Honey, it's hot in here...

Do you know what comes with Late July heat and humidity? Tons of wildflowers, that's what. I've been checking on my beehives about once a week this summer, watching them slowly build up the comb and fill it with eggs. It's pretty interesting to see the eggs, which are only two to three millimeters long, white and attached to the very bottom of each comb cell, quickly grow into a grub-like larvae that get bigger and bigger until they fill the entire cell. At that point, the bees seal up the cell and each larva transforms into a fully developed bee in about 21 days.

While I've watched the bee population expand in the bottom two boxes of each hive, I've added additional boxes one by one, and these have been filled with pollen and honey, and eventually just honey. I put the sixth box on each hive today and they'll probably need at least one more each by the end of the summer. I plan to steal the top three boxes off each hive around Labor Day and extract the honey and bottle it. I've already stolen a frame (about two weeks ago) just to see how much the yield would be, and how it tastes. Since it was early season honey, it had a very mild flavor and a light color. As the season progresses, and the bees forage for nectar further from the hives, on more and more diverse flowers, the honey will be darker and the flavor will be more intense in character. A lot of commercial beekeepers collect the early honey in mid summer and leave the darker honey for the bees to feed themselves through winter. Since this is the first year for these hives, I've decided to wait until September to see how much honey they actually make before making the decision about how much I'm going to steal from them. I'll be able to compare the September honey to the sample I collected a few weeks ago to see how much of a difference there is between the two.

If I end up pulling off three boxes from each hive, I'll end up with a total of 60 frames. If each frame yields two pints, I'll end up with roughly 15 gallons of honey, and that's still leaving at least two full boxes of honey on each hive to get them through the winter. As I was lifting the boxes off the stacks this morning, there were two that were 100% full of honey and I was shocked at how heavy they were.

I took each hive apart this morning because I wanted to get a look all the way down in the bottom box on each hive to see if there were any empty frames or if they'd all been built out with comb. I mainly wanted to make sure there was enough room for the queens to keep producing eggs through the rest of the summer. It looks like that is the case. In the process, however, the bees got pretty cranky and I ended up getting stung three times; twice on my right hand, and once through my suit just above the knee. I had one whole hive taken apart and had to walk away for a few minutes to see if they would settle down, and they really didn't. I ended up closing things up and getting out of there but I did add the 6th box on top of each hive before putting the covers on. Greg's going to have to put together another 20 frames soon because with all of the wildflowers blooming right now, they are definitely not even close to shutting down the honey production. I will probably keep adding boxes until I see the first ragweed blooming, then I'll pull off what I'm going to keep, and let them make honey out of the fall ragweed bloom, which they can keep. I've had several beekeepers tell me ragweed honey is not particularly tasty but the bees apparently don't care.

Beat It Lady!!!

That's pretty much the message I got today when I went out to check the hives. It was hot, in the mid 80s this afternoon, no wind, sunny and humid. I got out to the bee hives and there was quite a bit of activity around the front of the hives, with lots of traffic coming and going through the entrance. It was by far the most activity I've seen thus far. During my last visit to the hives I noted that the top hive box (there are two, one stacked on top of the other) had most of the frames built out with comb and there was lots of nectar filling many of the cells. I definitely saw larvae in both hives but not many capped cells. I tried doing a video with my phone camera but it did not turn out very well. I'll try again in a few days. It's too hard trying to hold the camera still and with the subject framed in the view window, and hold the frame in the other hand. I finally gave up. The main purpose of opening the hive the other day was to put some small pint-jar feeders of sugar syrup on top of the inner covers because it had been cool and rainy and I was worried there might not be much pollen and nectar in the vicinity. I made up a batch of syrup and filled two jars. I used a sharp screwdriver to punch a small hole in each lid and inverted the jar. Sure enough, after a couple of drips, each jar held a vacuum and no more syrup leaked out. Once I got out to the hive I put an empty (frameless) hive box on top of the inner cover and set the inverted pint jar over the hole in the center of the cover. I then put the outer cover on top of the frameless box. I figured the bees would use the syrup if they needed it, and I sort of expected the jars to be empty when I went back to check them today.

Today when I went out there, my plan was to remove the outer cover, refill the jars if they were empty, take off the inner cover, try to locate the queen in each hive, look for larvae, look for new eggs, and look for any signs of mites or other pests. When I closed up the hives I planned to add a third hive box with frames so the bees would have an additional level to keep building comb for the queen. I took two boxes out there with me, and in each of them I had removed a regular frame and added a green plastic drone comb frame. Drone larvae are bigger and require an additional couple of days to fully develop and hatch. For whatever reason, the varroa mite prefers to lay its eggs in drone comb and take advantage of the longer larval development time. One of the non-chemical suggestions for controlling this damaging pest is to put frames in the hive that are designed for drone comb, and the bees will fill it up with drone larvae, and the varroa mites will put the majority of their eggs in there. If you pull the drone frames out of the hives and replace them with fresh ones just before the drones would have hatched out, you have essentially removed much of the varroa population. Most people either scrape the comb off the frame or they put them in the freezer which kills the drones and the varroa larvae, and then they put the frames back in the hives and the workers clean out and discard the now-dead contents of the cells. Sounds gross but it is a pretty effective way to control the population of this particular pest.

Anyway, I got out to the hives and took off the outer cover of Hive #1. The pint jar was missing only about a third of the syrup so they must be finding plenty of flowers to forage on. I set the jar on the platform and took off the inner cover. I puffed a little smoke over the frames and drove the bees down in between them, and lifted one of the center frames with my hive tool. There was a lot of capped comb, which contain larvae in various stages of development, and also newly laid eggs in the bottom of many cells, which are so tiny you can barely see them. That is a good indicator that the queen is alive and doing her job. There were also areas with larvae that had not been capped yet, and also areas on the frames containing nectar (soon to be honey) and pollen of a very dark yellow color, indicating dandelions are being foraged on by the bees. As far as I can tell Hive #1 looks great. One thing I've noticed every time I've gone out there is that Hive #1 seems to have a lot more activity coming and going through the entrance. Not sure why this is, but the inside of the hives look basically the same and I can't tell that one hive is ahead of the other in terms of larvae, pollen and nectar.

Once I'd examined and seen what I wanted to see in the hives, I set the new box of frames with the one frame of drone comb on top of the other two hive boxes. I then put the inner cover on, and set the pint jar back in place so they'd have a reserve of food if it rains the next several days, as the forecast is warning. I then put the empty box on the inner cover, which basically works as a spacer for the pint jar feeder, and lastly the outer cover. I gathered all of my tools, closed the gate, and let the smoker fuel burn out and emptied the ash on the ground, loaded everything back into the Jeep and headed back to the house.

I will leave them alone for a week or so and then check them again to see how much comb they have built in that third box. If it looks like a lot, I will take the hive apart and arrange the three brood boxes with the fullest one on the bottom, and the one with the most empty frames on top. I'll remove the pint jar, add the queen excluder (which is a grid that the queen can't fit through but the workers can), and then a honey super (the 10 frame box that the bees use to store their surplus honey). Since the queen can't fit through the excluder, no eggs can be laid in the honey supers, and as each one fills, you keep adding another one until late summer. At that point you determine how much stored honey the bees will need to get through the winter, and you basically steal the rest. We're a long way from that point but based on the way things look thus far, most of the comb should be built by the end of the month, and the rest of the summer should be a whole lot of honey storing and rearing of baby bees. I'll need to keep an eye on things in the bottom part of the hive so that things don't get too crowded, which causes swarming behavior, and sets the hive back because half the population leaves, and you have to replace the queen immediately or you lose a whole 21-day brood cycle. Mature hives are the most prone to swarming and since these are first-year hives, I don't expect to have to deal with this issue, unless things get really hot sooner than normal, and there's an above average amount of blooming things and the bees get ahead of me. I bought plenty of extra equipment in case I need to split a hive to prevent it from swarming, so that's my emergency plan if things look like they are headed that way. I'll set up a third hive and order a new queen, and move the old queen and half of the brood and half of the bees into the new hive, and put the new queen in the old hive. Hopefully that won't be necessary until next year...

Here's a picture I took last week, right after the queen was released into the hive. Since I had only nine frames in each hive because the queen cage was wedged in there, there was extra space and a big gap between a couple of the frames. Since bees don't like big open spaces, they attempt to fill them with comb. I had to scrape this off and remove it before I could fit the tenth frame in the box. Kind of creepy looking. I saved it to show Greg. It smelled like honey.

Whew!!!

They're in! We transferred the two packages of bees into their new hives. Each package contained four pounds of bees and a single queen. Here's how it went...


We loaded the tools, a gallon of syrup, the guidebook, the smoker and fuel for it, and the two packages of bees into the truck. I suited up in my new bee suit and put on the veil and we headed downstairs. Doogan and Sophie both freaked out at the sight of the bee suit until I took the veil off and they realized it was me. The picture to the left is what one package of four pounds of bees looks like.



Once we got out to the vineyard, we opened the gate and I put all of the tools and supplies on the platform between the hives. Greg ran the camera from a safe distance, since he has no bee suit. I then put a package of bees next to each hive and took the cover and feeder off the hives. I've never done this before so I wanted to take my time and not screw up and end up standing there watching my bees fly away.



With the hive tool, I pried one of the cans of syrup out of the first package and slid the little box containing the queen out of the package and covered the hole with a coffee can lid. There were probably a dozen or so bees clinging to the queen cage. I brushed them into the hive, after removing five of the foundation frames. I then wedged the queen cage between a couple of the frames, but not before realizing that there was a cork but no candy in the queen cage, meaning there was nothing to puncture with a nail to allow the bees to chew through to release her over the next couple of days. That means I'm going to have to release her myself in a couple of days once they all get acclimated to their new hives.

Once I wedged the queen cage between a couple of frames, I used a stapler to attach the metal strip attached to the cage to the top of one of the frames so she wouldn't slide down to the bottom of the box. I then picked up the package, banged it on the platform a couple of times, and flipped it upside down, dumping the majority of the bees into the into the hive where the missing frames left a big space. Unfortunately, I failed to remove the coffee can lid that I had temporarily covered the hole in the lid of the package while I finagled around with the queen cage. Once I dumped about 20,000 bees in there, it was going to be way too disruptive to reach in there and retrieve it so it is still in there. I plan to get it tomorrow when I go back to release the queen and replace the missing frames in each hive.

After I put the bees in the hive, I put the feeder on top and then poured about a half gallon of syrup into one side of the feeder so the bees have plenty of food, then put the inner cover and the outer cover on the hive. The only thing I forgot to do was put the pollen patty that I had made to supplement the diet until there's enough real pollen in the area for them to collect. I left it on the platform. I'll put it in there tomorrow when I open the hive to release the queen.

Once the first hive was finished, I had a few minutes to reflect on the mistakes I'd made and on the second hive, I managed to do everything right and things went pretty smoothly. With both packages, I could not get 100% of the bees out when I dumped them out. According to conventional wisdom, putting the open package in front of the entrance to the hive will eventually encourage the stragglers to crawl or fly out of the opening and into the hive, because they can smell the beeswax on the foundation frames, and they can smell the pheromones of the queen, which is still trapped in her cage. We'll go out there in the morning and see if that's true.



All in all, things went pretty much without a hitch. Once the queens are released into the hive population, they should start laying eggs and raising new bees. Within a week I will need to go out there and pull out a couple of frames and examine them to see if the queen has put any eggs in them. If not, I will need to estabilish if she is still alive, and if not, I will need to order a new queen, quickly.

I noted today that there were quite a few dandelions in the grass around the hives so I would expect that if it is warm enough, some of the bees will begin to forage immediately. The sooner they do, the faster the hive population will build up and the more honey they potentially will make.

Box O' Bees...

I picked up my two packages of bees today. I drove about an hour north of here to the Bee Man's house to pick them up. I finished up assembling and painting the last few parts of the hives this morning, and they're ready to go to the vineyard tomorrow.

The bees came to Iowa on a trailer from Northern California, and each package includes about 20,000 bees, and a tiny box containing the mated queen. Tomorrow I will install them in their new homes.

I was a little nervous about driving home with them in the Jeep but they did fine. Only two bees got loose in the car, and they joined me in the front seat, and as soon as I cracked open the window, out they went. They were apparently clinging to the outside of the cage when I put them in the back of the Jeep.

The little circle on top of each box (in the picture above) is a can that contains corn syrup or some other sugar mixture, (probably from Cargill, LOL) and it has a hole on the bottom so the bees can feed themselves during the trip from the West Coast. I just checked and the cans are still about half full. I put the boxes in the garage for the night and will install them in the morning once I get everything set up in the vineyard. The weather is really crummy today, light rain and kind of cool. The bees were pretty sluggish. Tomorrow is supposed to be much better, warmer and sunny. I'll put plenty of syrup in the hive feeders so the bees don't get hungry but there are things starting to bloom around here, including dandelions and some kind of wild cherry bushes, as well as some maple trees in the surrounding woods so it should be warm enough for them to start leaving the hive right away and foraging on their own, at least on sunny days.

Tomorrow will be exciting. I will take the boxes up to the vineyard and take a few frames out of the hives. The little box containing each queen will be pried out of the hole with the can, which will be discarded, and the cork in the queen box will be removed. Inside the hole in the little box is a piece of squishy candy which prevents the queen from running out of the box. Over the course of the next three days or so, the bees will chew through this candy and release the queen into the hive, where she will take up residence. Once I put the queen box in between a couple of frames in the hive box, I'll bang the bee box on the ground, flip it over, and dump the bees into the hive through the hole in the top of the box. After that, I'll put the feeder on, with some syrup, and then the lid. According to my bee class instructor, you should leave the hives alone for three to four days, to allow everything to settle down,give the bees a chance to let the queen out of her box, and start building comb on the foundation, which is coated with beeswax to encourage them to get started. Once there is comb, the queen will follow along behind and lay an egg in each cell of the comb. In 21 days, there will be a new generation of bees in the hive. This will go on all summer to the point that there are 60 or 70 thousand bees in each hive.

I will take pictures tomorrow as I set things up out there and get the bees into the hives. I'm sure Greg will be filming too (from inside the truck)...

Buzzzzz

For about a year, I've been thinking about getting some bees. I'm fascinated by them, and their role in agriculture. We seem to have a lot of wild (feral) bees, including honey bees, bumble bees, mason/orchard bees, and lots of different species of tiny bees that I know nothing about other than they're bees.

Last March we went on a vacation to Kauai and we met a beekeeper who let us tour his apiary and processing set up. At that point, I knew I had to have some bees.

I am planning to set up two hives and with the vineyard, the fruit trees we've planted, lots of clover in the pasture, and the huge variety of wildflowers we have around our place, I hope these two little hives will produce lots of honey.

One thing the long Iowa winter allows is a lot of down time to plan and plot next year's gardens and projects. This year it allowed me time to take a beekeeping class and this past Thursday was the final class. There were about 25 people in the bee class, and almost all of them are planning on starting hives this spring. It's been fun to take this class and learn how it's all done. I'd read several books before taking the class so I was already pretty well prepared for what was involved but it was nice to be able to actually ask someone the questions I had, after reading several how-to guides.

At this point, I'm very excited. I will have to drive about an hour and a half to pick up the bees from the guy I bought them from, and then make the same trip home with them in the car. LOL. After my last Bee Class this past Thursday, I picked up all of the equipment I had ordered the previous week. The instructor had driven to Nebraska to pick up his large order and several orders for people in the class, which saved us all the shipping costs (my three boxes weighed well over 100 lbs in total). The bees will be ready to be picked up the third week of April so I have just over a month to get everything built and painted, and set up in the location of their permanent home. This needs to get done sooner rather than later because things in the vineyard are also going to get very busy by the end of March.

Greg worked out an assembly line in the garage and while I glued the pieces and fit the hive boxes together, he put the nails in and made sure the boxes were square. We have 12 out of the 15 boxes done now (we ran out of nails) and the next step is priming and painting them. Most people paint their hives white because it is reflective and helps prevent the hives from getting too hot in the summer. I've chosen a pale yellow that should accomplish almost the same thing, while making them just a little different than everyone else's. Once the painting is done, we'll assemble the frames where the bees actually build out the comb and store the larvae, pollen and honey. There are ten frames per hive box. Each hive also needs a base and an inner and outer cover. I have them and they need to be assembled as well. If things go well with these initial two hives, I'll expand next year.

I still have a few things to buy, including my bee suit and veil, as well as some leather gloves and a couple of tools that are used while working with the bees. I already have the smoker, although I haven't messed around with it yet.

Oh, and the instructor suggested a big bottle of liquid Benadryl, just in case...

Um, hello???

It's alive!!! I'm performing CPR on my vineyard blog and hope you will check in to see how things are going. Quite a hiatus, huh???

Well, it's February 17th and 68 degrees. I don't really know what to say about that and I know it's a tease. We're a long way from spring but I can feel it in the air!!! We have ice in our forecast for next week but today it feels like June. It was absolutely gorgeous today. I took the opportunity to get started on some pruning while I didn't have to dress in six layers and wear gloves, which are a PITA when pruning. I had a sweat shirt over my t-shirt when I got out there but had to take it off before I even started pruning because it really was that warm.

Our vines are dormant right now but all of them need to be pruned so that the new shoots and growth have someplace to grow, and the grape clusters, which form on one-year-old wood, will be located in the part of the trellis where they're supposed to grow. Otherwise, the whole trellis would be one big tangled rats nest of old, unproductive wood, dead winter-killed shoots, and who knows what else. We've had a pretty decent winter compared to the last few years.

We've still got a couple of months to go before we're out of the below-freezing overnight temps but we seem to be coming out of the extremely cold weather. We did not have the bone-crushing cold temps this year that we've had for the last three years, and based on what I saw in the vineyard today, things look really good. We also did not get as much snow (to date) as we have the last several years, so hopefully we won't have to face as much mud up there this year. Fingers Crossed!!!

The warm temps should be hanging on through Saturday and it is supposed to be sunny so although all of the snow has melted and its a muddy mess outside right now, it should be a really nice weekend to get a big jump on the pruning. It's very time consuming but one of the most important things to do, and do right if you want to grow good winegrapes. It's extremely windy today so that should help things dry out a little.

The sheep are still in the front pasture where the barn is located, and we'll be moving them back out to the vineyard sometime in mid to late March so they can get a jump on the weeds. In the meantime, they hang around in the barn eating hay and roaming around their front pasture. Their wool coats are long and I'll be scheduling them to be sheared sometime in early April. I have 12 of them now, 6 black and 6 white. I'll be sending the best of the fleeces out to a processor to process into yarn. I took a knitting class this winter and learned just enough to play around with it.

I'm also taking a beekeeping class on Thursday nights and I'm going to start with two hives in April and see where it leads. It's absolutely fascinating and we have plenty of clover, wildflowers, fruit trees and, dare I say it, WEEDS, to keep them happy all summer.

I'll post some pictures of the winter vineyard this weekend, and maybe get Greg to help me do a little movie on pruning the vines.