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.

Winterizing

Well, we've done the best we can do for this year. We took some losses in the fall due to a lesson learned the hard way. We have learned that sometimes you just have to let go of the weak ones. We need to concentrate more on good queens, combining when we should, and management. As a wise man once said, "Our doing hasn't caught up with our knowing." We knew better than to baby the weak hives as much as we did. Combine them with strong hives and good queens and they have a better chance of making it.

We are ready to go for the spring, and now all we can do it hope. Yet, hope and change has not always worked for us.

In October, Greg attended the Tennessee Bee Keeper's Association meeting, held at the Tennessee Tech University's Hyder Burks Pavilion. Overall, the meeting was excellent. Kent Williams from Kentucky was our favorite. Here is a YouTube video of him, well worth watching.


We are looking for a good bee candy recipe for the early spring, to keep them fed and healthy till the warmer weather brings the blooms. For now, we are studying up on new techniques and better techniques for next season.

In other news, Greg just finished a course on bee health from the University of Minnesota. One could say that he has officially earned his Ph.Bee. :) Greg found it very interesting and highly recommends this course to anyone interested in keeping bees. Beginners and experienced apiarists alike could benefit from this course (it is well worth the $25).

We have supplies ordered for more boxes, frames and foundations. We have some new bees ordered and we have decided to change to the medium size supers from the large. The large are extremely heavy when full, and let's face it: no one around here is getting any younger.

One of the goals for next year is not to order any more packaged bees. We would like to get our own strong enough to divide and not require any more than what we can produce. We also plan to do more survivor queen grafting.

We will leave you with a "Did you Know?" from some of our blog friends.

A tablespoon of honey tastes about 60% sweeter than the same amount of sugar, yet it has 20 less calories. When substituting honey for table sugar, use about 3/4 of the amount of honey instead of sugar listed in the recipe. If baking with honey, reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees.

Update on Bee Removal Using Cone Method

We wanted to update you on the progress of the bee removal from a house using the cone method. Overall, it was a huge success! We did have a few set backs, involving time and multiple trips, heavy hives, and poor taping methods. We now know to recommend Gorilla Tape rather than Duck Tape (on second thought, obviously a gorilla has superior grip over a duck, however, now we know for sure). We ended up with a pretty good hive that has been able to fortify itself for the winter, so we hope it will continue to thrive.

Summary of bee removal for this house: success. A lot of trouble, but at least we ended up with a strong result and learned a lot along the way.