″ bee space at the front of each hive. Continue reading →

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Trapout Update

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Jason

It is time to post and update on the trapout.  As with most things in beekeeping, if this fails it is going to be my fault.  I had some non-beekeeping things come up last week in addition to work and some poor weather.  The trapout got neglected.  It was certainly working at least initially.  I was checking it daily on the way home from work.  Then five days went bye.

TOB loaded in the truck ready to hit the open road.

What’s the worst that could happen?  You are about to find out.  On 5/18 the TOB was retrieved and moved to the home apiary.  The frames in the TOB were transferred to a hive body.  The queen could not be found, but that is not surprising since I have trouble with that all the time.  The frame that was next to the escape funnel had been drawn down to the point that the comb was flush with the end of the escape.  I believe this made it possible for the queen as well as all the other bees to negotiate the escape and get back into the block wall.  Not a good sign.  I have no pictures or video of the actual transfer because I destroyed my tripod on 5/17. Continue reading →

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Everything can be applied to beekeeping.

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Jason

I have been running myself ragged this week so I am not going to have an extremely long and in depth post today.  I do however want to give you something to think about.  Last week I took my daughter to the eye doctor.  I had forgotten to take my own reading material.  There was an entire table filled with magazines at the office.  I was getting annoyed because all of them were either about golf, fancy houses, or the lives of celebrities I couldn’t care less about.

After rifling through at least fifty or sixty of them I got a hold of an issue of Newsweek.  It had a child sitting on the front of it.  The cover read, “When I Grow Up, I’m Going to Weigh 300 Lbs. Help!”  With the other options available, I sad “what the heck!”.  I began reading the article by Gary Taubes. The actual title was “Why the Campaign to Stop America’s Obesity Crisis Keeps Failing“.

According to Mr. Taubes, recent studies indicate that America’s obesity problem has little to do with inactivity and video games.  There is evidence it has EVERYTHING to do with dietary choices, particularly too many carbohydrates — sugar.

Poor diet leading to health problems….  I can apply THAT to bees. Continue reading →

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New observation on swarming behavior

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jason

New behavior

Recently I have become aware of a behavior that bees are displaying around my swarm traps.  I missed it before because I had been putting traps inside woods or along wood-lines never knowing exactly when they were occupied.  Due to the fact that gas is expensive and I have 30 traps out, this year I have been placing many traps in people’s yards.  Along with making some friends and acquaintances

more interested in bees, I have received FREE trap monitoring.  Also it is becoming more and more apparent that  in my area, a trap in someones sparsely treed lawn with open fields all around is very productive.  Those traps seem to be getting hit more this year than my “in the woods” boxes.  This is patterning as referred to in Looking for Spots.  When you observe a productive pattern…..  REPEAT! Continue reading →

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Hiving a Trapped Swarm

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Jason

You made it to the point of  pollen coming into your trap.  You have moved it to its final location and now it is time to transfer the frames from the trap into a hive body.  This should be done on a good bee day when the work force is out flying.  The more they are working the better the transfer will go.

Continue reading →

Posted in Feral Bees, HowTo, Posts, Swarm Trapping | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments