A couple pictures from our Harvest

Year In Review

This was a fun year for us in beekeeping.  It started off pretty exciting getting the new hives and then getting lucky and catching a swarm.  We were up to 6 hives at that point.  I had a crazy experience and was stung on my neck and went into shock.  I pretty much passed out and so the paramedics came and gave the neighborhood some excitement on a Saturday night.  That freaked us out a little bit and the thought of giving it up about broke my heart.  I decided to take a lot more precautions.  Things were going well until harvest time and I was stung through my gloves.  The great thing is I didn't have any reaction to it, so I don't think I am allergic to them.  I did learned you always need to be careful though. Honey bees are for the most part very gentle but if you don't take precautions they will get you.

We also learned this year that you can have very weak hives.  We had to take from the strong hives and give to the weaker ones in order to help them out.  It was amazing how a couple of frames of bees and brood could help the weak hive start booming.  We didn't get nearly as much honey as we had hoped, but enough to get us excited for next year.

After we had harvested we checked the hives and found that we didn't have a queen in my Dad's hive.  The hive was so large we tried to split it and get two new queens, but Fall is a very difficult time to get hives to accept new queens and they killed both of them.  We combined them back and introduced another one and they killed her as well.  What we didn't realize is that they had raised their own queen but as late in the year as it was I don't think she was mated very well.  Our numbers were decreasing rapidly so we tried to put them into a nuc box (mini hive) and the Queen left and we lost the hive.

Now we are down to 5 hives going into winter.  Some are stronger than others, but we are optimistic they will all make it through.  We will try to make splits and buy a few more hives.  My goal is to get us up to 15 hives next year and do it without braking the bank.  Should be a lot of fun.

For now there isn't much we can do.  I try to read up on stuff and learn new tricks.  I must say this is my least favorite time of year when it comes to beekeeping.  There isn't much you can do for them now, but just hope they are making it through the winter okay.      

Harvest Time

We are getting really excited to harvest the honey this year.  Last year was fun, but with only one hive we really only had enough for our own use and still ran out.  This year we didn't know what to expect since we had purchased 4 new hives and then captured a swarm.  First year hives don't always produce enough extra honey to harvest but we had some that did.  I checked the hive at my place last night and they have a full super capped and ready for harvest.  The two brood boxes are looking really full too, so they should have plenty of food storage for the winter.  The other hives are doing well too.  My guess is by next Saturday we will be harvesting 5 honey suppers, which isn't too bad for new hives.  Each supper will probably produce 2-3 gallons of honey.  We should have some honey to sell if anyone is interested.  We are scheduled to rent the extractor next weekend, so we should have it available after Labor day. We will have 1 pound containers selling for $5 and gallon containers (about 11 pounds) for $45.  It will be about as pure and organic as it comes. We do not use chemicals on our bees. We wont heat the honey so it will be raw and it wont loose the amazing taste of raw honey.  We will put it through a filter just to strain any large wax particles, but it isn't fine enough to strain the beneficial pollen.  I will post some pictures of the process after we get done.  This is one of my favorite times of year, football is starting and its time to harvest the honey.

Nature's Hive     

Video of the Swarm

Here is our video of us catching our first swarm.  I learned a lot and would do a few things differently, but had a lot of fun doing it.  We checked the hive a week after and saw eggs, so we got the queen.  I think we were pretty lucky with how many fell on the ground. 

Capturing a Swarm

We had a pretty cool experience on May 13.  I put my name on the swarm removal list and the next day I received my first call. It came that morning and I had meetings at work until 3:00 p.m.  I was worried I would be too late and sure enough I was.  I was pretty disappointed.  We have a week hive from the nuc we purchased and I figured a good healthy swarm could help strengthen it.  I received another call about 7:00 p.m. and we were off.  Natalie and the girls came with me and we went and put the swarm in a box.  The swarm was a lot bigger than I thought and it packed the nuc box to the brim.  I couldn't get them all in, so I left the box over night and then picked them up in the morning.

The next morning I went early before they started to fly and they were all tucked nicely in the box.  I put them in my SUV (a pickup would have been a little more ideal) and brought them home.  We got them home without incident. I weighed the bees and I figured the swarm was about nine pounds of bees.  This was three times the size of the package we had purchased a few weeks before. I put them in their place and removed the screen from the entrance, the bees came flooding out.  They pretty much covered more than 75% of the exterior of the box.  I realized I needed to get them in a bigger box and it needed to be right away.   It was a lot of fun capturing that swarm.     

I will post the video shortly.  You can see just how graceful I am on my first swarm capture. 

If you ever see a swarm of honey bees, please call me or a local beekeeper.  Honey bees are so valuable to our food supply.  Please do not call an exterminator.  

Installing my first package of bees

Here is a video of us trying to install our first package of bees.  I think it went pretty well.  I guess we will see how the hive turns out. So far it seems to be doing really good (knock on wood).

 

 

The Value of Bees for Pollination

I found this great article on how important bees are to the home gardener.  Many people think pollination is only a concern for the large farms or growers, but it is really a concern for all of us with gardens.  Last year I really paid attention to my garden to see if I could see honey bees.  I saw some bees on my crab apple trees, but didn't see any on my garden plants (zucchini, squash, cucumbers, potatoes, peas, raspberries, black berries, etc.).  We go to all the work of creating a garden, it sure would be nice to get even a better return from our efforts.  Hopefully I see a lot more bees this year with my new hive.  I will hopefully have more hives available next year if anyone is interested in letting me keep one in your backyard.  In return I will give you some raw honey from the hive and you will receive all the pollination benefits. Don't worry I will do all the work.  

Here is the link: http://gardenbees.com/garden/gardpol.htm

Happy Bees

This was a great week for the bees.  The temperatures warmed up and the blossoms were in full swing.  I checked four of the hives on Monday and I was able to see the queen in three of them. It was the first time I have been able to find her in the hive.  I have seen her in the queen cages, but never free in the hive.  They are amazing.  I wish I had a camera.  She is quite a bit larger than the other bees and she is really graceful compared to the worker bees.  It made my day to see the queens.  The last two nucs at least have a queen, so I am least feeling a little better about that.  They still have a long way to go before they are a strong hive.  I left the hives alone the rest of the week, but they were sure busy bring in pollen and I would assume nectar.  This week is suppose to start out wet and then warm up should be a good combination for nectar. 

I love talking to people about bees.  They fascinate me and appear to have the same affect on those I talk to about them. We had two Mothers Day parties tonight and I had fun explaining all about bees.  I would say like a lot of things most people just don't understand bees or has never really been around someone who is keeping them.  I know I didn't know anything about them until I started researching them.  I still have a lot to learn, but they sure are fascinating. I do think a lot more people are becoming interested in keeping bees.  Natalie has a couple of friends who both commented their husbands are interested in keeping bees.  They had no idea we were already keeping them.

One question was asked where does the phrase "its none of your bees wax" come from.  I have no idea.  Any one know?

Nature's Hive     

All the hives have arrived

Well we picked up the remaining hives yesterday.  We drove out to Grantsville and waited for 2 hours to finally get the nucs.  We were a little concerned with the setup.  Things were pretty unorganized.  We got back and the other hives were flying so we decided to quickly transfer the frames to the new hives.  The first nuc we installed and we were pretty disappointed.  We didn't see any capped brood.  It was too cold to look for eggs, but we will next week when it warms up.  The second nuc was a little better.  It had 2 frames with capped brood.  Again we will check for eggs in a couple of days.  If I need to by nucs again, I would go with Apis Hives.  Chad is great and the nuc was very well established.

Half the hives arrived

 Last Friday we picked up one of the nuc hives and a package from Apis Hive Company.  We decided to wait until the following day to install them since we didn't have much time.  I was so excited I couldn't sleep that night.  The package of bees looked great.  Abby was sure excited to try out the new veil.

 

 

The nuc also looked really good.  I was shocked at how full it was.  You could tell it had been well established before we received it.  I think I would probably stick with the nucs if they are not much more money. At a minimum it is 4 weeks ahead of the package and really seemed to be a good way to go.  I have attached a clip of us installing the nuc.  I will try to post one of us installing the package. 

Why do I wait until the last minute?

Looks like we are going to be adding one more hive to our fold (total of 5).  We decided to try and find one more package of bees since we already have the hive boxes.  I realized I waited about a week too long to think of that one.  I have found someone in Logan, but that is a 2 hour drive each way.  Still looking around for someone closer, so we will see how it goes.  We will have tried the 3 main ways of buying bees: packages, nucs, and an existing hive.  Next year hopefully we can do our own splits to increase our apiary.  The next couple of weekends should be fun! I hear hiving a package of bees can be a fun experience.  I will take pictures and video and post them.

Nature's Hive

Welcome to Nature's Hive

We bought some raw honey in 2009 and loved every single drop. Last year I decided to look into getting more. I started reading more about raw honey and then about how fun it is to keep bees. I called my wife and she knows we're in trouble when I start the conversation with, you know I have been thinking. I told her I wanted to start keeping bees. She wasn't as opposed as I had prepared myself for. This was in March of last year and nobody had bees for sale, they had all sold out. I called my Dad and told him about my crazy idea and he loved it. He said he would buy the first hive if I would do the work. Well, we found one for sale and paid a little more than we should have for it, but we at least had a mentor. They have struggled as we were without a queen for a couple of months. By then they were getting a late start on the nectar flows. We fell in love with this new hobby. My parents love sitting in lawn chairs and watching their hive. My girls have become big fans until they get too close. My sweet wife puts up with my crazy ideas, but loves the idea of all the benefits from the bees. Nobody was stung last year except my Dad. He likes to get a little too close as he prunes the trees or weeds the flower bed. The amazing thing is not one grandchild was stung and we are talking a lot of grand-kids. In fact a lot of our concerns with bees went away as we saw they were so gentle and really didn't bother anyone. We did see an increase of honey bees in the yard, but they were either flying or on the flowers. I realized the wasps and hornets really do give the honey bee a bad name. We harvested just over 2 gallons of honey last year, which was a little disappointing. The one thing we were not disappointed in was the flavor. Some things we learned:

• Bees take their time and grow it good and slow (reminds me of the song by Lady Antebellum "American Honey")
• Try to avoid not having a queen (the hive just doesn't work with out a queen)
• Find a mentor
• There is always something to learn about and from the bees

We will try to post pictures and video to document what we have learned and what the bees are up to.

Hope you enjoy!

Nature's Hive

It's Beginning to Feel a lot like Christmas

No it isn't because we woke up to snow the other morning, although that would be fitting if it were December. Santa gave me three nuc hives for Christmas and we are getting closer to the delivery date. The anticipation of getting the bees feels just like Christmas. I waited a little too long to order the wooden ware for the hives, but Western Bee Supply was great to work with and got me the order. Not only did they have great prices (best I could find for a hobbyist), but were great to work with and I was really impressed with their quality. If I get a chance, I will post a video on how to assemble a frame and foundation. I still have about thirty to put together.

I decided to make a request to Santa to get the nucs from two different vendors. They both seemed really good and the price was similar, but I wanted to see which one works out better. I bought one from Apis Hive in Grand Junction, CO which has a Carniolan Queen and two from Harvest Lane in Grantsville, UT which will be a mix between Carniolan and Italian that they like to call the Utah Bee. Our current Queen is an Italian, so we should have a pretty good sample of Bees.

The original pick up date was April 9th with Harvest Lane, but because of the bad weather in CA they wont be ready until the 30th. Apis Hive will also be available for pick up on the 30th. Should be a fun day. If things go well this year we hope to have a little extra honey to sell. An average hive usually gets an excess about 40-50 lbs, which would be 4-5 gallons of honey. You never know what to expect from the hives, but hopefully we get a good crop from last year's hive and get at least a little off of the three nuc hives. I have checked the hive once already and the girls made it through the winter. We started feeding them just to make sure we don't lose them. They have made it this far, I would hate to have a cold spring (like it has been) and loose them.

I learned there are a few ways to buy bees. One is a package of bees and these can even be shipped through the mail. This mimics a swarm of bees in a cage. You will have about 10K bees and a mated queen. You also can buy a nuc or nucleus of bees. These are usually for local pick up only as they are more difficult to ship. From what I have found, a standard nuc contains 4-5 frames of bees. Three frames with brood in all different stages and one frame of honey and another empty frame for expansion. Most nucs will have the queen in the box for 3-4 weeks to allow her to start laying eggs. This makes it so that the queen is already accepted and you shouldn't see a drop of of bee population since new bees will hatch as old bees die off. The final way is to buy an existing hive. This tends to be much more expensive, but you should get more honey the first year. We chose to try the nucs as it wasn't that much more than a package of bees and we hope to get more honey as the queen is already established. We will see how it goes.

Nature's Hive