Honey Bee Keeping and other pollinators

Bee Check on sunday afternoon, added supers and everything looked good we followed up with lemonade and cake.

This morning the neighbor sighted a SWARM 20 feet from the east bank of hives in a tree so it could be from any of the hives. If they get too crowded or they don't like their digs. Mr bliss is on his way home from grocery shopping. It's very exciting....I hope we can reclaim them. Pictures to follow once we get our wits about us.

We have great neighbors, zach's mom sighted them and zach's dad came over to let us know! How fun or exciting or...I'll let you know how it ends.

sorry about them being turned one quarter to the right.






Both bee keepers are out there. Plan: put a nucleus box under the hive, clip the branch (with permission from neighbor), drop the bees into the box.

They ended up being our friend's bees (he bee keeps with us back there). He put out a new box, and they moved the bees on frames in the nuc box, to the new hive. YAY, it was awesome. The old box that the bees swarmed away from, had swarm cells in it, to grow a new queen with some workers. When one hatches, it will fight and kill any other queens, then she will go on a mating flight, and then start laying eggs for more workers. From beginning to end, sighting swarm to new hive, 2 hours 30 minutes. So fun. Our friend did a great job with mr bliss getting it done! Bee Happy.

This thread is like a soap opera. I keep checking back to see what happens next! Very interesting.

larry_stewart said:

This thread is like a soap opera. I keep checking back to see what happens next! Very interesting.

Click to expand...

Mr bliss took off shopping this morning, so I'm calling him (he can't answer when driving), so I call him 3 times so he knows it is important. Tell him about the bees. Send pictures to our friend we keep bees with and his dad. Thank his mother for spotting the swarm.
It was just by chance that our friend's work let him off early due to an electrical outage, or he wouldn't have been there for his bees.
It was a very exciting morning! Very fun. The life of Bees is so interesting.

The guys were soaked with sweat wearing the bee suits ...I mean soaking wet. It was the only disgusting part of it. (and honestly it wasn't that gross)

There was a swarm trap we hung in a tree 100-200 feet away, which the bees would have eventually found, but we found them first. I'll tell you between the price of potatoes and bees, this is living the life! lol

So cool! DH was outside in the garden when our bees swarmed the first time. They started flying in a huge circle around the bay tree finally landed in a swarm in our neighbor's tree. We weren't experienced in catching them yet, so we called a master gardener friend who is also a beekeeper and he came and got them.

I actually took a class in college ( 100 years ago) about the sociology of bees. It was really interesting (even though I dont remember anything, but I do remember liking it very much).

8 out of 10 hives are queened and producing honey and comb.
1 is iffy, there are 6 queen cells, so a new queen may be born soon. We won't know for a month.

There is the choice to harvest honey in the end of july and then the dearth sets in (less flowers dry season) when the bees don't produce, hot weather not enough nectar.
OR wait until sept and oct and catch the rest.
If we harvest early we have to set up the tent and extractor, seems like a lot of work to do twice (july and october). I'm trying to convince mr bliss to wait and do it once. I don't know how that will all turn out.

We have our 10 hives and Zach's 4 now, I'd like to do it all at once.

also, this past week, while not hot, the sun is overhead and we melted our winter and spring collected bees wax in a makeshift solar oven. An old 18 qt roaster with a foil pan, metal screen over it, strong paper towel, bee's wax on top and an old glass window over top. It melted through the paper towel into the foil pan. We'll collect this wash it and remelt into molds and use it for candles and for thicker coating on bee frame foundations for bee keeping.

We set up the tent friday, then extracted Zach's honey, collected his wax cuttings, bottled honey, Saturday. 15 pints and 2 quarts, or 28.5 lbs. His plan is to make mead in the future.
Then sunday, monday, and tuesday, we've been extracting honey, cleaning stuff, mr bliss's heat exhaustion, collecting wax cuttings, and garden stuff. So far we have 167.5 lbs, most of it in pint jars.
There'll be pictures later, we just too busy lately for uploading and taking notes.
Today, we're going to look at our 'comb honey'. We have 3 shallow supers set up for that. We think the first one might be filled and capped. This is the stuff we would cut and put in containers to sell separately from liquid honey. It's both the wax comb and honey in a big square, you might have seen those available at farm markets, or honey shops.

I go to the Farmer's Market about every other week. I always ask if the comb honey is ready yet. "Not yet, too early" "Soon, soon" is the last reply.
Love that stuff.
For some reason it doesn't give me the tummy ache that regular honey does. Maybe it's as simple as I don't eat as much of it at any one time.

@dragnlaw I've seen it sold in 1 x 2 inch chunks in the middle of a jar of honey and in 4x4 (ish) inch squares in a container. There are also 4 inch molds called Ross Rounds, where the bees fill the rounds with comb and honey.
The first shallow of comb honey is ready, so we took that off. Those go in the freezer first for 3 days to interrupt any chance of any insect activity. We'll probably cut it right after that.

I've not really noticed but I believe they are probably about 2 or 3" squares. In those disposable containers that one finds on the deli shelves for olives and such.

@dragnlaw right! When the comb gets cut, and it can be cut because it has wax foundation (most honey is collected in frames with plastic foundation), and the honey is built up on both sides of the wax. If we cut 4x4 inch pieces, any scraps of 1x2 or 2x4 inch pieces goes into jars filled with honey.

Um 5 days ago a beekeeper friend called, wanted help on the mite treatment, so mr bliss went there and helped, and the friend gave him a spare queen in a queen box. That was installed 5 days ago. Since then the workers have been feeding her and learning to accept her pheromones. Today mr bliss released her from the queen box, she was attended by worker bees, she went right down into the hive and the worker's followed. So she was accepted and not killed. Yay.

Speaking of mites: I remember a few years ago, maybe almost 10?, a friend came with a trailer full of his hives. They'd had a problem with - I believe it was mites - and the only treatment (at least at the time) could only be done at the University in Laval (just north of Mtl)
They needed to be steamed or pressure treated or something to that affect. He'd lost many hives to this problem/disease with the bees. It was not something they could do themselves so he trucked them on over, stayed the night, went at dawn for the treatment, then back home right after.
Wish I remembered more.

Mites. The problem and treatment has evolved and it's been a struggle for the bee scientists figuring out what can be done. They started to spread in the US in the 1980's in FL. Since we are new, we are taught the most effective treatments that are available for bee keepers, when to test, when to treat, what to expect. Some treatments are very hard on the queens/bees/hives. Some can be used while there are honey supers on the hive and other's can't (because it isn't good in the honey).

For us right now. In spring we treat with apivar for 2 weeks, a pad that goes at the top of the hive to disperse the treatment, no supers. Right now we're going to treat with formic pro, another pad in the hive for 9 days, it can be used with supers. Then again in the fall a treatment of oxalic acid which is heated and the vapor penetrates the hive, this can be used with supers.

Testing for mites (there are many methods) may be collecting 100 bees in a screening cup, coating the bees with icing sugar, the mites let go, fall to the bottom of the collection cup below the screen. The mites can be counted to get a rate of mites/bees. Drones appear to attract mites at a much higher rate than worker bees.

@dragnlaw it sounds like the university may have had some experimental treatments they wanted to try out or testing, or they were finding some success with it removing the mites. Bee keepers often participate in research that is ongoing due to the mites-all across the country.

Is there an apiary division Wisconson Uni? Believe some of them went to pick my friend's wife's brain while they were doing some research. But it might have been Michigan. Quite some time ago.
You can check out their site Boards Honey Farm
I've actually never been to visit them, my bro was a constant visitor. But they would stop by for several days in the winter on their way to do some skiing, again on their way back.

@dragnlaw I looked at the products on the Board Honey Farm. I love the honey candied garlic, ginger, and lemon peel. They have so many products. They must have been doing it for a long time.

University of WI has a dozen or more campuses across the state and extension offices. (like Madison, milwaukee, stout, waukesha, white water...) Many researchers are studying the honeybee health for things like winter die off. The varroa mite transmits viruses and that's the major problem with bee health.

You mention virus - that seems to ring a bell.

You can see in their logo 1974, so yeah, think they've been doing it for a while.

Comb honey yet to be cut (mug for size)

Pretty comb honey


The extractor is in the foreground, behind it the decapping tanks

The 2 decapping tanks stacked, wax in the top, honey into the bottom one

Both of them working hard.

First they use a bread knife to get the cappings, then the red forks for the rest

Wax in the top decapping tank, honey runs into the one below it

After extracting it goes through a double sieve into a bucket

From that bucket I put it in jars.

Our first honey extracting for 2024. We'll probably do it all again in a month. We'll cut the comb honey and package it in the next week or so depending on what else is going on around here.

Today is World Honey Bee Day, the third Saturday in every August.