...building more supers

Our bees have been so quick in their honey making that we decided to buy more supers. I went to Pigeon Mountain Trading Company in LaFayette, GA.  They have very reasonably priced supplies.  Because I am cheap, I decided to save $10 and assemble my own hive parts.  I bought 2 medium hive boxes, 16 frames, 16 honeycomb foundations, and a queen excluder.  I am glad I made the decision to assemble my own hive parts for two reasons: it wasn't very difficult to put them together and I enlisted some help from my wonderful husband!  With the purchase of these hive boxes, I have the potential to gain 70 lbs of additional honey.  CRAZY!!! 

Un-assembled Frames

Here is a description of the above parts:

- Medium hive boxes come in 4 pieces un-assembled.  These boxes hold 8 frames each.

- Frames come in 4 pieces as well.  These take the longest to assemble due to installing the foundation inside each frame.

- Foundations are made of honeycomb and must be secured into each frame.

- A queen excluder is a metal or plastic grate that sits above your brood boxes (the boxes containing eggs; usually 2 or 3 boxes).  The excluder keeps the queen from moving into the surplus honey boxes.  This keeps your queen from laying brood in the boxes and keeps her safe when you remove the frames to extract honey.

Un-assembled Frames

Un-assembled Boxes

I also came up with a new way of painting the boxes.  This saved so much time and energy.  I hung the assembled boxes on a pole.  As I painted a side, I was able to turn the box and paint another side.  I also used a paint gun to paint.  The paint gun was only worth it because I was painting Rachel's hives as well.  Note to self, paint guns are a pain to clean.

...making honey

 

Well, the bees are finally capable of living off their own honey supplies. We removed the feeder containing sugar water and replaced the 3rd super with frames. Rachel and I have both decided to purchase 2 more supers in the hopes that we will have excess honey to take off the hive in August.

 

We took a close look at what the bees had been doing.  The frames below show the bee's progress.  Bees usually structure their hives by placing eggs in the center of the hive, pollen storage around that, and honey stores on the outside edge.   You can see this in the pictures below.  The capped eggs are a pale yellow color.  The pollen is dark yellow/brown.  The sugar water/honey supply is white.

 

Below are a few pictures of drone cells that were ripped apart when we separated the hive boxes.  Bees will build what is called burr comb in spaces that are abnormal such as frames being placed too far apart or in between hive boxes.  Bees prefer to lay drone cells in the burr comb.  Below you can see the drone larvae.  Some of the larva have developed eyes and legs. 

 

Drones and worker cells are very different in appearance.  Below is a good example.  When the bees cap their eggs, the drone cells appear raised as you can see on the right side of the photo.  The remaining cells are worker cells.  Worker cells are in the middle of the picture, and they appear flat.  

...adding a super

The bees have been working very hard and have built out (made honey comb) all 8 frames in the bottom super or hive box. So it was time to add another super to the hive today. Rachel and I along with our helper Curt checked on the progress in the hive and added another super.

...finding the Queens

On Sunday, we had our first bee class!  There are 12 beekeepers in the class and 1 master beekeeper who leads the class.  Marcus is the master beekeeper.  The class is set up so that we all go through each individual hive.  As we went through the hives on Sunday, we realized how important this was to our learning experience.  All the hives were totally different.  The goal of the day was to make sure the queen survived the hiving process and that she was active in the hive.  These were the things we were looking for: the queen, brood (eggs or larvae), pollen and sugar water storage and retrieval of the queen box.  Any of these things individually or in combination will inform us if the queen is alive and well.  So here is a rundown of the day:

1. Rachel almost lights her car on fire.  We lit our smokers for the first time.  Our vague instructions were to put pine needles in the smoker and light it.  What we learned: Pine needles are really flammable and don't light the smoker in your trunk.  I'm very sorry that I didn't have my camera out when the smoker was sitting in Rachel's car.

2. The first beekeeper's hive didn't accept the queen.  The colony decided to supercede (dethrone) her. Here's is how we discovered this:  Her queen had obviously made it through the hiving process and she began to lay eggs because there were several capped cells (I will show you a picture of this later), but there were also queen cells.  A queen cell is a capped cell that holds an egg that the workers have decided to raise as a queen.  The egg is fed royal jelly by the workers and therefore becomes a queen bee capable of laying eggs.  The queen cell looks very different from the other capped cells. 

3.  The remaining hives all had queens.  The queens were able to escape out of their original box.  Eight of the hives had queens who had already laid eggs.  Some of the eggs had developed into larvae.  Some of the larvae had been capped meaning they were ready to go through the pupa stage of development.  One of the hives had no visible eggs or larvae.  Marcus said that the eggs are very small when just laid so we might have missed them.  We were able to locate the queen in this hive, and there was plenty of pollen indicating that the workers were making food for brood.  The white in the bottom right corner of this frame is stored sugar water.  The dark yellow closer to the center of the frame is stored pollen.  The whitish/yellow area in the middle of the frame is capped cells. 

In the picture above, you see a hole in the comb.  The bees sometimes chew a hole through the comb to create easy access to the frame on either side.  Marcus calls this the raceway. 

4. Rachel found Queen Gwenevere!

5. I found Queen Priscilla!

 Can you find the queen?

...feeding the bees

I went by to check on the bees today.  They were busy!  Every 3-4 days for the next several weeks, Rachel and I will have to check the bee's feeders.  The bees consume a diet of 1-1 sugar water.  They will do this until they find a steady food supply in the form of pollen and nectar.  Above is a picture of the feeder.  The feeder is in an empty hive box that sits on top of a hive box containing 8 frames, a queen, and all the bees.  The bees are busy building out the honeycomb in the bottom hive box so that the queen can began to lay eggs. In order to do this, they need to eat.  Their food supply comes from the quart jars you see above.  Each quart jar has tiny holes in the lid that the bee sticks its tongue into to get sugar water.  The bees have consumed a little over 2 quarts of sugar water since Wednesday evening.  On Friday, we are going to inspect the bottom hive box to check for brood (baby bee eggs) and to find Priscilla and Gwenevere.

...hiving the bees

We now have bees in our hives.

The process was pretty straight forward. First, we sprayed the bees down with sugar water. This causes them to huddle together to stay warm. They form a clump of bees and stop flying when you spray them. Next, you remove the queen from the box of bees. They travel in a box with the queen who is in her own box. The bees are now obsessed with her smell after traveling with her all day.

She is laid in the bottom of the hive before the bees are dumped into the hive on top of her.

As the bees come into contact with her, they eat the sugar around her box to free her. Then, they get to work!

Whitney's Bee Movie:

Rachel's Bee Movie:

Our bee EMT:

...primping the hives (part 2)

Butta-yellow. The prettiest bee hives in the world! Our bees are going to be so happy to move into their new homes on Wednesday. That's right...we get our bees on Wednesday afternoon. When Rachel and I decided to do this beekeeper thing, she verbalized some nervousness about working with the bees. It never crossed my mind to be nervous...until last Thursday. On Thursday, we got an email telling us the bees would be here soon. Every time I think about working with the bees, my stomach flip-flops. It is flip-flopping now! I look forward (I hope you will too) to posting pictures on Wednesday night of our first full-contact-bee-taming abilities!