Beekeeping with Dad

While on vacation this summer I had the opportunity to help my father inspect his bees. You see, it was originally my father who got me interested in beekeeping. He has a cousin in Utah that started up a neighborhood beekeeping business and so my dad was interested in getting a hive. When my dad got one, it basically made me realize that anyone can keep bees. I thought, wow, that is cool and I immediately started learning about it. From there, I was hooked. It's true in that beekeeping has this addictive nature to it. Probably because the little insects are so fascinating to watch and learn about. I used to grab a folding chair and sit off to the side of the hive entrances and just watch the bees fly in and away from the hive. It's fascinating as well as peaceful. Here are a some pictures of my dad's hives. The one on the right was always more active from the get-go. It must have had a better queen.

You can see the spikes of nails below the hive. These are placed there to keep skunks, raccoons, or other critters from trying to have meals consisting of insects with a sweet inside (i.e., eating bees).

The bees collecting water from the nearby lake.

My dad holding up a beautiful capped frame of honey.

My dad.

Frame rests are the best!

We brought out the umbrella so that we'd be inspecting in the shade. It helped a ton. We were sweating like crazy! That's me looking for eggs or the queen. We didn't find the queen, and I couldn't see any eggs. I only saw one egg in that entire hive and it was on the side of a cell. Most likely from a laying worker. We saw tons of drones though. Bad news. Both hives were queenless and so new replacement queens were ordered. Cost about $60. Queens aren't cheap, but they are most definitely necessary. And one could definitely argue that good queens are worth the money. I eventually would like to raise my own queens for my hives.

There's me still looking for the eggs.

Keeping bees is fun! It's even funner when you are doing it with someone. Thanks Dad for letting me help with your inspection and for getting me involved in beekeeping. You're the best.

White Queen & Impatiently Waiting for Honey

I've been pretty busy the past several weekends and haven't had the opportunity to inspect my bees. However, I've been prepping the "honey house" aka the unfinished basement. I know that I've got at least one full medium super of capped honey. This means that the bees have placed a layer or "capping" of wax over the honey to keep the honey from either absorbing more water or from evaporating down further. When honey is capped like this, then it is usually safe to extract. You see honey that is more than 18.6% water will ferment. The bottle of honey will go bad and the bottle can even burst. That would be a shame and a sticky mess. Bees must have a way of knowing when, generally, the honey is safe to cap and that it is sufficiently evaporated down. This fermentation risk, because honey is hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs water from the air, is also a reason why it can be important to extract your honey quickly after removing supers and perhaps even having a de-humidifier running while extracting. Interestingly, because honey is hygroscopic, if you use honey as a substitute sweetener in baked goods, you can use less liquid in the batter and the outcome will be that the cookies or whatever you made will not dry out as fast as it would if honey was not used.

Anyway, this medium super of mine that has capped honey is likely to hold close to 30 lbs. of honey. When I last inspected I checked my second medium super and found that it too is full of honey and curing nectar. The second super's frames are capped at the top 1/3. The bottom 2/3rds is nectar that is still curing and being evaporated and is not yet capped. So, this means that the extracting weekend is being moved out to probably the second weekend in September. This is tentative and depends on the bees' progress on this super over the next week or so. I'm thinking that it should be ready by then, because when I was inspecting these frames the nectar didn't run out when the frame was upside down, and so the curing process is fairly advanced already.

I was pretty proud of myself during my last inspection, as I was able to find the queen fairly rapidly. The white marking (which stands for queens introduced in years ending in 1) was starting to come off, and so I brought along a white marking pen and a small push in queen marking cage. I didn't want to have to pick up the queen because I was wearing my beekeeping gloves and was afraid that I might squish her accidentally. I've had 3 stings on the hands this season and the swelling hurts. Perhaps this is because I didn't take any Benadryl or use any ice (which when I get stung again, I will definitely be using). So I was being somewhat cautious. Next time I will try inspecting again without the gloves. The queen kept moving throughout the marking cage and so it was still somewhat tricky to get a decent dab on her thorax; but I was able to. This should mean continued ease in finding the queen. It also meant that despite the queen cells I've found at the bottom of frames, the bees have never swarmed.

However, I have noticed that my bees crowd to one side of the hive. I don't know why the brood ended up concentrated on the side of the hive rather than in the middle. My next inspection will involve me manipulating brood frames to place the brood more centrally in the hive. I definitely don't want them hugging the side as they go in to winter.

Good luck with your bees! Here is my hive with 3 supers (2 mediums and 1 shallow) and 2 deeps below. The bees get everything in the deeps. I'll get everything in the supers. My goals was at least 30 lbs. of honey this year. Looks like my bees will be surpassing that goal!

Too Much Honey A Problem?!

You wouldn't think that you'd ever hear a beekeeper complain about his bees making too much honey. However, this happens. You see, beekeepers want to keep as many bees as they can so that they can get more honey from each hive. However, sometimes bees can bring in so much nectar that unless the beekeepers is able to keep up on providing more space for the bees to put that nectar/honey, the bees can make it so the queen has no more room to lay eggs. As soon as this happens, the hive is said to be "honey-bound". The bees will swarm from this hive because they've essentially outgrown it.

Perhaps because I was gone so long and unable to inspect and put on my second medium super, when I last inspected my bees a large portion of the second deep (normally for rearing brood) was full of nectar and capped honey. In my opinion my bees are pretty close to being honey bound. I did find swarm cells at the bottom of the frames and some did indeed have an egg in them. I destroyed quite a few of these cells. In the future, I may leave them. I think there is some risk in that if the bees do swarm, I want a new queen to be in the works and not have destroyed my bees' chance to save themselves from a queenless doom. When I returned from vacation, I immediately put on my second super. Just this last inspection I switched the positions of the supers so that the one that the bees have filled nearly entirely with capped honey is now on the very top and the super that still needs to have wax drawn out is now just on top of the second deep.

Now, it is the middle aged 10-20 days old, bees that are the comb building, wax drawing bees. These are also the bees that are mostly involved in the nectar processing within the hive. They are sometimes called the food-storer bees. Their job is to unload the bees that have been out foraging for nectar. A forager returns and seeks out a food storer bee to unload their nectar/pollen. If the bee is able to find a food storer bee within an average of 20 seconds, then that means that there are likely less foraging bees than food storing bees. So, if the foraging bee determines that her nectar source is energetically efficient (i.e., the sugar concentration of the nectar and the amount of available forage and distance from the hive will net more energy gained than lost) she  will likely perform a waggle dance. Waggle dances are only performed by bees when they deem their nectar source to be valuable enough to merit recruitment of other bees. Part of this feedback on whether the source is indeed valuable is given via the length of time required to find a food storer bee, the other part via the bee's innate judgement of the nectar source's value. If a specific nectar source is being advertised extensively via waggle dances (which will recruit unemployed foraging bees to find the source), then more bees will quickly find that nectar source and begin to forage and bring back nectar from it. This will have a cross-inhibition effect on nectar sources that are not as valuable. Because bees foraging at a less valuable nectar source will have to spend more time looking for a food-storer bee and hence will perform less waggle dances and there will be less recruitment to that nectar source and bees will be more likely to abandon forage at that source.

Interestingly, I learned while reading Thomas D. Seeley's book The Wisdom of the Hive, that when there are not enough foragers (say at the beginning of the day -- early morning), when a returning forager enters the hive, it may go up to an inactive bee and grab hold and shake it. This seemingly "awakens" the bee and makes it much more likely to go out and forage. This seems to be a signal to recruit more bees to forage.

Another signal that bees give is called the tremble dance. This dance is different than the waggle dance though it does involve shaking. However, instead of just the abdomen shaking, the entire body and legs shake back and forth. This dance is performed when there is a sudden influx of nectar and there aren't enough food storer bees to unload foragers from profitable nectar sources. This dance is performed further into the hive where nurse bees are caring for brood. It causes inactive or brood caring bees to become food storer bees.

I tell you what bees are truly amazing. I have to agree with Lorenzo Langstroth, the inventor of the movable frame hive and Father of Modern American Beekeeping, that honeybees are a witness of a divine creator!

So, it is my hope that my second, empty, undrawn medium super will be drawn out by hard-working middle aged bees so that the nectar in the brood areas can be moved up into that super so that the queen has more room to lay her eggs. The fact that wax is energetically more expensive to produce than honey may also help relieve the overflow of nectar in my bees' brood area. In fact, it takes 6 g of sugar/honey for every 1 gram of wax produced. The bees will naturally move this nectar and honey up as that is how they store their food. Honey on top, pollen just below that, then brood. Honey and pollen on the outsides of the hive. Brood in the middle. Laying eggs is important nearly year round with bees in order to replace the die off rate of foraging bees. During the summer bees (except for the queen) may live only 4 to 6 weeks, though they'll live longer in the winter when they are inactive.

Here are some interesting notes from The Wisdom of the Hive: Social Physiology of the Honeybee:


A patch of flowers 100 square meters about half the size of a tennis court, represents less than 1/125,000 of the area enclosed by a circle with a 2 km radius (and bees can fly up to 6 km radius from the hive) yet remarkably a honey bee colony has a probability of 0.5 or higher of discovering any such flower patch located within 2 km of its hive.

An average foraging trip for a bee results in either 15 mg of pollen or resin (propolis) or 30 mg of nectar or water. Many foraging trips are performed each day.

Yearly colony wide approximately 20 kg. of pollen, 120 kg. of nectar, 100 g of propolis, and 25 liters of water are collected. During the summer bees will consume 70 kg of nectar. This leaves 50 kg of food storage that the bees amass each summer. Much of this comes during what is termed "nectar flows" periods of intense flowering by certain sources that last perhaps only a week or so perhaps shorter due to inclement weather, etc.

Next time you see a honeybee, stop and take a look at it and marvel at the work it performs! I recently read a quote that I liked, "Only God can make blood and honey."

Beekeepers Do Crazy Things

I'm sure that mainstream society already thinks that beekeepers have got a screw lose. I mean, who in their right mind thinks that keeping nearly 30,000 stinging insects in their backyard is fun?! But just to make sure that there is no doubt in anyone's mind that some beekeepers are a bit more "unhinged" than others, one just needs to read the news. Check it out: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/07/world/hires.bee.bearding/index.html?&hpt=hp_c2

Now this demonstration of bee bearding is a testament to several things 1) the insanity/bravery/guts of the guys in the picture and 2) the gentleness of bees when responding to queen mandibular pheromone. Either queen pheromone vials or queen bees themselves are used to attract the bees. I'm guessing that vials of pheromone were used here. The cloth in the picture may have been soaked or sprinkled in it as well. The bees aren't necessarily swarming the person as much as they are swarming where they can smell the presence of queen pheromone. So, if you took a bath in queen pheromone or hung  a vial of it about your neck like a pendant or talisman during late spring/ early summer and you may very well end up with a swarm of bees hanging from your neck. That would give a whole new meaning to the term: bee bearding.

On Vacation is the Place to Bee

Honeybee in Hawaii

My wife and I recently got back from a celebratory cruise throughout the Hawaiian islands for my parents'-in-law 40th wedding anniversary. We had a great time. This, though, was my first time in Hawaii as a beekeeper. I was much more cognizant of these amazing insects this time around. So, when I'd see one on a flower, I'd try to get a nice close up of it with my new camera. The picture of the bee and the purple flower is mine. However, this is a much closer/better picture of a bee in Hawaii going for a landing on a white tropical flower. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nayrsivart/4612613865/.

Funny, how once you appreciate something, you notice it much more often and take it for granted much less. In fact, I noticed a brochure at one of the ports that the cruise stopped (Kauai, I believe) where you could go visit a beekeeping facility and they'd open up their hives and you'd be able to check out their bees. Now, this may very well be something cool for someone who's never seen inside a hive before, but I'm fairly certain that my hives would look for all intents and purposes like hives in Hawaii. I'm not so sure that suiting up in a bee suit in Hawaii is my idea of a vacation. However, touring their beekeeping operation and talking to a Hawaiian beekeeper, would be an enjoyable way to pass the time (if you ever get sick of being on the beach and hiking to waterfalls :) ).

Unfortunately, bees in Hawaii have been having a tough time. This is because, until recently, they've been able to avoid acquiring the dreaded Varroa destructor mite and small-hive beetle. I've been reading in Bee Culture that both Varroa and especially the small-hive beetle have now gained access to paradise. Throughout the Big Island of Hawaii, apparently small-hive beetle has been causing the loss of many colonies. Small-hive beetle does better in warmer climates, and when they eat the honey and wax, their waste causes the honey to ferment and become slimey. The bees can't stand this, and so they abandon the hive. So, in some respects, having that dreaded winter season where it gets bitter cold also helps to eliminate and diminish the threat of some bee pests and diseases. So winter isn't all that bad.

Just this last weekend, I took the family to Palmyra, NY. We visited the Joseph Smith family farm there. It has been restored and is as close to what it would have looked like in the 1800s as it can be. As we were walking out of the restored threshing barn, I noticed replicas of what the Smith's honeybee hives would have looked like. Now, these certainly aren't as convenient--or bee friendly for that matter-- as the removable frame Langstroth hive; but I probably wouldn't have thought twice about this two years ago. Instead, it became a great picture spot. I'm sure that Joseph, Hyrum, and the rest loved their honey! I wonder whose job it mostly fell to when honey harvesting time came around?

Hives out of Tree Trunks

The Smiths had some pretty serious hive weights!

Since I've been gone, I haven't been able to inspect my hives for nearly a month. I did take a quick peak (i.e. without smoking the bees) and determined that I should put a 2nd medium super on. That's good news. Hopefully, the bees will have made enough honey by the end of the summer that I can take in close to 30 pounds. That would be what I'm shooting for. Any more than that, and I'll be pleasantly surprised!

New Reasons for Why I Love Keeping Bees

Having walked around for two days last week with a right hand that looked like a surgical glove that you blow up and give to your kids as a five-fingered balloon, I was reminded in some of my bee-related reading why it is so quintessentially "cool" to keep bees. This is a quote from Professor Tom D. Seeley, author of the books "The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies" and "Honeybee Democracy":


The study of the honey bee colony, especially its food collection, has yielded what is probably the best-understood example of cooperative group functioning outside the realm of human society.

Wow! This means that we understand how honey bees cooperate better than any other social organism beside ourselves! Pretty nifty. The social intelligence of these small creatures is just fascinating to learn about, and then to be able to see parts of it in your own backyard, is truly like living your own episode off of Discovery channel. Did you know that if there are several floral sources available, that honey bees will forage on the floral source that has the greatest quantity of nectar and the highest sugar concentration in the nectar available? Here's an awesome quote from the book ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture:

It has been said that humans differ from other animals because we can communicate with one another. However, we observe that the honey bee dance can convey information about direction, distance, quality, and the type of food to be found even a mile or more from the hive. Without the use of a compass and a machine to measure distance, we might find it difficult to convey such information to another human ourselves. Obviously the honey bee dance language has certain deficiencies, such as the inability to convey information about color, shape, and upward or downward direction. Still, it is probably correct to state that only human language is superior to that of a honey bee.


Double wow! After reading that I feel like sitting back, folding my arms contentedly and nodding my head, "Yeah, I keep 20,000 to 60,000  of the life-forms whose language skills are only inferior to that of humans in my backyard. Yeah, they pollinate my garden, and yes, they also make me honey." Now you may say, "But what about gorillas and chimps that can learn sign language. True, but they've been taught by humans. I haven't heard of or seen chimps or gorillas use sign language in nature.

And finally, another reason, it's incredibly fulfilling to be able to explain the coolness of bees to those who haven't yet had this revealed to them. In fact, this last inspection, I had a friend come over who wanted to help out with the inspection and see the bees more up close. We saw several drones (they are much larger and fairly easy to spot). We saw swarm cells (queen cells on the bottom of the frames). This is bad news. I don't have any empty drawn comb in order to make more room in the brood area. I did, however, add a honey super. Although, the bees will have to draw out the wax. My hope is that perhaps this will make more room for brood by having more room for nectar. We also saw the queen, eggs, uncapped larvae, capped brood cells, capped honey, and pollen/bee bread. When it was over, my friend thanked me for giving him the opportunity to participate in opening up and seeing the innards of a honey bee colony. I mentioned that he could now identify a drone from a worker (which he did during the inspection, without my help-- after seeing a drone). He said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I bet most people have never even seen a drone before, let alone know how to tell the difference between a worker and a drone." So, if you are a reader who happens to know me and happens to be in the Cleveland area, feel free to come out and take part in an inspection. You'll definitely leave it with a greater fascination and appreciation for honey bees. Funny, just had a hymn in my head, "In Our Lovely Deseret"... roughly translated means "In Our Lovely Honey Bees." Yeah, that's where I like to bee once a week. Enjoy the pics of being in the lovely deseret!

My friend's son. Clearly no fear of bees. My daughter is this same way. The goal here is to keep them with just enough fear that they don't get stung and then develop a real "fear" of bees. However, I generally try to keep the kids a bit further away, esp. when we're opening the hive (unless of course they have a veil, then-- no problem).

A picture of the queen. Looks like her head is down in a cell or covered by bees, but the marking on her thorax as well as her pretty orange abdomen can be seen clearly here.

Another queen picture.

My friend holding his first frame of bees. Looks like a beautiful frame of capped brood, but can't tell from this distance.

Decently crowded, populated hive in this picture, at least in the central area of the hive. Hopefully, they won't swarm. A swarm would essentially halve the population in the hive and make it more difficult to build up the honey stores necessary to survive the winter.

I love this picture. You can see the nectar droplects on the pollen baskets on the hind legs of the bee. Look how hairy the bees are as well, that is also to allow them to collect pollen.

My beautiful kids and I near Dad's Hive, perfect picture for father's day!

Makes me wonder why my father doesn't seem to have as many bee issues with his hive. Perhaps because he doesn't know enough yet to notice when he has them? Or perhaps because he stays so busy that he isn't able to inspect his bees as often? Or perhaps, the bees just knew that with the amount of reading about bees that I've been doing, that they've got to make it "interesting" for me? What do you think?

The Proper Way to Remove a Bee Sting

I must say that I already knew the proper way to remove a bee sting. If you are ever stung by a bee and the stinger is still left in your skin, the proper way to remove it is just to scratch it off as soon as you possibly can. Why? because generally when the stinger is left in your skin, the venom sac is still attached to the stinger and the sting apparatus will continue to pulse venom into your skin (hence the ASAP removal of the sting is very much to your benefit). Also, if you try to grab the stinger and pull it out, you essentially squeeze a whole bunch of venom into the sting area as you squeeze to lift out the stinger. Well, all of this information did absolutely nothing in preventing me from removing my most recent sting the incorrect way. Maybe bee venom dampers some of our brain processing power? Probably not, most likely, the sudden pain of the sting, the view of the stinger protruding like a sliver, and, viola! the brain went to the most familiar movement program: that of removing a small, sharp, protruding object from skin via the pinch-remove method. Hopefully, this current sting helps me to implement the correct sting removal method into my motor program repertoire -- scratch as quickly and crazily as possible till stinger is removed-- then stop scratching.

I also need to admit that as a kid, when I was stung by a bee I felt a sick satisfaction that at least the perpetrator suffered the ultimate punishment: death. A classic comic of this is from the buttersafe comic strip shown below. Buttersafe Comics: Serving the Queen.


However, now, when I'm stung I feel a small pinge of sadness that one of my bees just died by stinging me: what a waste!

So, just to hammer home the lesson that is being throbbingly repeated in my right hand: the proper way to remove a bee sting is scratchedy-scratch!