Sugar....Oh, Honey, Honey.

Special thanks to Bill Emenhiser (my father-in-law).  Without him there is NO way I could have made this.

While this may look like just your everyday, average trashcan, it's anything but. That's my honey extractor, and you know what that means!  HONEY!  Bill and I just finished making it last week, and none too soon, because today I got to go and try it out.

Now it's kind of difficult to see here, but on the top is (of course) the lid.  Inside, that mesh and steel bit you're looking at is a basket that holds the frames.  By attaching a drill to the shaft that comes out the top, you spin that basket around, and it flings the honey out of the combs and basket against the sidewalls of the can, and it drains down through a spigot into a 5 gallon bucket.  Or, at least that's what is supposed to happen...

Now, most of you will recognize that this drill looks a little short on the front end, and that's because after spinning the frames for a few minutes, the screw that holds the chuck on broke, and now my drill is in two pieces.  Unfortunately, my other drill doesn't have a large enough chuck to fit the shaft of the extractor, so now my extractor is out of commission.  This means there will be no more spinning honey out of the frames today.  But that doesn't mean I'm not getting that honey.  Just need to improvise, adapt and overcome.  And that's exactly what I did.

Again, it's a bit difficult to see here, but those frames have been stripped of their wax and honey.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of actually doing it, on account of my hands were covered in honey and there was no way I was going to touch the camera.  All I did, however, was take that yellow prybar on the left side of the box and scrape all of it off into several containers.  This made for one heck of a mess, with the wax and honey all mixed together.  Fortunately, there's a cure for that.

This five gallon bucket has a plastic strainer in the top, that filters out anything larger than 600 microns.  Into this the wax/honey mess was piled.  Since it was a bit chilly this morning, the honey was pretty thick and didn't want to run through the strainer very well, so I set it in the living room in the sun.  It warmed right up and drained through pretty well, leaving the wax and the occasional bee leg in the top.  Everything underneath that strainer is pure, beautiful and delicious honey.

This container holds 1 gallon, and you can see it's about 3/4 full.  That's all the "good" honey I got.  There's pretty close to the same amount of uncapped honey left that we probably won't be able to keep and eat.  The reason is that the bees don't cap (cover over the cells) the honey until it reaches a certain amount of moisture (usually less than 22%.), and honey with a higher moisture content is likely to ferment.  That's a long way of saying this higher moisture content honey (or "bad" honey) will probably get fed back to the bees in the next few days, so they can add it to their winter stores.

And there it is!  The first bear I've ever bottled, and hopefully, it's the first of many, many bears to come.  The honor of having the first bottle goes to Bill and Julee, because without Bill's help, I'd have had a heck of a time getting the hives built, and they wouldn't have turned out nearly as well.  He also gave me (okay, so it was actually a loan) a Beekeeping book 3 years ago, and that also helped to get me started.  And if not for Julee, I wouldn't have half the time I do to get these things done, because she watches Logan, a lot.  So a big thanks to the both of them, and I hope you guys enjoy the honey.  Unfortunately, there isn't a ton of honey to go around, so most people can't expect to get any from me this year.  Next year should hopefully go much better, and we should have a very large surplus to go around.  I'll leave you (as usual) with one final picture.  A couple of my girls wandered inside the house this afternoon to see what all the good smells were about, and here they are just hanging out on the back of my couch.

 

 

Say hello to my "little" friend.

The Back 40 is back!  I had to take a short hiatus after Logan stole our camera and hid it in his toybox for a few weeks, and then I was starting school, and I've just been busy.  I've got some Bee news coming up in the next couple of weeks, but for right now, we're going to hit the wildlife side of The Back 40.  So here we go.

My food plot is starting to come in and looks fantastic.  It's Michigan Ultimate Blend which combines turnips and clover, along with some other brassica type seeds.  My father-in-law Bill has had some great luck with it over the last few years, and I'm hoping I'll have the same, although it can take deer a while to figure out that the turnips are there under the ground if they haven't run into them before.  So, with any luck they'll hit it hard this year, and I'll be able to hammer a nice buck in a month or so.

These are what's left of the stalks of some Pokeberry bushes.  They grow about 8 feet tall, and they're incredibly tough and woody.  These ones (and all of them within 20-30 feet of here) have been stripped bare and broken by bucks using them to rub their velvet off.  These have been pretty well decimated, so while it may not be a large buck, I'm hoping there's at least a lot of deer working them over.

This is more of the same.  The deer have been working them pretty hard all along what was a pretty solid scrape line last year, so I'm hoping we'll see some more of the same this year.

 

To wrap things up, I've got a few picture off of trail cameras below.

 

 

 

To come clean, that last one isn't from my trail camera.  But I'm fairly certain I got at least a couple hearts to skip beats there.  Bazinga.

 

Newspaper in the hives, and THIEVES!

Well, an awful lot has happened since the last post, so I'm going to dive right in.

First off, as we discussed in "Ruthless Virgins!", Nucleus #1 failed to raise a queen, and Nucleus #2 was successful at doing so.  You'll be glad to learn that she was in fact successfully mated, and has been laying eggs like crazy that have begun hatching, and the population has just exploded.  About a week and a half ago, I combined the two Nucs back together into one hive, using the "newspaper method."

Using this method, I place the bees and frames from Nucleus #1 in the bottom box, and the bees and frames from Nuc #2 in the top box, seperated by a piece of newspaper.  As the bees would attempt to kill each other if they were just introduced into the same box together, they need to be kept apart for a few days.  The newspaper divider keeps them apart while they get accustomed to the smell and sound of the other bees.  When they chew their way through the newspaper after 2-3 days, they have become accustomed to each other and can live and work together in the same hive again. 

The left side is a picture taken the day I combined them, and on the right, you can see the girls have done exactly what they were supposed to do, and have opened up both "floors" of the hive.  Hopefully, they'll continue to do well, they won't supercede their queen again, and they will have time to build up and make it through the winter.  Moving on!

We had a slight issue at hive #1 (the recently combined hive,) when we went out to inspect.  We discovered these nasty buggers hanging around the entrance, along with about 6 of their buddies.  They are bald faced wasps, and they had seemingly discovered the sugar syrup being fed to hive #1, and were looking for a free meal.  They mostly crawled around the front of the hive, looking for an entrance that wasn't being guarded.  Before we left, I decided to squish them, to relieve my girls of the burden.  After the first 3 or so, the wasps got rather agitated (I wonder why?), and they began diving in towards the entrance and stinging my bees as they came back with their pollen. It took awhile, but I killed all but one, and that one eventually "bugged out."  Robbing attacks like this are not uncommon, but a strong hive has no trouble defending itself.  I put an entrance reducer back on, to minimize the space my girls will have to defend if the wasps come back. 

Enough about hive #1, let's talk about #2!

This beauty to my right is what you want to see in any honey super.  The entire frame is honey, it's beautifully capped, and that frame weighs probably 9-10 pounds, most of which is honey weight.  The bad news?  That particular frame is in the brood box, meaning it's not for me.  Everything in the brood chamber must be left for the bees so that they can make it through the winter.  The good news?  The girls are coming along rather well in the honey super, with most of the frames having at least a softball sized block of drawn comb that is full of uncapped honey.  With plenty of time left before the cold sets in, we may just get lucky and have a nice, long, late bloom that will net us at least a small honey crop this fall.  And, speaking of the honey,

Erin and I both sampled some honey direct from the hive, (although she declined to be photographed) and it is the absolute best honey I've ever had in my life.  So, I guess there were 8 small thieves, and two really big ones. :D

I've discovered that there are more things I want to cover each time I write than I really can, while still keeping it interesting.  So, I'm saving some pictures and topics each time that I'll share in a few posts over the winter, or during some slow times in the blog.  Until next time, enjoy this final picture of the girls lining up at the "watering hole," (some spilled honey on the inside of the inner cover.)

New deer blind and trail camera pictures you don't want to miss.

Here we go!  The first post, not about bees.  To the left is the skeleton of the deer blind I've been working on, and recently finished.  The nice platform underneath was there when we bought the house last year, and it's in a perfect place to sit in a funnel between two fields.  As soon as I saw the platform, I wanted to build a blind on it, but we didn't have quite enough time last year, so in true redneck fashion, I suffered through the first year by sticking a pop up blind on there and tying it down.  Dropping things down to the ground between the cracks in the floor got old, however, so this year I'm riding in style.

To the right is my completed deer blind, and I think it looks great.  The roof is steel roofing panels that the previous home owners were kind enough to leave in the garage for me (although I don't think they thought I'd use them for THIS!)  The side panels are just underlayment sheathing I painted up with cheapo green paint and camouflage spray paint, and I think it turned out pretty well.  The best view, however......

North

West

And East 

 out the windows.

We've also got some nice trail camera pictures from my last trip out to check cards.  The first (and most mundane) of the pictures is this guy here.  He's a nice 6 point right now, and it's tough to see in this picture, but he's got two little nubs up between his forks that look promising, and I think he's going to be a very respectable 8 point pretty soon.  This camera is about 35 yards out the east window of the blind up above.  Hopefully, he decides to hang around. 

Here's a beautiful Sandhill Crane that decided to walk about 5 feet in front of my trail camera, which I really appreciate.  This is just a cool picture to catch. And finally, the one we've all been waiting for, a picture of the elusive....

El Chupacabra!  The mysterious, frightening, possibly fictitious goat sucking critter believed to inhabit the southern United States, Central America, and various islands in the Carribean. 

Wait...maybe its just a coyote.  The jury is still out on this one.  Stay tuned,

Ruthless Virgins

So, let's get the bad news out of the way first.  Nuc 1 (at left) isn't doing great.  They seem to have failed to raise a queen from the limited queen cups they had remaining after the Small Hive Beetles had their way with the comb, and two frames had to be frozen as you will remember from Pests!.  At this point, the plan of action is likely to re-join Nuc 1 and Nuc 2 into a single hive.  At this juncture, it would probably be too late to get a viable nuc before winter.  While this is unfortunate, it's not entirely unforseen.  The hope now is just that we can get two good hives through the winter.

Now, on to some good news!  Nuc #2 (pictured at right) is doing just swimmingly.  They have hatched out a virgin queen, and that queen has taken her nuptial flight or flights.  These flights send queens into Drone Congregation Areas (or DCAs.)  In the DCA, drones from several colonies congregate together for the purpose of catching a virgin queen on her nuptial flights.  There is no known rhyme or reason to the choice of location for DCAs, but they typically occure anywhere from 50-130 feet in the air.  When the virgin queen flies through, she will attempt to avoid being caught and bred, allowing only the fastest, strongest, and longest enduring drones to breed with her. (A special nod to our old buddy Chuck Darwin!)  As many as 10-15 drones will mate with her, after which they will immediately plunge to their death.  The now mated queen will return to the hive, after which she can begin laying fertilized eggs that will grow to be worker bees. 

The picture at right shows two of the four queen cell husks in the nucleus.  We have talked several times about queen cells, but never about them hatching.  As you can see, these two cells appear to be ripped open from the side. Inside the queen cell, the larvae grow head down, and when they are ready to hatch, they chew a circle around the bottom of the cell, letting it drop open like a hinge.  So, how are these cells blown out the side, you ask?  After the virgin queen hatches, she moves around the hive destroying any other queen cells she can find, and engaging in a fight to the death with any other virgin queen she finds.  When destroying queen cells, the virgin will come at it from the side.  Unfortunately, the husk that contained our hatched queen had already been mostly torn apart by the bees, and the picture quality wasn't good enough to see what I've described above.  Our queen has now laid some eggs in the nuc, and only time will tell if she has been properly mated, or if she failed to do so and will only lay unfertilized eggs that will become drones, but I am hopeful that things will go well. 

Finally, I am glad to report that hive #1 is doing so well that they are ready for a honey super.  This smaller box sits on top of the two deep hive bodies and is for the sole purpose of collecting honey.  A queen excluder is placed in between the hive bodies and the honey super, and is a framework of holes that will allow workers to pass through, but keeps the larger queen out.  The workers will fill this extra area with honey that we will be able to harvest and keep, as the hive bodies hold enough honey to sustain the hive through the winter. 

I would also like to let all of my wonderful, loyal readers know that we will soon be coming into more posts about other "Back 40" topics, so it won't be ALL about bees. 

Pests!

So, poor, unfortunate hive #1 just can't catch a break.  As we discussed last time in Splitsville: Population, a few thousand?, hive #1 is going through another Supersedure, or replacement of the queen.  As this is the second time they've gone through this process this season, they are an understandably weak hive.  This weakness means that they are more susceptible to infiltration by other pests.  In this case, it appears that a small hive beetle has laid eggs in some of the comb.  The eggs hatched, and the larvae started eating their way through the honeycomb. 

In the picture to the left you can see a bunch of small, maggot-looking worms.  These are the larvae of the Small Hive Beetle (SHB).  The eggs have rapidly hatched, and these clusters of larvae have started making their way through the frames, eating pollen, honey, and wax as they go.  A strong hive would have no problem plucking these larvae out and disposing of them before they could wreak too much havoc, but hive #1, in its weakened state, was unable to do so.  There are several treatment options available, however I do not have any of the pharmaceutical or chemical treatments readily available, and because earlier today I thought they may have been Wax Moths (a whole different pest that I'm sure we'll discuss at some point),

I elected to freeze the affected frames.  The freezing will kill the larvae (and unfortunately, that includes my bee larvae and eggs left on the frame), and allow me to return these frames to the hive so that the bees can clean out the cells, rebuild the comb, and eat the honey they have stored there.  To the right, you can see some of the damage caused by these larvae in just a few short days.  The outlined area follows the worst of the damage, with the wax being eaten clear down to the foundation in some spots.  The dark brown portion towards the middle of the outlined area looks to be still standing, however it is so riddled with holes that it is completely unusable.  Some dead bees were removed already from that dead, brown area.  The final picture below shows some of the damage on another part of the frame.  This is closer to what the center of the above picture looks like, where it appears to be okay at first glance, but by looking closer, you can see how badly it has been affected. The outlined areas show the worst damage again, and this time it's easiest to see in the chunky, crystallized look of the top of the cells.  These cells have been riddled with holes as the SHB larvae passed through them, especially in the largest portion circled, that goes from the top down to the right bottom.  In the section on the bottom left, it is most apparent by looking at the outline of the combs.  Where it is stark, and very well outlined on the healthy sections of comb, the lines fade and become more indistinct, and in some cases disappear as the wax has been eaten away.  Hopefully, the larvae has been confined to these two frames, and the freezing process will fix the problem.

Splitsville: Population, a few thousand?

Welcome to splitsville.  We have quite an interesting situation going on here.  Due to yet another supersedure (replacement) of the queen in our Hive #1, we have an abundance of queen cells that have been made.   You may remember us discussing the long, peanut shaped cells once before in Death of the Monarch. 

These cells have been created to house queen larvae to replace the old queen.  The first time this happened, we bought a new queen to speed the process between queens.  This was unacceptable to the bees, however, and once they stabilized again, they superseded, again.  This time, we've decided to let the bees do their own thing and raise their own new queen, even though it means a lot of down time before the hive starts growing again.  In any case, now that we have these supersedure (SS) cells, we've decided to do a split into a nucleus (nuc) hive, so that we will have a spare queen on hand if this happens again.  If it doesn't happen again, it's very easy to introduce the nuc into a standard 10-frame hive and then we'll have another full hive.

This here is the five-frame nuc, after I loaded it with the following:  1-Frame from Hive#1 with the SS cell.  This is the frame that will provide the nucleus with a queen. 1-Frame from Hive #1 with soon to be emerging brood.  This will provide the nuc with bees to forage and build comb as well as care for the eggs and larvae. 1-Frame from Hive #1 with some empty, drawn comb, and some space to draw new comb.  This gives the queen someplace to lay once she starts laying, and gives the workers work to do while trapped in the nuc. 1-Frame from Hive #2 with lots of capped honey for food, and 1-Frame from Hive #2 with more capped brood, to help work the hive (nuc).  I also shook several frames worth of bees into the nuc to provide plenty of workers immediately.  You can see in the picture above that there is a feeder attached to the front of the hive.  This is especially important because what you may not be able to see is that the opening to the right of the feeder is covered with window screen.  This will stay in place for 2-3 days, to prevent the bees from all leaving and going back to their original host hive tonight.  However, in 2-3 days, they will have become accustomed to their new home and will begin foraging to provide for it.

NOW, on to the very interesting part.  This will require some background:  When we ordered our first hives, I specified that the queens were to be marked, and not clipped. (It's a common practice to clip the wings of the queen to prevent her from flying in an attempt to control swarming.  I elected to pass on this.)  So my unclipped queens were marked with a white dot on their back. 

Now, in hive #1, we had to requeen as already discussed.  In this case, I DID elect to have a clipped, marked queen, she was marked with a yellow dot.  So, until very recently I had a clipped queen in Hive #1 (yellow dot), and an unclipped queen (white dot) in Hive #2.  Hive #1's queen (clipped) recently disappeared.  During inspection today, I discovered a clipped queen with a yellow dot in hive #2.  So, what has happened, is my queen from hive #1 jumped ship and went over to hive #2.  At this point, it's unclear if there are two queens in hive #2 (not unheard of), or if this new queen went over to hive #2 and killed off the old queen. 

Pollen and Larva: Part II

Worker with Alfalfa pollen in her pollen baskets.

So we're going to revist a couple of older topics with some good pictures, and then there's a new and fun topic at the end, but no skipping ahead!  Hive number 2 is still doing very well. The workers have drawn some comb in the upper hive body, and the queen has made her way up and laid eggs there as well.  The foragers were out in force today, even though we've been lacking rain for over a week now and it's getting very dry.  They were bringing in the same pollen as they were before (which I believe was Pear), and they are now bringing in another kind, which, thanks to the handy Pollen Source chart, I believe is from Alfalfa.

Worker with Pear Pollen in her pollen baskets.

While these are certainly not the only kinds of pollen they are collecting, it definitely doesn't surprise me that they are bringing in a lot of alfalfa, considering how many fields around here are full of it.  I still haven't been able to decide where the pear trees are, but they seem to have found it.  Additionally, I've seen lots of bees up in our yard on the white ball clover, and tonight I saw one in the garden, buzzing around looking for something flowering.  Unfortunately, that's a losing battle in our garden right now.



As we work our way over to hive #1, we get to revisit another old topic, but with some fantastic pictures as we look at the stages of development for the eggs and larva of bees. 

This picture gives a good view of the shared space between brood and pollen.  The pollen is kept near the brood to be convenient for feeding the developing young.  These nurse bees are working their way around tending to the young.  I was unable to get a picture of them sticking their heads down into the cells with the young and tending to them, because they work their way through pretty darn quickly.  When there's 1500-2000 new eggs a day, there is a lot of running around to do in order to make sure that all of the young are tended.  The picture below gives a blown up image of the various stages of young, numbered from 1 (youngest) to 5(oldest).

As you can see, the first circle is a tiny egg that looks like a miniature grain of rice.  It stays this way for the first 2-3 days, while it is growing into number two, a tiny little larva.  From there, the next 6-7 days grow it into a larger larva (numbers 3-4), and finally into one that fills almost the entire cell (number 5).  Around day nine, worker bees will cap the larva where it will stay for the next 8-12 days, when it will emerge as a worker ready to help the hive.

Our final picture covers one of my favorite facets of colony life: the guard bees.  At the entrance to the hive are many guard bees, who inspect every critter attempting to gain access to the hive.  Whether it is another bee or something else, from a spider to a mouse to a skunk, or anything else.  Obviously, with anything other than a bee, it's a pretty easy job.  The guards see a spider coming in and release their alarm pheremones, alerting the colony to the danger and mobilizing them to fight off the threat.  This is why the first thing one does when preparing to open the hive is smoke the entrance.  This masks the pheremones of the guard bees.  With other bees, however the guard bees check the pheremones.  If the bee belongs to the hive, it may come in and do whatever it needs to do.  If the bee belongs to another hive (and this is my favorite part), the guards will either mobilize the hive with their pheremones, or accept a bribe, if one is in the offing.  Bees from other colonies will sometimes offer a bribe of pollen to the guards, at which point they can come in, grab some honey, and leave again.  The picture below shows a guard bee (far right) checking the pheremones of a returning forager before allowing her into the hive, while another bee is coming in right behind her.  This guard bee inspected dozens of bees while I watched, a very quick process of face-to-face interaction, moving efficently on to the next bee as quickly as possible.

It's a girl! And...Another Girl. And another, and another...

I want to preface this post with my sincerest apologies.  I know that the pictures are probably the best part about this blog (what that says for my writing, I don't know), but I inspected last time on my own, and going solo makes taking pictures difficult.  I then have to hold the frame, the camera, and sweep bees out of the way of the proposed picture by myself.  Sadly, being equipped with only two hands, I'm not very adept at doing this all by myself, so the pictures aren't up to the normal standards of the blog.

Here you can see a lot of empty cells(the darker ones are all empty) surrounded by lots of (the lighter colored) capped cells.  Those empty cells were all capped and full just days ago, but we've gotten (with one hive) around to the hatching stage, where new bees are constantly breaking their way free of their birthing cells and joining the productivity of the hive. 

This picture shows two very blurry bees making their way out of their cells.  They're tough to see, but since they are doing this continually, I will get some better pictures next time I get Erin to come out with me and inspect.  For now, the bees are hatching like crazy and the population is exploding. 

Hive two is progressing rather well, and has been given a second hive body with frames to fill up.  As of yesterday, Hive one still hadn't released their new queen, so I helped them along, and she is hopefully laying eggs by now.  I'll give her a few more days to get established before I go bothering them.  Thanks for reading, and I'll "bee" back with you as soon as there is anything new.

Death of the Monarch

Well, it's not all sunshine and honey in a beehive.  Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen, and in our "Hive 1", we lost our queen.  It's not uncommon for bees to supercede their old queen during the first year, likely because they have recently settled down from the stress of being packaged and shipped across the country, and are replacing the queen because they feel she is responsible.  Anyways, when Erin and I went to the hives the other day, we discovered 6-8 queen cells on a couple of different frames.

These elongated, almost peanut shaped cells contain new queens.  If this wasn't the first year, and I hadn't gotten such a late start on the hives this spring, I would let them do their own thing, and raise their own new queen.  However, since these queens are anywhere from 16-20 days away from laying eggs, we're not going to wait. I've ordered a new queen who will be here tomorrow, at which point we will destroy all of the queen cells in that hive and install a new queen.  Within 3 days or so, she will be released to the hive and start laying eggs.  This will help to lessen the lag time between new bees being hatched, and hopefully help this hive to be able to survive the winter.

It is unfortunate to lose the queen, and have to requeen so early in the game, however, we'll keep on pushing, and get these girls settled.

Look at the Babies!

I went out today to just do a quick inspection and get the girls some food for the weekend, as we're off to Ohio tomorrow morning for five days to see some friends and take a little vacation.  I was desperately trying to figure out how to keep them fed from today until Sunday, and I had an inspiration when walking through Tractor Supply Co. the other day.  I picked up a couple of gallon water pails for chickens.

The challenge with getting the girls fed all weekend is that they can't use anything in an open bucket or similar, because they get into it and drown.  This has just a small ring around the outside that fills with syrup.  I filled the ring with rocks, and that will give them something to land on and crawl around on as they search for their delicious syrup.  Hopefully, there won't be too many drowned bees when I come back.

All of these little grub looking things in the cells are bee larvae.  They started out as those little grains of rice we saw in the last post I made, and here they are just a few days later growing up very quickly.  In the center of this picture, you can see a bee with her head deep down in a cell.  This is a nurse bee tending to the young, feeding them nectar and small amounts of royal jelly (early in their growth cycle).  Nurse bee is one of the first jobs that bees get after they have hatched and are ready to start working for the hive, and their job is solely to care for the developing eggs, larvae, and pupae.

Over to the left, you can see the waxy covering that has been placed over the larvae (called "Capped Brood" at this stage.)  They will remain like this for another 11-12 days, before brand new bees will emerge.  This is especially important right now, as no new bees have been born sine the bees were packaged to ship, and the size of my colonies have been slowly diminishing over the last couple of weeks.  Soon, however, I'll have a whole new crop of bees, and it should be just in time for them to start gathering from the field crops that are peeking through, and our garden which should start poking shoots out in another week or so.