Top Bar Day 5

Time: 10:00 - 11:00 AM

Weather: partly cloudy with a slight breeze - mid 50's.

Well, my top bar hive (Schampel TBH) has been set up and with bees for 5 days now. The queen was still in her cage so it was time to release her. The hive is built with a screened bottom that has a sliding wooden bottom beneath that can open or close from the outside depending on how cold it is. I'm nervous about leaving the bottom wide open when it's still cold at night so it's been mostly closed all week. I've opened it a few times at night to shine my light up inside and see what's going on (ok - I've done it every night - sometimes twice). They've been very active all week as the weather has been nice. I've seen them coming back in with pollen also.

Upon first opening the hive this morning I was surprised to find that some of the top boards were stuck together. I figured the girls had propolized them together and didn't think much about it. But as I slowly pried them apart, it became obvious that the comb had crossed over more than 1 top bar.

I was able to pull out 3 different bars with comb built up (or down) about 5 inches wide and 6 inches long. I was amazed at the amount of comb already produced in only 5 days. Wow! They were filling the cells up with honey and pollen already too.

When I had built the top bars, I cut a groove down the center of each bar about 1/16 inch deep and filled it with bees wax to give the bees a starting point for drawing out their comb. At least that was the idea. Well, they had their own idea. They completely ignored the wax strips and used the edge of the top boards as a guide for starting their comb. This is going to be a problem as the comb is now attached to 2 top boards (actually centered between the 2). I ended up causing the collapse of one of the comb. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I removed it altogether.

In hopes to get them back on track, without destroying all of their hard work, I cut one of my top bars in half to use as a spacer. My top bars are 1 3/8 inches wide. I put the 2 bars with comb attached to one side of the hive and next to the 2 bars, placed the half bar. My thinking is that when the bees move over to build their next comb (if they use the same spacing), they'll end up drawing comb in the center of the next top bar. I'll let them proceed this way for a while and will eventually remove the 2 bars with misplaced comb. We'll see how it works.

The queen is in there and loose now, so I'll be getting back in next week to see if I can find any eggs or larvae and to check to see if they're drawing out their comb where I want it.

Here's a video I captured right be fore I closed her back up.

Hive Inspections

I was finally able to go out and inspect our three Langstroth hives for the first time this year. I've checked them from the outside and was happy with the activity there but this is the first time I was able to get inside them. The weather was warm but quite breezy. We smoked the bees but found them all rather calm. The wind, I think, made them hunker down in the frames rather than come out after us.

Not sure how to keep track of each hive so we'll call them Hive1 (north), Hive2(south) and Hive3 (caught from a swarm).

Hive2 was the first one we got into. We had let her overwinter with the brood box, a large super full of honey and another large super about half full of honey. We wrapped all our hives with black tar paper before it got to cold making sure to leave plenty of ventilation. We found the queen in the second box. She's been busy. lots of brood comb. Also several empty queen cells (some in the middle of the frame and some on the bottom). We damaged some of the drone brood cells that were between frames and we found voroa mites in them. We're gonna watch this one for swarms. Possibly get a screen on the bottom also. We did place a queen excluder on top of the second box.

Hive3 was the weakest of our colonies last fall so she wintered with the brood box, a full large super and 2 partially full supers (4 high). Also wrapped in Tar paper. This hive has preferred the top entrance since the day we caught them (last July - I know it was late in the year). We found the queen in the top box. There were several frames of brood. The bottom three boxes were full of crystalized honey. You could tell they had been eating it as a lot of it had been opened up and there were little white grains dropped all over the place. This hive was filthy inside. I was surprised to see all the junk that the bees had been dropping in there.There were dead bees, white grains of crystalized honey and feces all over the floor of the bottom box. The bees were stacked so high, the front bottom entrance was entirely blocked. We cleaned out all the dead and swept up best we could. We left a full box of the best looking frames of crystalized honey on top of the brood box (we put her back on the bottom). The others boxes of crystalized honey we'll clean up and reuse the frames. Didn't notice any mites in this hive but didn't break open any brood cells looking either.

Hive1 was the last box we got into. She's been the strongest all along. The top box had black mold on the north side, and on several of the frames. We removed and discarded the frames with mold on them. We'll have to improve ventilation in this hive. There were a lot of brood cells in this hive also. Again, we didn't see any mites, but we didn't break open any cells looking for them. We found the queen in the 2nd box (we left her there, but put a queen excluder on top of the second box).

We'll probably try to split the 2 strongest colonies in the next month (as soon as we can acquire some queens).

In all we were very pleased with the strength of all three colonies. We'll probably install mite screens on all three boxes. We're gonna watch for swarms also.

Here are a couple of videos taken before and after installing the bees.

The Package

Hive activity after the installation.

Hiving the Package Bees

Over the winter I build a Kenya Top Bar Hive. I became fascinated with the idea of "natural" beekeeping. I followed instructions found at The Barefoot Beekeeper

to build my hive. Most of the wood used in the building of this hive was from wooden pallets discarded at my work. I had ordered a 4lb package of bees with a Minnesota hygienic queen from Knight Family Honey about an hours drive from my house. I had a friend pick them up on Saturday as I was out of town. He dropped them off to me Sunday night and I was so tempted to hive them right then. However, the sun had just gone down and since it was my first time hiving a package, I wanted to take pictures. I decided to wait.

I kept the package overnight in the garage covered with a towel. They did fine. For Monday, I placed them on the back deck where they could get the sun in the afternoon while they waited for me. They were so anxious to get out and get working that they were actually trying to clean up the dead bees from the bottom of the package (though they had no way of carrying them out of the package).

The weather on Monday was perfect. It was still in the upper 70's at about 6:00 pm when I hived them. I had my helper keepers and we were ready to go. There was a slight breeze but not enough to bother the bees.

I had read about spraying them with sugar water but decided against it as I wanted a more dramatic hiving with bees flying around the yard. I had veils on my kids but did not bother wearing one.

The queen did not have the sugar plug that I was expecting so I'll have to get in the hive in a few days and release her. All in all it took about an hour. the queen was hung from the top bars and the box was dumped (as much as possible) directly in the top of the hive. I had only removed 4 of the top bars. Once the bees were dumped in, I replaced the top bars and placed the package on the table in front of the hive. At 7:30, when the sun went down, almost all of the bees had found there way home.

Some photos are posted here on this blog. The rest can be viewed here.

The girls inside the package - it's hard to believe there's 10,000 of them in there.

The queen in her cage.

My helpers in their veils (Tylor and Jaden)

Watching them all fly around.

Introduction (a bit of history)

This is basically a blog to help me document my hives and beekeeping activity - a beekeeping log if you will. I'm a new beekeeper. I started in the spring of last year (2008). I partnered with a fellow beekeeper on 2 hives and we were able to catch a swarm in the summer bringing our total hive count to three. All of our hives are Langstroth hives and they reside on his property in Price, Utah (a couple miles from my home). All three wintered very well and are very active. We have not yet inspected them this spring as the weather has been nasty every time our schedules permitted - perhaps tomorrow. My father kept bees when I was younger and I didn't get involved much. I remember earning my beekeeper merit badge. I remember harvesting. That's pretty much where the memories end. More details to follow (maybe).