Oak Orchard Honey

Picture of the sun this morning. School is almost over for the year. On June 24 all the paperwork for the year has to be handed in by 11:00 a.m. and I can walk out the door. In the next couple weeks I have two trap-outs I'm going to try for the first time. I've read the blog posts, looked at pictures, and watched the videos. One of the colonies is in a tree that is up pretty high in a tree, so I'm going to get a travel-lift from my brother to reach that one. The other is in an inaccessible area of an old house that is the grandmother's home of a teacher I work with. I should get some interesting posts on my blog from those situations. Not too interesting - I hope. About two weeks ago the catalpa blossoms emerged, but I really haven't seen any real honeybee activity on any of the blossoms. June 5 was the first day that I noticed them, which seems earlier than last year. I think I posted the bloom date on the BeeSource forum last June after school

The end of the school year is coming up fast. For me this is always a mad dash to the finish. I've got projects that students have started that need to be wrapped-up, and bookkeeping that needs to be entered... I've got a picture of my new method of protecting my ankles with my bootlaces that works very well and makes me look a lot like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. If I only had a brain... Last weekend I was picking up a piano that was a Mother's Day gift when my "A" hive swarmed. My wife was out in the backyard when it happened and she told me it was amazing. By the time I went out to see where they were - it was too late. They had left the area to parts unknown. Yesterday I went out to my $300 beekeeping shop (well-beaten travel trailer) got my tools ready and headed down the hill to see what had happened. Luckily for me Matt, a local beekeeper showed up just as I was struggling to light my smoker. After a lesson on how to make fire we walked the path ba

It's really cool to finally get to hear Michael Bush speaking after reading so much from him on bushfarms.com . I thought I would give this video a place to live on my blog so I can come back and listen any time I like. I'm not sure when-and-if I will ever get to the point of raising my own queens, but life is an exciting journey and one never knows. (PowerPoint slide link) Today was very windy, so I never got a chance to look inside the hives to see how things are progressing. I did add medium supers about a week ago because both hives looked as though they have a lot of capped honey in the top medium and they were running out of room. When I got home one day this week I slid the cover back to see if they were building comb, and I could see that they were - that's always exciting. I've ordered six more mediums and frames from my friend Joe Caton at BeeManDirect.com along with some other things - like a bee brush. Ive been grabbing handfuls of grass to sweep the bees a

So, 34 million years seems like a long time... It's pretty amazing to be working around insects that have been doing what they do for so long. From Wikipedia: Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene-Oligocene (around 34 million years ago) boundary, in European deposits The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate that Europe is where the genus originated, only that it occurred there at that time. There are few known fossil deposits in the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied. There is only one fossil species documented from the New World, Apis nearctica , known from a single 14-million-year old specimen from Nevada. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately

Everywhere I look I see the beauty of an early spring in Upstate New York. The only exception is for the catalpa trees. As I understand it, the catalpa that grows here in this climate is the most northern variety of a tropical species. Also, the name catalpa was writen in error by an early botanist. The name originally being catawba after the Native American tribe Catawba. When the catalpas in this picture have leaves, I'll know warm weather is here to stay. It will be interesting to see if the blossoms are a big hit with the honey bees.

This is a test to see if I can upload movies from my iPhone. I was out at sundown and tried a 15 second movie of the evenings's activities. Now I just have to figure out why it's sideways...

Cold with a bit of snow today; kind of thought we were past all that. I took some pictures of what is blooming in the yard so I could look back next year and get an idea how early or late spring is. The dandelions have just appeared in the past couple days. I've always liked dandelions and felt that they are wildflower not a weed. I think of a weed as one of those things with thorns that causes intense pain when you step on it. Now that I have honey bees I feel like mowing all those great flowers is not as easy as it used to be, especially when bees are working them. The catalpa trees have small buds and some are starting to open on lower branches of the young trees. The older ones look as if it were mid-winter, not any signs of life. The cherry tree pictured here has bloomed within the past two days, while the Bradford pear has been in full bloom for about the past five or six days. A few honey bees were on the blooms in the late afternoon when I got home the other da

Things look active at both hives, but I won't see them for a week because of vacation. I'm writing as we travel down 95 on our way to Kure Beach. The forsythia and cherry trees are in full bloom as we motor along the Virginia countryside. I'm looking to see if there are honey bees on the blossoms, but haven't noticed any yet. I have heard it said that spring travels north at about twenty miles an hour. That puts flowers like the ones I'm looking at about twenty days away. That's not too bad.

I tell people I have a growing list of things I don't know. There is really no way for a person to keep up with the information that becomes available every minute of the day - it's a battle I have conceded after years of self deprication. Now I'm happy with a general working knowledge of a few concepts. Beekeeping is a new world to me filled with ideas and knowledge gathered by multitudes of observant people over the past hundred and fifty years or so. It seems like such a peaceful past-time with roots in an earlier days before corn syrup and fast-food. I can walk out to the back corner of our big yard and go back in time, and slowly learn information about honey bees that has been common knowledge for over a hundred years, and yet for me it is the unknown.

Scientific Queen Rearing by Gilbert M. Doolittle, published in 1889, is a wonderful story. One can sense the time and place in Doolittle's writing and feel the tug of nostalgia for days-gone-by. And, even though more than one-hundred years have past, Doolittle's outlook on life and beekeeping seem to be what many of us are looking for in our "modern" world. It was very nice of Michael Bush to republish this work at: http://www.bushfarms.com/beesdoolittle.htm

Things look good down at the two hives. The placement of the apiary seemed to have worked out well this winter. Living at the top of one of the highest spots around leaves our property exposed to the West winds that blow across the open fields. I was able to locate the hives on the lee side of a stand of sumacs, blocking the worst of the winds. I was lucky on the first summer of beekeeping, the field that borders our property to the East was all red clover. It will most likely be field corn this summer, but it could be soybean and that would be great. For now I'll keep feeding the bees until I see some signs that the maple trees have bloomed. I've read that maples could be a good source of nectar if the weather stays warm enough for the bees to fly.

I can't expect too much from March. It looks like Saturday will be a good day for bees and people, then the long haul to Wednesday.

It's nice to be able to compare the rates of syrup being consumed by the bees in both hives. They have both taken up half of a quart in just over two hours. This is the first time I have cared for bees in the waning weeks of winter. Now that spring is officially here this blog will help me to chronical all the changes I see taking place in and around the hives. All pictures and postings will be done in the field with my ever-ready iPhone (recently identified as an addiction).

A picture from July 2009, just starting out with two hives that I purchased from Joe Caton of BeeMan Direct. I borrowed a 1950's bulldozer from a friend to carve out this apiary in some sumac trees. Today 3/17/10 - St. Patrick's Day was warm and both hives had consumed a quart of 1:1 by late afternoon. I replenished both around 5:00 PM. Sunny and mild, mid 50s, the bees were very active.

The bees out in the back seem to be active. This catalpa tree is home to the honey bees that got me interested in beekeeping last season. After reading about the decimation of the wild bee population it seemed like a perfect time to purchase some bees. A fellow sailor and friend of mine in Toronto had talked to me several years ago about becoming a beekeeper, and it always seemed like a wonderful activity. With the purchase of an old farmhouse on a couple acres of land the time was right.

It warmed up today to about 56 - degrees and sunny all day. By 6:00 PM the bees in hive "B", what I thought was the weaker hive going into winter, had consumed a quart of 1:1. The stronger hive "A" (pictured here) had dropped about half a quart. I refreshed B and left A alone to see where they would be tomorrow. Both hives seemed very active.

This week it cooled off and the bees were not as active as they had been last week as temperatures reached the fifties for the first time this year - it was time to start feeding the bees. Today it was in the forties - I mixed a 1:1 syrup for the entrance feeders and expanded the opening for the bees to about one and a half inches. When I placed my ear against the hive and tapped the side I could hear the loud buzzing from the clusters in both hives. I'm hoping this is a good sign.

I have two hives that I purchased at the beginning of summer 2009. I probably would not have these two hives if it weren't for the help and encouragement of Joe Caton of BeeMan Dirrect . A little about Joe from his apiary supply store on the web: E.J. Caton started his journey in beekeeping back in1963.His mentor was Amos Archer who taught him everything he knew until his passing in the early 70's. Early on Caton started thirsting for more when he began working his own hives, and went to the local libraries, and the local university's library seeking out anything he could find about Honeybees and about Beekeeping. Years passed and his hive numbers expanded quickly as he and his father started seeking out places to go and things to buy. Buying out equipment from other old timer beekeepers such as hand crank extractor, tools, hives and anything that he could use. He even made his own observation hive, after reading about them in a monthly bee magazine he was receiving. Years