Some cool articles... Blue Honey and Red Honey, Whoops!

Red Honey

Blue Honey article

Sharing the Bee Love...

What a fun afternoon!  We had a young guest today who is being homeschooled... her lesson today was about bees!  B is such a good teacher and it was such a pleasure to have such an interested and animated student! Please scroll through til the end, we have some fun videos...

Teaching her to build some frames.  The one she add to the hive will be hers at the end of the season!!

Happy Student!

Our intrepid Apiarists... off on an adventure to add frames and check out the general health of the hives!

Despite the bug netting being hot and annoying, this little girl was VERY patient and happy.

The bees are doing very well, plenty of brood, honey, pollen - all the good stuff.

This little girl has NO FEAR!

B is having fun sharing his knowledge of all things Bee.  He's becoming quite the expert.  

Interesting use for Bees... Elephant blockers!

Interesting article:    Bee hive fences keep African Elephants away from crops

Bees and Slow Motion

Playing with the slow motion setting on my iPhone and filmed the bees.  So much fun!!

OMG... I forgot this year's Naked Gardening Day shot... LOL

Oh B.  I love you.  And your booBEES....  bwa ha ha... or it more like a BEEkini??  

Don't forget, Naked Gardening Day, the 1st Saturday in May.  Live a little.  Or heck, a lot.

Bees are doing great

We did a quick check on the bees today... with the great weather, incredibly high pollen counts and nature just starting to explode everything...we wanted to make sure there were enough frames in there for growth.  We've been checking them about twice a week, this should go down to about once a week now that we don't have to worry about feeding them.

The NWC  hive always seems more active and is building at a faster rate than the other hive.  We even got to see a drone today while we were checking the hive.  I'm gonna call him Bob.  He's the kind of bigger, darker bee under B's thumb in this picture.

I was concerned that some of the combs seem to be growing together between the frames... apparently its because of some gaps between the frames.... but it doesn't seem to excessive at the moment.

Here is the completely empty feeder from the NWC hive.. .we added one more feeding just because and they went through it all pretty quickly.  The WQD hive, once again, didn't seem to pay their feeder much attention.  We took their feeder and left it on the ground for tonight, maybe the NWC's can get a quick snack.

Found one of the little girls on my Star of Bethlehems, just chilling on a leaf.  Other than the dandelions, these are the only other flowers in my backyard this time of year.

As usual, Evil Kitten was out with us while we were in the side yard.  His interest however seemed to be completely focused on a pair of chickadees that were playing around this Birch... LOL.

Close up of the bee on B's jacket.  I love all the detail, considering it was taken with an iPhone 5s.

Bee Hive check-in

Today we had our friend W drop by and check out the hives with us.  We're looking for brood and stores... the NWCs had more stores, but the WQDs were really working on making more brood.

1st Sting...

So, as blogger and photographer... I'm usually just outside taking pictures... and I never bother with netting or any kind of protection. Today, just for giggles I wore netting and boots... and one of the little jerks crawled into my boot and stung me. I sincerely believe that the WQD's are just meaner than the other bees...

Anyway, we noted on Easter Sunday, when we fed them last, that it seemed like they're current frames were filling up, so this time when we opened up the hives to feed them, we decided to add an extra frame to each hive.
  

Here is the extra frame going into the NWC hive...

Adding sugar to the WQD hive..

They aren't building directly on the frames... not sure if we should bust off this section or what.  Needless to say, we are a little paranoid from last year and don't want to accidentally injure/kill the Queen again...

Extra frame going in to the WQD hive.  Apparently, they didn't like us redecorating... also, I think they may just be a more aggressive bee?  Will have to research...

Busy spring bees....

Day 6 of 2014 season... 2nd Sting of the season...

The bees seem to be doing quite well so far. We've been feeding them every other day and each hive is going through about a quart a day of the sugar syrup solution. (1c. water to 2c. sugar) Also, they've been starting to collect pollen - we assume it's from the local willow trees. These gals (NWCs) have already filled up an entire frame in their hive... they may have more, but we're trying to not *mess* with the hive too much (they were kind of pissy today) and let them be. The other hive actually started to build some comb off of the feeder. We need to go back in and remove it next feeding...





One of these girls crawled up into B's netting and he received his second sting of the season. Last year, he didn't get stung until almost the very end of the season. I wonder if having the two hives next to each other is making them more aggressive?

Adventures in Beekeeping! Heebie Jeebies

If you get the Heebie Jeebies from seeing a few bees, Bryan is not the person you want to be today. He escaped with only being stung once... on the neck.

G'night Sweet Bees

OK, so it started to snow a little.  We have the hives pretty well insulated, but were reminded by W to make sure that the bees were moving out of the packages and around the Queen so she wouldn't get chilly...

This is the foam board that we are using it's 1.5 inches thick and has an insulation value of 7.5.  We have the same board built in to the side walls and floor, plus the plywood we assume the insulation value to be about an 8 or a 9.  

Important to note... that we have made sure that proper ventilation is in place... you can't see it here, but we have soffit vents installed in the floor and in the roof.  It's important because you don't want condensation ending up dripping on your bees.

Video of the check in!

The Bees have arrived!!

The bees are here!!  We bought two packages of them this time.  One batch is Webster's Queen Daughters (WQD), the other is New World Carniolian (NWC).

The picture above is the WQD batch... I was a little concerned because there seems to be a lot more dead bees at the bottom of the container than in the bottom of the NWC batch pictured below.

The overall health of the bees seemed fine... we had them in doors before we had a chance to hive them and within an hour the buzzing was pretty intense.... There were a few bees that managed to escape the containers, but they didn't stray far from the group...

They did, however, manage to gain Evil Kitty's attention...

Then we moved them in to the hives...  

Hiving the New World Carniolians part 1

Hiving the NWC's Part 2 - Because SOMEONE forgot their pocket knife...



Hiving the Webster's Queen Daughters...

 

Also, please note... the hives are now painted the same color.  I like that the roofs are different though, it will  be easier to track which hive is which!!

The hives themselves have insulated walls, but before we put on the roofs we put a layer of foam board insulation on top of the wooden slats... we're hoping this will keep the hive warm should the temperatures drop, and will keep them safe throughout the winter.  

Colorful new hives...

The new hives have been painted.  I was rooting for orange with red trim, but B apparently thought differently.  Yes.  I've not been subtle in my disapproval.  Expect changes...

Adventures in Beekeeping - Take Two

OK, so, last year did not end well with the Bees. We killed the Queen on accident and could never just get another to establish itself and get the colony happy again.   My heart still hurts a little. By the end of the season we ended up giving the rest of the bees to a fellow beekeeper who added them to his hive to overwinter.  I couldn't see just letting them all die off alone.

This year, we are starting off early and way more prepared.  B has been working really hard on creating the ultimate beehives.  These have easy access, with minimum molestation should we need to move things around, they're insulated,  and ultimately, they are pretty huge, to accommodate as a lot of bees before we need to start adding anything.  The main goal is to have it set up so that we can just leave them alone to do their thing.  I think our main mistake last year was messing with them too much in our quest to make sure everything was OK.

So other than a coat of paint, these puppies are ready to go!  Bees should be arriving on the 12th or so...