From Mistakes to Double Takes

Double screen wire that is! This entry was inspired by a loyal follower, Steven C., who keeps us on our toes. Jessie made a typo in the last post and shook up the bee keeping community with the elusive "bubble" screen method. Whoops! (A lot of good an English degree did her editing skills!)

Anyways, we decided to make a teachable moment out of our mistake and talk a little about the double screen method, the why's and hows' to this technique.

First, use a double screen 3/4" frame with #8 wire in both sides with one entrance on top side of one end . Find the queen put her in the lower box with capped brood and pollen/honey. Place the eggs and open brood in the top with some honey and pollen and either a queen cell, caged queen or let them make their own queen. Place the screen between them with the entrance in rear . The virgin queen will use this entrance for her suiters. :)

In about 30 days look and see if you like the egg pattern of the new queen. If so, you have some options: kill the old queen, move her to a bank for emergence replacements, or just take your chances and put the two boxes together. If you do this, the new queen will most likely kill the old, but you never know. Use a newspaper combine for the two boxes . With this method the hive will think it swarmed and will not swarm. Use this method to requeen cheaply and easily while having the advantage of two queens laying eggs for a while and end up with a strong hive for honey production. You can also use as a split and move the top hive to a new location for replacement of winter losses.

If you have questions or comments or stories to share about your own tips and tricks, please post them in the comments area. We will try to be a little more careful about our typos, but thought it was a good opportunity to do a little explanation. Wishing you all a honey filled summer!

Adventures in Bee Keeping

Despite the exciting title, things are running along on schedule at the bee farm. We are close to the end of the honey flow and look forward to at least some honey this season. Around the end of the month, we will be able to take a look at the fruits of our (but mostly the bee's) labor.

Here are some updates about the action going on around the apiary:

We have recovered from winter losses, but not without pain, cost, and a reduced crop. We did see as much swarm activity this year yet (good and bad. Good we haven't lost too many of our bees and bad because we have no acquired new swarms from elsewhere). We ended up with two, but one was unsatisfied with the housing provided and left for greener pastures. Nukes were purchased this year from Walter Kelly in Kentucky and we bought some stock packages from Rossman in Georgia and Wolf Creek in Tennessee and Georgia.

In more swarm news, we used the double screen split method to prevent swarms this year. This method was quite effective, yet out timing was a little off due to slow build up or just because we still just don't really know what is going on with those bees. After 30 years, there are still surprises. Next year we plan to use this same method and tweak the plan according to the lessons we learned this year.

At this time, we have a few extra queens for replacements and splitting, from collecting queens cells. Greg's homemade queen castle didn't work too well. That is what we get from just going from pictures. Next time, we may try reading the actual directions... We ordered two more recently; they are terribly expensive, but they are needed in order to start getting ready for a strong winter.

Those two queens were ordered from Jennifer Berry at UGA via Brushy Mountain. We hope that these renowned queens will improve our gene pool, along with some survival stock from White County that refuses to give in to the mites. Greg hopes to do a little more queen grafting later in June for replacements. We will give updates on that, as we are still experimenting with this.

In other experiments, we learned a little something this year about queen excluders. We initially were using these to keep brood (eggs) out of the top super, where we wanted the bees to produce more honey. Our results were inconsistent. Some hives worked like gang busters in the super and proved the theory of the queen excluded. Yet some were really just honey excluders; the bees would not even have a presence in that super. This leads us to believe that while it serves the purpose of keeping brood out of the honey, this is less significant problem that not having honey. We have since removed most of the queen excluders and will deal with the brood in the honey in another way.

We want to mention a new friend/cousin/rookie bee keeper Dwight Johnson. We have been working/mentoring him this summer and we would like to wish him well with his new venture. We have found it immensely rewarding and hope he finds the same fascination with these wonderfully amazing creatures.

Greg's daughter Jessie has moved to Georgia but is still able to edit our blog postings. She is excited about pursuing bee keeping at her new home in Athens. We hope to get her started in the Spring. This is exciting as we will be able to learn even more about bee behavior as we see the differences in taste, timing, and maintenance from a more "southern" perspective.

We are looking at a promising new apiary site in Jackson County. There is LOTS of clover and it may be a good idea to take advantage of new accessible locations.

So this is an early summer update. Expect many more posts as we get ready for honey harvest, late swarms, hive build-up, and preparation for winter. As Greg says, it is amazing how much there is to learn about bees; you just have to learn by doing. The trouble with learning from experience is that you have to take the test before you take the course! He just hopes to last long enough to re-take the tests once the course is complete!

A Farewell...

It seems some congratulations are in order for some of our staff / family . Our son-in-law Adam has been offered a new position in Athens, Georgia (UGA campus Minister). We are very proud of him and wish he and Jessica well in all their endeavors. Jess has been a helper, partner, and #1 sales person from age two, when we rolled the arms and legs on her mothers bee suit so that she could help; she has never been one to just watch.

Jessie’s humor and sound advice will be difficult to replace. Upon looking at my bee records, she suggested I would need a bigger truck in order to make money . After using her mother's bee suit for almost 30 years and getting a new one for her birthday last year, she bragged to James,"See what you get for 30 years service!" I am hoping she will continue writing and editing this blog from Athens. Maybe we can put bees in Athens, then I could count my milage. Her mother has informed me there would be a lot. Adam hasn't been that enthusiastic about bees, but we will miss him none the less. A quote from uncle Joe, " Hard Work and Success Go Hand and Hand." I guess Adam and Jess have proven that.

Something Lost. Nothing Gained.

We've been busy, as you can see, getting ready for spring and hoping that our bees were tough enough to make it through the winter. We've checked on them periodically and have a few losses to report. We lost one hive in January and five in February. This is disappointing of course, mainly for the fact that we don't know exactly why we lost them. We have some theories, but no good evidence.

One potential reason for the loss is of course the weather. Bees know how to survive in cold spells typically. They stay in the hive and cluster up around the queen to protect her. They surround her and begin to shiver to produce friction and thus heat; they eat stored honey to produce the energy to shiver all winter long. As the bees on the outside fringe begin to get cold, the move towards the center, and bees in the center move towards the outside. We used to believe that as long as they had enough to eat, they would be fine during the winter. Yet, this winter we found hives of dead bees, some just inches from many frames of honey!

Another hive we found, we suspect fell victim to a laying worker bee. This can occur when the queen dies or leaves. Worker bees can only lay drone eggs (male bees). Male bees occur when the egg remains unfertilized. So strangely enough, drones have no father, but they do have grandfathers. (It's not quite as Jerry Springer as it sounds). Hives cannot subsist with a laying worker and eventually die out.

Mites are also another lethal foe to the honey bee or it could have been dysentery. Really, we have no idea. We will just keep trying to keep them fed and hope for the best.

We hope to have no further losses. We managed to save the honey in the lost hives to use in early spring to build up and hopefully split some strong ones we have left. Time will tell. Some times things go your way and sometimes you end up with a mess....

Whoops.

New Designs for a Long Winter

We have been trying a new strategy with a few of the bee hives this year (i.e. it's been a long, dreary winter and Greg and James have numerous "projects" going in order to keep busy in the bee lair).

This picture is a more rustic design of bee hive, which is both functional and interesting. First, we will describe the functionality of this design. According to some, a different type of hive can serve as a compass of sorts. Bee hives normally look the same, and are lined up like soldiers ready to be sent to battle. Some apiarists choose to use different colors and graphic designs on the hives to help the bees determine the "address" of their home hive, while also helping the keepers to determine which hive is which. Another good reason for this design is to provide extra weight on the top of the hive. We have had some instances of hives getting blown over and thought this may provide a bit of protection from the wind.

As far as attractiveness, well beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The lady of the apiary was none too thrilled with the new design and made a royal proclamation: "Not in my yard!" Time will tell how many of our regular hives get converted. It may well depend on the weather and how much longer our bee squad is trapped inside.

Here is a picture that provided inspiration for the new, rustic design. We honestly don't remember where we stole, I mean, obtained this image. If anyone knows to whom to give credit, please let us know.

If You Can't Run With the Big Dogs...

Here are some updates for January:
In January, we visited our friends in Frankfort, Kentucky at Dadant to purchase some supplies. We got more frames and foundation and headed back to Tennessee. We stopped in Byrdstown to get some lumber for the supers. Since then, we have been building the supers and frames to get ready for Spring. We have also been feeding them lightly (to keep their spirits up) and sprinkling sugar on a piece of newspaper and placing that on top of the frame. This serves to give them a little boost as well as absorbs moisture in the hive.

Given the cold weather, we had gotten lax about using smoke to subdue them since the cold does that to some extent. The Cookeville hives were fine without the use of smoke, yet we visited Sparta on a warmer day. When Greg popped the top on the Sparta hives, they met him with guns a'blazing. Without smoke, the only casulties of this battle were Greg, James, and Glen's dog (who took particular offense at this and rightly blamed Greg and James).

Bees-1 Bee Squad-0

Next time, there will be smoke.

The Tennessee Chainsaw Massacre

One thing you don't expect the day after Christmas is a call about bees. We received a call from a friend whose son had cut into a hive while cutting wood. This particular acquaintance has had his share of run-in's with our flighty friends and has called us several times before. He knew the bee squad responds to calls in rain, sleet, snow, and despite post-holiday food induced comas.

Upon arrival, we witnessed a freezing flurry of activity coming from a freshly cut oak log. Our friends had unknowingly chosen a feral colony's home as their firewood and the bees were unamused at the disruption of their winter's slumber.

Upon inspection, Greg decided that some rubber mats would do the trick. The chain saw had cut directly into the colony and left the entire hive exposed; the mats were cut into strips and nailed onto the log to cover the damage (this was to mainly keep the rain out). A piece of plywood was used to cover the exposed end of the hollow log. We think this solution will keep the rest of the colony safe until Spring and that if the queen survived the "chainsaw massacre", they should be in good shape. If she didn't survive, they have little chance of making it through the winter.

We will go back in the Spring and check on the status of this hive. If they are survivors, we will relocate them to a new home on the farm.

Feral Honeybees are a valuable asset to your collection of hives. These survivor hives have proved strong through winters already, without chemicals. The idea is to raise your queens from strong, survivor hives so that you can introduce them to hives to breed stronger, healthier bees, with little to no chemicals. Finding and making use of these feral survivor colonies could be the key to saving bee keeping.