MAQS?
Mite Away Quick Strips.
I've been too busy to do mite checks, and when I did, I found I had a pretty good infestation. Fortunately MA has approved the use of MAQS this year, and even more fortunately, as late as Sat Sept 17th, I was able to find some of these MAQS at Behavin' Apiary in RI. Everett is always such a good source of info, comradery , and supplies! I put the 2 strips per hive on Wed night Sep 21 ... Bees weren't happy I was there and I got stung twice! Once through the leather gloves, and once when one crawled up under the bee suit pants legs, under my pants, and up on my calf. By the time I was able to get to that sting it was 15 min later and lots of the poison had been pumped into me. It was sore 24 hours later, but, very functional, and no swelling.
I do hope this works. The hive seems to be back to normal activity levels, so I will wait the specified 7-10 days at 50-92 F to see how we did. I'd like to see these bees survive the winter!
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Sunday, September 25, 2011
2011 has come and almost gone
Well, I had the best intentions this year - to blog as much as I did the first year, chronicling my adventures with the bees as a second year beekeeper. What happened? I'd like to say it was my work (employment) that kept me from blogging, and to some extent that is true. I really wish I could say it was the amount of time I spent golfing at Norfolk Golf Club, but, it wasn't. I think it was a combination of a lot of things ... work, family, vacations (count them, 3 - Italy for a week, CapeCod for a week, and California for a week), time spent revamping NorfolkGC.com website (the real reason I didn't write), and some degree of laziness for sure.
Today is Sep 25th, and the season is winding down. We started with 2 nucs this year, and we've been fortunate enough to get a honey harvest - despite all of the rain we had. Of the 2 hives, one seems to be more fond of putting honey on the medium super than the other, and therefore more productive. However, all told between the two hives the total tally is 24 pounds of honey that I have taken. And at this point, I think each hive still has approximately 30-40 lbs for them for the winter. I am not taking any more for me.
For as long as I live, I will cherish the memory of walking into the house with my first medium super of honey. Charlotte asked me what I had, and when I described what it was, she immediately came over with a spoon. Scraping down the comb, breaking it slightly, and scooping up that honey, it couldn't get any fresher that that. The smile on her face is what I live for, and she was smiling from ear to ear as she tasted that honey. She hordes it now :).
Charlotte has bought some 1/2 lb jars and come up with some labels. We have 2 different names on the honey labels: The Literary Bees and The Quotable Bees. Each label is unique and personal with quotes from famous people. We have given some honey away to friends, and we have saved some for Christmas gifts. We have had some (truth be told, more than some) that we've mixed with bourbon at 10 at night. It's been a good year, I've let the bees do their own thing, and they have done it well.
It is an amazing process to watch these bees do their work. Busy as a bee really does describe how they act if you ever are able to sit back and watch a hive. They come and go so quickly from the hive, it's like watching time lapse of planes landing at an airport.
Ever wonder what it takes to make honey?
How many flowers will a bee need to collect nectar from to make one tablespoon of honey?
The answer is 2000 flowers
How many flowers does a bee visit to make a pound of honey?
To make a pound of honey the bees need to visit about two million flowers, and in doing this they will fly something like 55,000 miles -- the equivalent of more than twice around the world.
How many bees does it take to make one pound of honey?
A single bee can collect about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, so it would take the life's work of about 560 workers to make a pound of honey.
The product they make is so very good, so very tasty.
- Posted using BlogPress
Today is Sep 25th, and the season is winding down. We started with 2 nucs this year, and we've been fortunate enough to get a honey harvest - despite all of the rain we had. Of the 2 hives, one seems to be more fond of putting honey on the medium super than the other, and therefore more productive. However, all told between the two hives the total tally is 24 pounds of honey that I have taken. And at this point, I think each hive still has approximately 30-40 lbs for them for the winter. I am not taking any more for me.
For as long as I live, I will cherish the memory of walking into the house with my first medium super of honey. Charlotte asked me what I had, and when I described what it was, she immediately came over with a spoon. Scraping down the comb, breaking it slightly, and scooping up that honey, it couldn't get any fresher that that. The smile on her face is what I live for, and she was smiling from ear to ear as she tasted that honey. She hordes it now :).
Charlotte has bought some 1/2 lb jars and come up with some labels. We have 2 different names on the honey labels: The Literary Bees and The Quotable Bees. Each label is unique and personal with quotes from famous people. We have given some honey away to friends, and we have saved some for Christmas gifts. We have had some (truth be told, more than some) that we've mixed with bourbon at 10 at night. It's been a good year, I've let the bees do their own thing, and they have done it well.
It is an amazing process to watch these bees do their work. Busy as a bee really does describe how they act if you ever are able to sit back and watch a hive. They come and go so quickly from the hive, it's like watching time lapse of planes landing at an airport.
Ever wonder what it takes to make honey?
How many flowers will a bee need to collect nectar from to make one tablespoon of honey?
The answer is 2000 flowers
How many flowers does a bee visit to make a pound of honey?
To make a pound of honey the bees need to visit about two million flowers, and in doing this they will fly something like 55,000 miles -- the equivalent of more than twice around the world.
How many bees does it take to make one pound of honey?
A single bee can collect about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, so it would take the life's work of about 560 workers to make a pound of honey.
The product they make is so very good, so very tasty.
- Posted using BlogPress
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Looking good
Between the poor weather and me being so busy of late, I have not had the opportunities to really get inside the hives to properly check on the bees. I do check the outside activity almost daily and can easily see lots of flights coming and going, can see many pollen laden bees landing, I assume all is OK on the inside.
On Sunday the 19th, I was finally able to do proper hive inspections. Each hive has 2 deeps and a medium super on them. Both hives show capped brood, young larvae, nectar and pollen stores, and capped honey in both deeps. Neither hive is building comb into the medium super. Lots of activity. Interesting is that the bees this year appear to quickly fly up into me as I pull a frame out for inspection - this is behavior I don't recall seeing in the bees of last year. They weren't angry enough to be pinging off the veil or trying to sting the gloves; but, I was well aware of them flying about me for 15 sec or more as I first pulled a frame ... almost as if each frame had their own set of guard bees.
I did find the queen in each hive, and I saw no indications of moths, beetles or mites. I reassembled the hives, leaving the medium supers on top for expansion. Only one hive has a queen excluder on it as I currently only own one of them.
I'll post pictures as soon as I transfer them from the camera.
- Posted using BlogPress
On Sunday the 19th, I was finally able to do proper hive inspections. Each hive has 2 deeps and a medium super on them. Both hives show capped brood, young larvae, nectar and pollen stores, and capped honey in both deeps. Neither hive is building comb into the medium super. Lots of activity. Interesting is that the bees this year appear to quickly fly up into me as I pull a frame out for inspection - this is behavior I don't recall seeing in the bees of last year. They weren't angry enough to be pinging off the veil or trying to sting the gloves; but, I was well aware of them flying about me for 15 sec or more as I first pulled a frame ... almost as if each frame had their own set of guard bees.
I did find the queen in each hive, and I saw no indications of moths, beetles or mites. I reassembled the hives, leaving the medium supers on top for expansion. Only one hive has a queen excluder on it as I currently only own one of them.
I'll post pictures as soon as I transfer them from the camera.
- Posted using BlogPress
Sunday, May 1, 2011
It's April 30th and I've picked up both nucs. They were here and ready for me on the 16th; but, I was on my way to a week's vacation in Italy. The nucs are interesting - they are essentially 1/2 of a deep super ... They have 5 full frames in them, a fully functioning (already) laying queen, and bees from eggs, through all larval stages, young bees, nurses, foragers, and guards. It's really a functioning mini-hive. Why I didn't start with this last year I do not know. By using a nuc, the bees are fully functional from day one once I install them into the full hive. They do not need the time to free the queen, let her go off and mate, build comb, allow her to lay eggs, and start the whole life cycle. The added cost? Only $5 per nuc.
So I began by setting the nucs on top of the hive bodies to give them a chance to settle down. There is a piece of screen in the nuc opening that keeps them intact while transporting them in the car. After 15 min or so of letting them sit, the noise or hummmmmm level died down a bit so I decided to begin to pull the screen out. Now, I'm doing this without any protection and I am ok with this ... this year so far. As I gently pulled out a corner of the screen, a few bees came spilling out into the air ... no problem. I waited about 10 more minutes before pulling more of the screen, with again more bees coming out. Finally fully pulling out the screen on hive # 1, and then on #2 ... As I did, this one bee darted fast as a jet at me, and stung me on my right thumb in the area where all the fat is. My first sting since I began keeping bees last year! I looked at the stinger in my thumb, and my first thought was to walk in and show Colin the stinger in my hand when I saw the end was pulsing, pumping it's venom into my thumb! I scraped it out with my other thumb nail and went inside. No problem with the sting - no adverse reaction.
About an hour later I returned fully suited up, using gloves and veil and installed them into both hives. It was good to see so many bees again in one spot. I will say that these bees seem so very much more aggressive than those I had last year. There were thousands flying around me, pinging off the veil. They weren't thrilled with being transferred from the nuc body to the hive body; but, they survived and so did I. I had the carryover frames from last fall that had comb and some capped honey on it, I used those to complete the 10 frames in each hive's deep super, put the inner and top cover on and walked away. No stings through the gloves or the suit.
Lots of activity around the hive, yet by dusk, all had settled in to their new homes.
- Posted using BlogPress
So I began by setting the nucs on top of the hive bodies to give them a chance to settle down. There is a piece of screen in the nuc opening that keeps them intact while transporting them in the car. After 15 min or so of letting them sit, the noise or hummmmmm level died down a bit so I decided to begin to pull the screen out. Now, I'm doing this without any protection and I am ok with this ... this year so far. As I gently pulled out a corner of the screen, a few bees came spilling out into the air ... no problem. I waited about 10 more minutes before pulling more of the screen, with again more bees coming out. Finally fully pulling out the screen on hive # 1, and then on #2 ... As I did, this one bee darted fast as a jet at me, and stung me on my right thumb in the area where all the fat is. My first sting since I began keeping bees last year! I looked at the stinger in my thumb, and my first thought was to walk in and show Colin the stinger in my hand when I saw the end was pulsing, pumping it's venom into my thumb! I scraped it out with my other thumb nail and went inside. No problem with the sting - no adverse reaction.
About an hour later I returned fully suited up, using gloves and veil and installed them into both hives. It was good to see so many bees again in one spot. I will say that these bees seem so very much more aggressive than those I had last year. There were thousands flying around me, pinging off the veil. They weren't thrilled with being transferred from the nuc body to the hive body; but, they survived and so did I. I had the carryover frames from last fall that had comb and some capped honey on it, I used those to complete the 10 frames in each hive's deep super, put the inner and top cover on and walked away. No stings through the gloves or the suit.
Lots of activity around the hive, yet by dusk, all had settled in to their new homes.
- Posted using BlogPress
Monday, March 7, 2011
Another year
It's 2011 and I'm more than ready and anxious to get going again with the bees!
I plan on having 2 active hives this year so I've ordered 2 nucs to start off with. A nuc is a hive nucleus - it is a box that has 5 working frames with the queen already laying eggs on it. So the bees and the queen are already aclimated to each other. Supposedly it means that the bees start up immediately when installed into my hive. When you start with 3 lbs of bees and a new queen, there is a lag period where the new queen and bees aclimate to each other, then a slow die off of bees while the queen begins laying and new bees develop to build the hive population. With the nuc, the hive is supposedly immediately functional. Time will tell.
Bee nucs will come in April.
I plan on having 2 active hives this year so I've ordered 2 nucs to start off with. A nuc is a hive nucleus - it is a box that has 5 working frames with the queen already laying eggs on it. So the bees and the queen are already aclimated to each other. Supposedly it means that the bees start up immediately when installed into my hive. When you start with 3 lbs of bees and a new queen, there is a lag period where the new queen and bees aclimate to each other, then a slow die off of bees while the queen begins laying and new bees develop to build the hive population. With the nuc, the hive is supposedly immediately functional. Time will tell.
Bee nucs will come in April.
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