Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

Pictured below is my new bee yard.  Actually it’s not so new anymore and this post is a bit out of order as this picture was taken last April.  I was approached this spring by my wifes insurance agent for her business about placing some bees on his property.  It’s a beautiful location on a high (20-30′) bank above a river well outside of the floodplain with large groves of locust and catalpa within eyesight, as well as alfalfa fields planted by local farmers.  It will be interesting to compare how well these hives do, and their honey as the forage available here is considerably different than that available near my other apiaries.

Simply because it was easier, I started this yard completely with package bees and drawn foundation (and honey from deadouts).  They were installed this past Saturday as previously mentioned.   It also proved a good yard to test the effect of queen excluders on honey production, but more about that later…

I’m not really sure if Winter is here or not.  So far this year  we’ve had 0 degree weather followed by temperatures in the high 60s.  Then snow, temperatures in the teens and sustained 40-50 mile winds.  Followed by 50’s, thunderstorms and significant flooding.   And it looks like it will be snowing and in the single digits again this weekend.  Feels like we are on a roller coaster.

So how are the bees fairing in all this?  I still find it amazing they are able to cope with all this with no more protection than a drafty wooden box.   I was able to do a quick check when the temperatures hit 67 degrees in January and all 61 hives at the house were flying.  Only one showed signs of trouble, the tell tale marks of dysentery on the front of the hive.  It wasn’t unexpected, that particular hive wasn’t really thriving in the fall.   It’s cluster was far too small when I inspected it and it looks like it froze in the last cold spell since then.   You will always loose a few hives over the winter and I expect that one won’t be the only one.  Still, the hives looks far better than they did last year and I expect losses to be well within the normal range.  But we still have a month and a half until maples will bloom and nearly 2 months until April, so there is still plenty of time to worry.

It’s getting quite late in the year for mowing lawns, but I’ve been putting it off for several weeks waiting for the leaves to fall so they would be mulched up.  Of course most have fallen a fe weeks ago and I couldn’t even use the ‘bee work’ excuse as to why it hasn’t been done.   So this past weekend I finally got around to it.  Pumped up the now completely flat tire on the tractor (another item on the needs-fixed list).  The day was cool in the low 40’s and overcast, promising rain later in the day.  So the bees were all tucked in quite nicely and weren’t likely to get stirred up by the exhaust from the tractor that blows out the side of the engine cover.   A good time to mow the bee yards.

Not a good time, however, to zip though the bee yards not paying attention where the ends of the landscaping timbers the hives were sitting on are.  The bees quickly let me know that they were less than happy with the new orientation of their hive, flat on it’s back.  Fortunately the hive boxes were firmly stick together with propolis so it was a quick matter of setting the hive upright  as hundreds of bees pored out the front entrance.  Given the temperature few took to the air and were back in the hive as nothing had happened a few minutes later.  Sorry, no pictures.  It’s just not the kind of thing you run back to the house to get a camera in the middle of.

Frost has been on the ground the past couple of mornings and the trees are turning from green to gold and red.  Not a hard freeze yet, but enough to kill the more delicate plants and some trees have only just started changing color.  At least it looks and feels like the the beginning to middle of October.  By the calendar its November 2nd.

As of just a few days ago, the hives were still bringing in a fair amount of pollen and were collecting propolis from any unoccupied equipment they could get to.  The hives are looking much better than this time last year and most are very heavy with honey.  If anything they may be too heavy and I’ll have to pay special attention to the amount of empty area they have for brood this spring.

I’m hoping this is a good sign for this coming winter and spring.  The hives still are quite populous and busy once it gets warm.  The picture to the right is from 1 1/2 weeks ago, but they were still just as busy mid afternoon today.  It’s a big change from their condition this time last year.

Small hive beetles are another one of those pests imported into the US (discovered in 1998).  While they can be a serious problem  in the Southeastern US, making a fermenting mess of the comb in the hive, they have yet to cause serious problems for most here in Ohio.  No one I’ve talked to has had a serious infestation with most only seeing a few on the bottom board or under the inner cover.  I myself have never seen them in my hives, that is until this year.  In my year end inspections I did find 2, one each under an inner cover of two hives at different apiaries.  I did catch one and am nearly sure but not 100% positive it’s a small hive beetle as there are many similar beetles in appearance.  I did not get pictures until it was dead for some time, so it’s body has shrunk and it’s legs and clubbed antenna have folded in.  You can see the clubbed antenna from the bottom view, and wing covers shorter than the abdomen.

Top of the small hive beetle

Bottom of the small hive beetle

I had the opportunity last weekend to attend the North Central Queen Assembly held in Troy, Ohio.   It was entitled ‘Selecting and Rearing Your Own Queens’, which did make me think the information was going to be rather introductory and basic and that I wouldn’t get all that much out of it.  It’s the downside of beekeeping conventions after a while and you are really into bees, the conventions tend to target those at the beginner level and there just isn’t that much new information for some of us.

But the list of speakers included some very notable people such as Gary Reuter who works with Marla Spivak in Minnesota, Greg Hunt from Purdue University and John Harbo who worked at the USDA Honey bee lab and is responsible for the Harbo syring, SMR/VSH queens and much more.  Not to discount Larry Connor and Jim Tew, both entertaining speakers, and Joe Latshaw whom I blame for my queen rearing obsession.  So I had some high expectations.

It ended up being well worth attending, and if you have any interest in rearing queens (or even just buying a queen) you should be kicking yourself for not attending.  Enough basic information was presenting for the beginner, yet had plenty of good information for us that have been rearing queens for some time.  Even had good information for those just wanting to buy a queen and what they should look for in a breeder.  It was very interesting and very worthwhile.  I sincerely hope they hold it again next year.

Still incredibly good weather for this month.  There isn’t much left for the bees to work as the goldenrod has finished blooming and is going to seed, and just about everything else left is drying up.  Strangely, the bees don’t seem to be too interested in robbing as I would expect in such a dearth.  They also don’t seem to have any interest in open feed pollen substitute like they typically do this year. 

They are however very interested in any old equipment sitting around.  They are collecting propolis from anywhere they can get it, with preference for the easy pickings.  Of course ‘easy’ is a relative term.  While there is a good buildup on old equipment, and sometimes on external parts of the hive, it looks like a real struggle to chew off the sticky stuff and put it on their legs for transport back to the hive.  Watch for yourself in this video…

It’s hard to believe by looking outside that it’s well into Fall and bee season should basically be over.  But the temperatures are still in the upper 60’s and into the 70’s with no chance of frost yet in the 10 day forecast.  What a huge change from last year with it’s cool wet weather and early frost that virtually eliminated any fall flow from goldenrod or aster.  The bees have been packing away stores and are very heavy for winter, yet the queens are still laying in any available space they can find.  I’m hoping that is a very promising sign for this coming winter and spring.
We have been feeding some of the very late splits that were only a single deep just 6 weeks ago.  Most have taken the syrup quickly and built up population on the pollen flow from goldenrod and aster that we’ll be able to stop feeding before it gets cold.  It’s really been a great finish to a year that started off so poorly.

Over the past couple week the weather has been very hot an humid and generally very little wind.  It’s been unpleasant to do just about anything as you break out in a heavy sweat doing anything more than sitting still in front of the fan.  The bees thought so too and spent a great deal of time simply hanging out in front of the hives.  Even hives with screened bottom boards and upper ventilation were bearding heavily with the high heat and humidity at this time where their population is at it’s peak.

Fortunately the unbearably hot weather has abated and the past several nights have been rather cool.  Just in time since we are completely out of honey to sell and county fair is just a few days away.  So last night all the extracting tanks and equipment was cleaned, fresh cardboard was taped to the floor to make cleanup easier and this evening we hope to begin pulling honey off the hives and extracting it.  It can’t be soon enough because I have call from customers every day now wanting to know if we have honey yet, and I desperately need some empty drawn comb for later splits I had made.  In fact last week I resorted to giving the strongest ones boxes with new foundation because they simply could not go another day without some place to build.

I quit my job.  I never really thought that after 12 years at Kohli & Kaliher Associates I’d be doing anything else unless I could afford to do beekeeping full time.  But I had a good offer from a company I did some freelance programming work for over the past several years and could refuse.  It can be a little big unnerving to leave a good stable job and take a chance in a different line of work.  But the money is there and it lets me work from home and have a bit more flexibility with my schedule.  Will take a while to really get into the groove of things at Data Business Systems, but I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be in the swing of things.   So it’s not beekeeping full time, and it is a full time job, but I think I’ll like it and it will give me more flexibility to answer phones, and beat the 4:00pm storm front to keep the grafting schedule.  It also got me one thing I’ve wanted for some time, an office where I can keep my records, do shipping, insemination, etc.