Jun 10

Open Mated NWC Queens Available

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Beekeeping, Journal

June 10, 2013

Every year throws a different set of challenges in beekeeping.  This year it was the terribly cold March and April that delayed the start of the season.   Even this week we had one customer delay his order because they had snow on the ground this week in Wisconsin. 

The good news is we are now caught up on open mated queen orders and are back on schedule and still have a few openings for queens later this month as well as the rest of the season.   Nucs are on track to be completed this week and we’ll be starting inseminated queens this week as well (only about a week late).

The bad news (for a queen producer) is that the honey flow is now on in earnest.  Hives are booming and need supered, mating nucs are being plugged with brood and/or honey.  For the beekeeper producing honey, this is a great thing.  But for me, the extra work removing supers to find brood to graft, time to remove full frames from mating nucs, is a minor annoyance.   But this is one problem we can turn to our advantage if we have the time.   Frames of brood from overpopulated mating nucs are used to make summer splits using queen cells, that will become the nucs for overwintering.

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May 30

Wintering Hives, another reason to use deep boxes.

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Beekeeping

May 30, 2013

While researching overwintering to get other opinions in preparation for my upcoming talk at the Ohio State Beekeepers Association Summer Conference I discovered Michael Bush’s page on overwintering.  I’ve written before on the advantages of switching to all medium but never considered overwintering as a reason to switch to medium brood boxes.

I have not had the opportunity to run medium and deep hives side by side for a few winters to compare their overwintering success, and since I’ve switched to all medium hives I refuse to put any deeps into operation.   So I must take Michael Bush’s observation that medium hives tend to overwinter better than deep hives.   The logic makes sense however.   Bees in deep hives have less freedom to move around in the cluster as the cluster is broken up by the frames more effectively than with medium frames.  This, I suppose, is why deep frames often have ‘communication holes’, typically located near the bottom corners of the frame (Unfortunately this location makes them of very little value to a cluster that would typically be located more towards the center of the frame.  It would make more sense to me to put these ‘communication holes’ in the center of the frame.)

So I can’t say for certain that medium hive bodies overwinter better, but I generally do have fewer losses than the average for my area.   Of course I do many other things in preparation for overwintering (usually) that likely have larger effects.

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May 29

I need a queen NOW!

Categories:

Beekeeping, Rants

May 29, 2013

I’m not sure what exactly is happening in the world of queen production, but it seems to me that there is some big shortage of queens.   We get calls daily demanding we produce an extra queen for them now (out of thin air apparently).    We typically get a few a week this time of year, but it’s been nearly a 10 fold increase this year.  Some of them have been outright rude demanding that we do something about their problem and/or lack of planning.

Queens unfortunately don’t store on the shelf well, and they are a time and resource consuming product that also is affected by the weather.  And not just the weather today, the weather weeks ahead of the shipping date.   We also will always fill the orders of those who pre-ordered as they are our customer and we have an obligation to them and will do our best to keep it.   So that means we often won’t have extra queens just sitting around, and when we do, they get snatched up quickly   (Not to mention I need to requeen 140 hives myself sometime this year or there will be few bees next year)

So I’m sorry we don’t have extra queens for everyone who happens to call.  I appreciate your need and fully understand what it means for a hive to remain queenless.   But please don’t yell at my secretary.  She (and I) can’t raise enough queens for everyone and don’t have a crystal ball.

So what can the beekeeper do when they really need a queen now?   Not a lot besides spend time calling around.  Most producers this time of year won’t have any extra queens, but you might get lucky.   Also try resellers, beekeeping supply companies that buy queens in bulk and resell them.   Or contact a local producer and purchase a queen cell or virgin queen.   It will be longer before they begin laying, but it’s better than no queen at all.   In fact, this is what I end up doing because I don’t have queens for myself this time of year.

And for next year… there is a lot you can do but it doesn’t happen overnight…   more on that in a later post.

 

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Apr 15

Drones – Time to graft.

Categories:

Beekeeping, Journal

April 15, 2013

drone2 drone1Inspections last week found very little in the way of capped drone cells.  This Sunday was a completely different story.

As you can see by the lower picture, the hives have consumed the majority of the pollen patties placed earlier and now  have a large quantity of drone brood.    I did check a few and none are close to emerging which is no surprise, but the fact that they are capped cells means that they will be mature enough for queens grafted now.

This particular hive had a frame marked with the green top bar to indicate that it had a frame specifically to encourage the bees to raise drones.   Since I run all medium frames and drone frames aren’t available in medium, I started attaching a half sheet of Pierco to the frame, letting the bees draw out the other half.  In most cases this results in a half frame of drone brood.   You can make out the dividing line between worker and drone brood near the top of the first picture.

I checked several hives in my two mating yards and while I only saw a single adult drone, most hives had similar amounts of capped drone cells.

So this Monday we finally began grafting our first batch of larvae.   It’s about a week and a half behind schedule.

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Apr 09

Queens Delayed This Year

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Beekeeping, Journal

April 9, 2013

2013-04-07_11-38-29_938 (Custom)In a typical year silver maples would have bloomed several weeks ago and we would be seeing hives increasing in size significantly and a fair amount of drone brood.

This has not been a typical year so far.  And unlike last year that was several weeks ahead, this year is the opposite.  The silver maples just started blooming at the very end of March and the last of them finished blooming today. 

This past weekend we were able to inspect most of the hives for the first time of the season.  The good news is that the majority of hives survived the winter and losses were less than what I expected.  (Great news really given the reports of larger losses from some other beekeepers around the country).   The bad news is, given the cool March and late blooms, hives are easily 3 weeks behind in development.   Typically I’d expect to see a good amount of capped drone brood in most hives by the second week of April.  We found only a couple of  the 80 hives checked this past weekend that had drone brood .  We put more pollen patties in the hives to hopefully encourage drone rearing soon.

So why does this matter?  One of the big factor for good queens is having an ample supply of mature drones.   Grafting now to raise queens would be a futile effort and waste of time because there won’t be enough drones when the queens are mature enough to mate.   For early queens we don’t look for drones themselves, but for a good amount of capped drone cells when we graft.  These drones will be old enough to mate when the queens grafted are ready.

 

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Apr 04

Forgotten Swarm

Categories:

Journal

April 4, 2013

SAM_0438 SAM_0435 SAM_0434As a beekeeper you normally try your best to make sure the hives are well prepared for winter.   You make sure the bees are healthy, hives have good populations, equipment is in good shape and that there is plenty of honey stored for the winter.

In spite of our best efforts, hives will still die over the winter for various reasons.   Sometimes though, a hive will survive in spite of the beekeeper.

Imagine my surprise when I did a quick check of the hives early this March when I noticed 2 hives among the weeds.   Not the brown and blue hive in the foreground of the first picture…. the 2 hives in the background, the second can barely be seen behind the first.

These two poor hives were swarms that landed on small trees or bushes sometime last summer.  They were hived in a single medium and then were promptly forgotten as the weeds grew up around them hiding them from view.  (This could be an argument for better record keeping).  

Surprisingly these two hives (again, in a single medium, with no winter preparation) where quite alive and well.  I have added a supper of honey to each on one of the few days in March warm enough for bees to fly.  As of a few days ago they still looked good and will likely survive in spite of my forgetfulness.  It’s a reminder that bees are still wild creatures and quite capable of living without our help, at least some of the time.

(The second two pictures are the two hives forgotten among the weeds)

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Mar 29

New Web Host

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Journal, Other Stuff

March 29, 2013

With the new look to the website, we’ve also outgrown our old web host due to too much usage on a shared server.  Part of the high usage was self inflicted by using some non-optimal code, but even after fixing the problems I couldn’t get the usage down to where the host needed it to be.  

So, I pulled out my old unix hat from college days and moved up to a full fledged cloud/vps server.   It’s basically a virtual server running on a portion of a much bigger server.  So far it’s running circles around the old shared hosting in terms of speed, but the nameserver was just switched tonight to point at the new host so we aren’t seeing the traffic yet.

I do have to put in a plug for the new hosting service, togglebox.com.   Their prices were good, but their support has been even better.   Just tonight I contacted them twice and had an answer in minutes.   That’s a faster response than what I’ve gotten from our host at work where we are spending many, many times as much.  The jury is still out, but so far I’m impressed.  Togglebox (or any vpn server) isn’t for everyone as you need to be able to manage linux and setup and install your own web server, etc.   But for those who can and need that level of server, it looks great.

We still have a number of things to fix, in part due to the move from php4 to php5, but that will just take time.  

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Jan 23

2013 Beginning Beekeeping Class

Categories:

Events

January 23, 2013

The Northwest Ohio Beekeepers Association will be holding its annual Beginners Beekeeping class on Feb 16th.  This class is ideal for the beginning beekeeper, particularly if they don’t have bees yet or inherited a hive and don’t know an inner cover from a telescoping cover.  Topics covered will include basic honeybee biology, races of bees, package bees versus nucs and where to get bees, how to start a hive, new and used equipment, keeping bees in a residential setting, feeding, inspections, swarm control, disease and pest management, producing honey and other hive products and overwintering.

It will be held from 8:30AM to 4PM Saturday February 16th at the OSU campus in Lima, Ohio.  Cost is $30 and includes the book and membership to NWOBA. 

Last year will filled the room to capacity so space may be limited.   For more information see the NWOBA website.

For other classes and events elsewhere in Ohio see the Ohio State Beekeepers Association website.

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Jan 15

2013 Package Bees

Categories:

Beekeeping

January 15, 2013

packagesInformation on this years package bees are finally available.  Pickup Dates will be March 21st, April 4th and April 18th.

The March 21st date is generally not recommended for the beginner or starting a new hive on foundation as it’s typically too cool for the bees to draw comb well (2012 was an unusual exception to this however).   The march date is a great date for those installing bees on drawn comb, particularly if honey and pollen is available from dead outs.

Generally it will be warmer for the April dates making it a better choice for the beginner because it’s easier to install packages when it’s warmer and the bees will draw comb and forage for their own pollen.   It is still necessary to feed a new package.

More details are available here: 2013 Package Bees.

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Dec 27

The Mathematics Behind Pouring Honey

Categories:

Beekeeping

December 27, 2012

 

Pouring Honey

 

Fluid dynamics was something I didn’t have to deal with as an electrical engineering student in college.  This is probably ok as the average beekeeper doesn’t need to know much more than it makes a sticky mess when you miss the bottle.

However, I did find this high speed video of pouring honey and it’s mathematical explanation pretty interesting.   I’ve been fascinated by the intricate patterns honey makes as you fill jars.   While I’m at a loss as to what the practical applications of understanding the exact physics of pouring honey may be, they have explained three different modes of pouring honey… Viscous, Gravitational and Inertial Regimes.  These have relatively simple explanations and equations.   The forth mode ‘Inertia-Gravitational’ is yet to be described mathematically (and may be the key to obtaining enlightenment, or not) and the best ‘guess’ is described as ’17th-order nonlinear two-point boundary value problem with two free parameters and 19 boundary conditions’.   Or in layman’s terms, ‘really, really complex’.

So until this mathematical problem can be solved, virtual reality beekeeping may have to wait.  It’s still a cool video.

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