Sunday afternoon, reflecting on Saturday morning

Mark and I are sitting on the front porch. The air is buzzing with sound of hummingbirds. A gentle breeze blows our deep-toned wind chimes, and the temperatures of summer have abated for a few days. Bliss.

Yesterday morning we headed to Bee Hill to follow up on our notes from Art's visit, as well as check on our two new queens in 4 & 5. The picture at left shows all six hives when we first arrived. (Mark had whacked the weeds back on Friday, which made it nice.) Thankfully, in both hives, the queen had been successfully released. In fact, both queen condos had been "licked clean" of every bit of candy. The bees were very calm, which we took as a good sign, and rather than disturb their contentment with their new leaders, we opted to look for the queens another time. I got to sprinkle them with powdered sugar, and Mark added a medium super to both to accommodate the growing number of bees. (Photo on the right shows Hive 5 is full!) Hive 4 already had a feeder with sufficient supply, so we added a feeder and the last of the recent batch of diluted "stinky" honey to Hive 5. Hives 4 & 5 should be set for a while with plenty of fuel to strengthen them and get them well established before the colder months set in. The goal was to give them enough room for the population they have, but not give them so much space they have a hard time keeping it warm.
Hives 2 & 3 got the powdered sugar treatment and pollen patties as well. Both seemed to have the beginnings of capped honey in their medium supers, which means the brood nest is solidly established in the lower deep super. (Photo below.) Nice!

Hives 1 & 6 both had some activity, and tomorrow we'll check them to make sure the queens were released.

I felt for the first time that we were working in tandem as a team, getting needed tasks accomplished and equipment moved around without me being in the way. Admittedly, being suited up in my jacket, veil, and gloves makes me more willing to get closer and help!

In beekeeping news, we got our first issue of the Mississippi Beekeepers Association newsletter, and the annual meeting is the end of October. They're going to have a class on crafting soaps, candles, and cosmetics with beeswax and honey, classes on marketing your product, etc. I'm excited! A new addition to their schedule is a make-and-take decoupage class. I gave Mark a hard time about how even beekeeping seems like an old boys' club in MS, because they're having the crafty event "so our ladies can get to know each other." I'm going to attend, and try not to feel like they're patting me on the head. It also makes me want to learn as much as possible so I can hold up my end of conversations and avoid asking silly questions at the meet-and-greet events. Who knew beekeeping would turn out to be a competition? Oh wait. For Lewises, *everything* is a competition!

Finally, a shout-out to Cousin Marla and her family -- check out Mark's cap!

Hive 1: The Big Split

Mark consulted a couple of experienced beekeepers about the number of supersedure cells and what to do about it. The verdict: they're trying to swarm, so split the hive.

As Mark had wanted six hives all along, he wasn't going to argue.

So today, he drove to Shannon, MS to buy two queens from Tommy Holman. He has a 220-frame extractor and 600 hives, so Mark was pretty impressed with his operation. For the second time this week, two queen condos were brought to Bee Hill.

Hive 1 originally had 2 deep supers and 2 medium supers. The lower of the two deeps (with the bulk of the brood) and the top medium super full of honey (completely capped) became Hive 6. When I visited Bee Hill tonight, it looked like this (picture at right). I suggested we set a stem of leaves from a nearby plant on the entrance, to give the bees a marker, as I've seen on Steven's Bees. Mark was kind enough to indulge me.

Hive 1 is now the upper of the two originals deep supers, a medium super with honey (though not much is capped), and an empty deep on top to accommodate what we assume will be the greater number of bees. He put a new queen in both hives. Mark didn't look for a queen in the lower brood box when he moved it to be Hive 6, and his hope is that both of Holman's queens will be released and become the dominant forces in each of the "new" hives. The new Hive 1 (pictured at left) also had bees around the entrance, though not as many.

Hive 5, the "Macon" bees, seemed to be thriving and he added a pollen patty. Mark plans to return and add a medium super to make sure they have enough room.

Hive 4 got a jar of diluted honey rather than sugar water, from the odd smelling stuff I processed from the Kemper County project. Odds are it was goldenrod that gave it that odor, which will eventually go away according to the experts, but we'll just use it to feed the bees.

All six of the hives were treated with Terramycin (TM) for American and European Foul Brood.

Where is Your Honey From?

I follow a few beekeepers' blogs, and today The Weekend Beekeeper posted this article from AOL.

Look at the labels of the honey you buy, and support your local beekeepers. And hey, come next spring, feel free to support us! :-)

Hive Inspection with Art Potter

Art Potter produces A LOT of honey. Generally, if someone here buys local honey, it's Art's, because he has a variety of local businesses promoting his product. He offered to help us with the re-queening, and to give us a hand with a more thorough inspection of the hives. In the picture, Mark is on the left and Art is on the right.

The best news is that there is no evidence thus far of disease or pests. HURRAY! We'll continue to be vigilant, but hope that our oil traps underneath screened bottom boards will continue to be effective.

Art's first advice was to get a plastic tote to carry the smoker, pine straw, hive tools, and lighter in. Mark grimaced and I laughed, because I've offered more than once to help him get organized. His second bit of advice was to buy entrance reducers and install them no later than October 1, to keep the field rats out of the hives.

We began with Hive 4, with the intention of finding the old queen and putting the new queen in. The sugar water feeder was empty, which was a good sign. The pollen patty wasn't completely eaten. What was ironic was that just over a week after our last inspection and our fear that this hive wasn't doing well it was full of active bees, and the brood pattern was consistent. Art explained that the reason they weren't laying wax evenly was the old wax Mark had put in an empty frame was not flat, and they were simply avoiding the comb that was invading their space by building around it on the frame next to it. I felt badly that we were going to kill a queen who wasn't doing as badly as we thought, but the factor of unknown age had us proceeding with the new queen. Can you see her in this picture? (Look in the center of the photo, about a third of the way from the top -- her body is longer.) One bit of good news too is that the worker bees were forming two "supersedure cells" which means they might have been displeased with the queen and intended to grow their own new one to replace her. Bloodthirsty wretches!

What you see in Mark's hand is what I call the Queen Condo. She's in this ventilated box with 3-5 worker bees and some fondant-style sugar to eat. There's a small hole on each end that is corked. When it's time to put the condo in the hive, they uncorked the candy end, poked a hole in the candy with a paper clip, and put the condo between two frames, screen side down, but one end angled up slightly. What should happen is that the new queen will release pheromones, bees from the current colony will come to see what's going on, they'll eat the candy plug, and by the time they eat their way through to let the queen out, they've accepted her and won't kill her. The condo is angled up so that if one of her attending worker bees dies, it won't block the exit. We're supposed to check on her in 3-5 days to make sure she got out.

This process was repeated for Hive 5, with the differences being they'd eaten the entire pollen patty, they didn't have a sugar water feeder so it won't need refilling, and **I found the queen before Mark or Art did!**

Then we decided to tackle Hive 1, the largest colony of all. Both medium supers have honey. What we didn't know was that the top deep super is nearly all honey too! Art said that super probably weighs 100 pounds! The big surprise in Hive 1 is the sheer number of queen cells they were growing. (In the photo, it's the large "blobs" on the edge of the frame.) They were seriously attempting to re-queen themselves, in spite of the fact that we'd given them a new queen before we even brought them to Bee Hill from their home in the tree. Art said it could be a variety of things: she could be injured, she could have fertility issues, etc. But they were scraping off supersedure cells like crazy, and then discovered one that looked as though it could have produced a queen that had hatched. By the time they got down into the bottom box of Hive 1, the air was full of agitated bees. I retreated to the four-wheeler, where they were dive-bombing my veil, which fortunately is stiff so they bounced off.

In total, we spent nearly two hours on Bee Hill. We have notes on next steps to take, but are left with a conundrum in Hive 1: attempt to re-queen if we can track down the new queen they made for themselves, or let nature take its course?

Date Night with the Beekeeper

You know you're an old married person when a "date" is any time you spend alone with your mate. In our case, Monday's "date" was driving to Forrest, MS to buy two new queens from Derwin Thrash (pictured at left). You can read about Derwin and his work with a locally famous beekeeper in this article. Derwin and his wife welcomed us into their home, gave us a jar of honey "in exchange" for the jar of jam we took to them, and offered a lot of helpful information. She's a teacher so you know we hit it off!

One of the queens has a long, golden body; the other is darker, and has a stockier build. We're hopeful they'll get Hives 4 & 5 on the right path. The idea behind this particular attempt to re-queen is that both of these colonies came from other places (a gas grill and an old dairy barn, respectively). With a purchased queen, you know she's young and fresh (!), and has "good genetics." Or in this case, at least known genetics. We also didn't see as much activity, solid brood patterns, and consistent wax building in these hives. So, hopefully the new queens will straighten out those worker bees and start laying well.

How many people can say they had a fun date that involved their husband picking up two other gals?

Murphy's Law of Beekeeping, Part 2 and Inspection Information

As soon as we filled the s0lar wax melter and set it outside, a weather front moved in. Clouds, rain, and a generally mugginess loitered over us all weekend, and is forecasted to remain until Thursday.

Mark said if he'd gotten the solar wax melter *and* washed his truck, the area would have flooded.

Today on my lunch break I researched forms and information to create an effective Hive Inspection Notebook. I bought the binder and a zippered case to keep pens and pencils in over two weeks ago. It's much easier to indulge in my love of office supplies than take the time to track down the forms.

I will save the Great Debate between "green" beekeepers and their counterparts for another post. Some believe in treating hives with medications and some don't. That said, I found a helpful resource from Ashley Bee Supply, which was originally published in the American Bee Journal in 2008. I found this hive inspection checklist from Mann Lake, Ltd. Finally, there's this one from the San Francisco Beekeepers Association Web site.

Hopefully one of them will fit our needs. If not, I'll create our own!

The Solar Wax Melter

In an ideal world, honey would be relatively easy to harvest, the wax could be rendered with ease into a pure product to use in making other items, and clean-up would be minimal.

In reality, as one local expert said to Mark recently: "People get into it because of the bees, and get out of it because of the honey."

Honey is sticky. Every pest in a 3-mile radius figures out you've got some of it. And when you have vast quantities of old honey comb, you quickly realize there has to be a better way to deal with it than in your own kitchen.

Trust me: we tried the frugal method. I wrapped comb in cheesecloth, put it in a Crock-Pot, poured boiling water over it, and ended up with 1) a mess; 2) a broken wooden spoon; 3) a ruined mesh strainer; 4) a nasty bog of brackish water in my Crock-Pot; and 5) a buttery yellow disc of wax with brown goo in it. Verdict: we'll have to remelt and filter again, maybe through a coffee filter.

As Mark began migrating colonies and bringing home buckets full of comb, we decided to invest in a solar wax melter. Yes, you can build them yourself. There are many designs on the Internet. But we didn't have the time or skills. So Mark did the research, talked to a nice man in Wisconsin who builds them, and after what felt like an eternity, it arrived.

So today is our first attempt at using it. We have a bunch of old comb sitting in a large disposable aluminum pan lined with cheese cloth and door screen. A hole in the end should allow the melted wax to drain into the large loaf-shaped disposable aluminum pan.

My fingers are crossed.