Oak Orchard Honey

Well, the winter went okay except we lost one of the two hives... the Washington. As you may know, I've decided to name the hives after the US presidents to help me learn them as I go - ha! Time to try a trapout from a beehive in a tree out in Bergen, NY. The owner is highly allergic to bee stings and would like to walk along his wooded path without worry. He is glad to have the bees taken to a new home. So, I set up the trapout and was ready to pull a frame of fresh eggs out of the Jefferson hive, but... no eggs. I knew the numbers had dropped after a predicted swarm, but I thought the old queen would still be doing her job. Not from what I saw. The whole brood box was empty and clean. Lots of bees though. The numbers looked strong. So, I called Jill at Bloomfield Honey Farm and she set me up with two laying survivor stock queens for $30 a piece. She will have them for us today in queen cages with attendants so I can go out tomorrow and get the trapout started as well as re

The mid-summer harvest went well. Both hives seem to be building up at about the same rate. We were able to extract a medium super off each hive leaving four mediums for the bees. The last frame on each super had not been fully drawn out so I swapped them out for one of the empty frames on the supers I added. This is one of the reasons I will be switching over to eight frame mediums; those outside frames are hard to get drawn out. Also, in eight frame mediums the bees are less likely to eat themselves into a corner and not be able to move up into the honey stores.

I have been really enjoying Craig's podcast about organic hive methods. A couple of things have been repeated enough times in just a few episodes to make me understand their importance. 1. I need to stop with the large cell foundation for reasons made very clear by Craig and his guests 2. I need to switch over to 8 frame mediums for all my hive boxes, again for various reasons. 3. I need to re-listen to the pod casts and write down a few things that will make me a better keeper. The things I am hearing help me to better understand the nature of bees. I always felt that if I had to keep the bees alive by artificial or pharmacological methods I would need to just get out of the hobby. It sounds like I can have success without introducing foreign materials into the hives - that's perfect... Link:  http://somdbeekeeper.com

I put a pool in our backyard... It was a very dry start to the summer, and the bees were very happy to hang out at the pool with us. My family was not so cool with "swimming with the bees". So, I packed up the two hives and drove an hour away to our feral apple orchard on the south shore of Lake Ontario. The bees now have a two acre pond to draw all the water they need. The fall season will last longer there because the lake will moderate temperatures for a while. They will also get a later start because during spring the temperatures will stay significantly cooler than it will be just a few miles inland. This will be an interesting new start.

On the second day of my very first screen-cone trap-out I was called by the homeowner to tell me the hive boxes (two mediums) were overflowing with bees. He said they were hanging off the front entrance in a long beard. I didn't need a bunch of bees running out of space on a house only twenty feet from the busy sidewalk, so I hurried over and swapped it out for another two- medium hive. I'm trying to switch over to using only medium boxes for brood and honey supers to make trading out frames simpler. I cut down a deep that had ten frames of empty comb and made the whole thing into a medium. It all went pretty well except for all the wire I had to cut. The three inches of comb strips left over were tied to new frames for the a nuc. I left the second hive on the house for a week and a half. I had to get help to lower the hive to the ground. They had loaded it up with a lot of honey. It felt like sixty pounds or so. The picture shows the Washington hive on the left that was

So, I watched the "Trap-out King" video quite a few times to pick up on the finer points of the trap-out. I got myself some aluminum window screen and some wire to sew it together with, along with some fresh eggs - I hope. Man, those things are small. I kept thinking I saw them in the cell and then it looked like... a mirage - I just convinced myself that they were there after a while. The homeowner was kind enough to make this really nice hive stand that can be seen in the video. The hive boxes were full after only a day - bees hanging off the entrance, so I went back and placed another set of boxes just like in the video. I took the full hive back to my apiary and looked inside - it was packed with bees. I'll see if I can get another sizable colony out of that house.