Christmas, Snow and Rearing Queens

Snow on the Geronimo Hive
The Last Snow of 2010 - Christmas at the Geronimo Hive

Christmas has come and gone, but a blanket of snow persists in the central Virginia area even today. I did not measure it, but it appeared to be about 4 inches of snow that came down between late Christmas day and the following evening. It was really the perfect snow for Christmas, blanketing everything (including the beehives) but leaving the roads mostly clear since the daytime temperatures had stayed above freezing since then. For the garden plants, snow is one of the best things around. It creates a blanket over the ground, effectively keeping it right at freezing (for the most part) even during the brutal nights when it gets down into the teens. But, does it help the Bees?

I doubt that snow has much effect on bees except that it provides water for the surrounding landscape, which indirectly helps the bees out. One of the things that folks up north worry about is snow that is higher (due to the depth) then the bottom entrance. Some folks (Michael Palmer, up in PA, for one) have switched to all or mostly top entrances to prevent this. Although I am not worried about snow covering the bottom boards of my hives, I am going to try a top entrance hive this year (2011) just for fun. I am interested in seeing how they work when it comes to managing the hives.

Thinking about the top entrance reminds me of one of my main goals of a beekeeper this time of year: identify and target achievable goals for the upcoming year. There are tons of things to do with bees. Many of the things you have to learn on the spot, as you are simply reacting to something going on in one of your hives. But, there are a lot of things that require planning. To do them all would be impossible (for me, anyway). To do them right, I need to identify the learning goals of the coming year and begin preparation in December of the previous year. For 2011, I have three main ‘learning’ goals.

Icicles hanging off the front porch at Wilton
Winter Setting In

My first goal is to dabble in Spring Nuc creation. I am currently thinking that I will attempt to start 4 Nuc’s the traditional way (traditional to me, at any rate), letting them raise their own queens. I will be happy with a 50% success rate, but will certainly take more! I will definitely keep one Nuc to watch it grow and might trade one for some local bees from another beekeeper, to continue to diversify my genetic pool. If more then two do well, I’ll worry about dealing with them later. The long term goal is to possibly start selling Nuc’s, but I will not sell them this first year, as this is a learning year.

The second goal is to start a Top Bar Hive. I have already cut a lot of the wood from an old fence to make it. The key will be getting some bees into it. Hopefully, I’ll get a swarm in April to use. Otherwise, I’ll figure out a way to transfer a hive from my Langstroths.

The third, and final, goal is to raise some queens. I received some queen rearing gear and books for Christmas that I am looking forward to trying. It included a system from Mann Lake which is basically the Nicot System and a queen castle (which is really a deep hive that has been divided into 4 cavities, each for a new queen). I hope to raise four queens, but will be happy (as with the Nuc’s) with raising just two. Again, I will use one myself and hopefully trade one for a queen from another local beekeeper’s stock.

The bottom line is that I have three goals in mind that I will begin working towards now. At this point, I simply want to do as much research as I can (to develop my initial plan for each goal) and to obtain/build/paint any gear that is necessary to make it happen. I want all of this in place by March 1 so that I can be working on my goals as of April 1!

All of this, of course, assumes that I am not wiped out (all of my hives perish this Winter)!

Winter Feeding Adventures

We have had a good stretch of fairly cold weather over the last couple of weeks in central Virginia. Here to the east of Richmond, it’s been dipping into the 20’s nearly every night. Although this used to be normal a few decades back, I do not recall a stretch of cold like this in December in the recent past.

So, how does this effect the bees? The key for the bees is really the daytime temperature. If it rises above 40 during the day, my bees move around a bit (within the hive) and get their nourishment. We did have several days, back-to-back, that did not breach 38, but it was not long enough of a stretch to cause the bees problems, in my opinion.

The key to remember is that bees rarely die from cold. They die from starvation. I read a study last year where a scientist put a few hives in a deep freezer where the temperatures were kept below -20 degrees! He made sure the bees had plenty of stores and monitored them. They did just fine.

How do bees starve? They can either run out of food or the weather stays very cold (daytime temperatures do not rise above 30 degrees) for a long time. I do not know for sure what ‘a long time’ is, but it is probably several weeks. Bees do not move much when it is really cold. So, they eat the honey around them to keep warm but it remains too cold to move over to another batch of honey (or to retrieve honey from another area and bring it back to the cluster.) In either case, no hive should be starving at this point. But, it’s good to keep in mind come Janurary-February. You can move frames of honey to the cluster (either from the same hive or even from another hive.)

At any rate, the main reason I decided to post boils down to a little situation that occurred yesterday. Basically, the temp’s jumped up into the mid-40’s. At around 40, my bees come outside to use the restroom and stretch their legs. In the mid-40’s, I do not have a problem cracking the cover to look in, as long as it is not too windy. By ‘look’, I actually mean just that: look. I am definitely not breaking the hive apart in any way. But, it’s only December and I know that none of my hives are in any trouble now (well, I do not KNOW this, but I do know that any hive having a problem now is beyond my control – plus, I really don’t want that gene pool anyway.) But, I do have a few Nuc’s that I am overwintering. These guys do not have the stores that my regular hives do and this is my first year overwintering them. So, I needed to have a look. I decided to keep this to one double-Nuc (a deep that has been split in half to hold two 4 frame Nuc’s.)

Well, I can tell you that they still have the energy to attack. I guess I was lazy, as I did not suit up. This basically meant that my neighbors got to watch me sprint away from my hive the moment that I opened her up. They came out, armed for bear. In the end, I got a look at both clusters and could still see a good amount of capped honey on the frames. I was actually sort of surprised, for some reason. I guess I have not really bought into this ‘overwinter a few pounds of bees on 4 frames’ idea. Despite my subconscious misgivings, these bees were doing great. Today, when it breached 40 again, I put two cups of sugar on both hives (1 layer newspaper on top of the frames, two cups sugar and then used a cone to direct a few spritz of water onto the sugar to dampen it a bit.) This is called insurance. I currently do not subscribe to doing this with a seasoned hive, but I am not that confident in these Nuc’s, so they are going to get the full guns this year. In future years, once I have more experience with this, I may change my protocol.

At any rate, the amusing story took place with moving this double nuc. As mentioned above, it got cold quicker then I thought it would. So, I ended up with 1 double Nuc down at the Goose Pond Apiary. I like to have my Nuc’s close. Plus, this Nuc didn’t receive the sheltered Southern sun that I give my home Nuc’s behind my huge patch of Burford Hollies. This area was the first to have complete snow melt after all of the snows last year. It really is the best wintering location that I have and I wanted these Nuc’s in it. The other problem was that I never took the mason jars of sugar water off of them (another issue with having a distant Nuc yard.) So, I had to move them and I didn’t want to break the cover and let any bees out before I transported them. I hoped that the jars were empty.

This was a learning experience (never ‘hope’ for empty mason jars), as neither jar was empty. Once I got the double  nuc into the back of my Trailblazer, I immediately noticed sugar syrup seeping out of two corners of the hive. This was a potential disaster. I was not sure if any of the bees were even alive. But, if they were, I just introduced a major threat to them. Bees cannot get wet in the Winter as they simply cannot generate the  internal body heat to deal with it. They die. In my mind’s eye, I could see both of my clusters covered in syrup at that exact point (although I did occasionally waffle to the notion that all of the bees were probably already dead anyway:).

I am not sure if this made any difference, but I simply jacked the temp in my trailblazer up on the way back to Richmond. Once I got there, I parked in the field beside my house and listened to the hive. I could definitely here the bees buzzing! They were alive! So, I let them sit in the sun, remaining plugged up in my car (the inside of my black Trailblazer always stays comfy in the sun). I took my Greenhouse temp monitor and placed it in the car, monitoring it throughout the day. It did get into the lower 70’s, but no higher. My goal was simple: If some bees did get doused, I wanted them to be at a temperature that they would ‘lick’ it off of one another. By around 2 pm, the weather was still in the lower 40’s and I could see bees at my other Nuc’s making cleansing runs. So, I put them out in the field, popped the cover quickly to get the mason jars, and opened the entrances. Who knows if this helped or hurt, but I am recording it here as another one of my adventures. The bees looked great today, so I do not think it hurt much – it may have helped a ton. I am good with it, either way.

I guess the next hive update will be in January, under the assumption that we have some days that climb into the 40’s and are not too windy (ideally, the sun will be out, but I do not make that a rule for Winter checks, just a nice-to-have.)

Getting Your First Beehive [Pick-up Day!]

Per the previous post, someone recently asked me about what they needed to be prepared for getting bees this  Spring. After we talked for awhile, the first thing that I realized was that he had not ordered his bees yet.  My previous post went over how you get your hives but, as  mentioned by Doug, I got lost in the explanation and forgot one of my primary points of the initial post – no matter how you are getting your bees, order them right now. Nuc’s run out quickly and, from what I have been told, packages also run out from the best suppliers. So, get your orders in now.

Now, as to the point of this post, when I was talking to this gentleman who was expecting to get bees in the Spring, he asked me what  kind of ‘Nuc hive body’ to buy. This made me realize that the whole process of actually ‘installing’ your bees might be confusing to some. So, I will review it (at a high level – I recommend further research and talking to your local club members of course!) now.

With my preferred method, purchasing a ‘Nuc’, you are basically getting four or five frames of bees with a queen. The term ‘Nuc’ really refers to the size of the hive body that is used to ‘grow’ the bees. Although some folks might give you a cardboard box that holds the 5 frames, I have never heard of someone actually selling a wooden Nuc hive body with the 5 frames. So, you are really just getting 5 frames (they are going to be Deeps unless you specifically work out something else with the seller), so you are going to need a Deep hive body (w/top and bottom) to put the frames in. Since a Deep holds 10 frames, you are going to need to purchase at least 5 other frames to go in the Deep to fill it out (with your five frames of bees.) Check with your supplier, as they may want you to ‘swap frames’ with them, so you have to give them 5 empty (foundation only) frames for their 5 full frames of bees. If this is the case, your initial Deep Hive Body should also  have 10 frames of empty foundation (5 to go with the 5 you will get from the seller and 5 to give to the seller.) This will give you the bare necessities.

If you are getting a package, it is pretty much the same deal. A single deep with 10 frames (and top/bottom) will get you started.

Most folks (including me) would recommend getting your expansion gear now too. As a first year beekeeper, I recommend getting another Deep so that your bees can expand their broodnest to a second level once they get going. I would also get a medium or a couple of shallows in case you have a banner year. You can make the call on what you do with this, should the occasion arise, but I am pretty militant about not taking honey off of any 1st year hive, regardless of what happens.

This should get you started for a great learning experience. I should close with a couple of other thoughts.

1. There are a lot of folks that use the ‘all Medium’ strategy. This really means that you do not use Deeps or Shallows but instead use nothing but Mediums for all of your bees. I do not use this strategy, but have nothing against it. My personal advice is to start with what has always worked (2 Deeps) and make up your mind about the Medium strategy once  you have experience with bees (maybe in year 2 or 3.)

2. I pretty much talk about ‘One Hive’ in this and the last post. I am a huge believer in getting two hives, especially if you are getting packages. Once you get going with Bees, they are good little soldiers and make it fine from year to year. But, at the start, there are all sort of variables that can cause problems for you and most of them are beyond your control (Doug mentions a poor queen in a comment to the previous post). Get two hives so that a casualty does not leave you completely bee-less. You’re going to lose hives once you get into it and you’ll come to adjust to it. But, losing all of your hives in year 1 is a good way to give up on the hobby, which would really be a shame. In addition, you have something to compare to. It really helps with the learning experience.

That’s it for my ‘getting your bees’ posts. I have really only scratched the surface here and interjected some of my own opinions in several points. So, this is not designed to be the final resource, but just an ‘FYI’ for anyone thinking about getting into bees. Good luck!

Getting Your First Bee Hive [Overview]

A nice fellow from a recent ERBA meeting contacted me the other day about getting bees and what were the next steps. After an email or two, he secured a couple of Nuc’s and is ready for the bees that will hopefully come his way this Spring. His initial assumptions did get me to thinking that the whole process is not well documented. Some might think it is a decision that they can make in the Spring, which is far from the truth. So, I thought I would lay out a general outline of how it works. There are exceptions and this is fairly high level, but it should prove helpful to some folks.

There are four basic ways to get your hands on some bees. When I say ‘bees’, I literally mean the mass of workers, drones (maybe) and queen that make up the group of bees that you are going to start with. For the vast majority of folks, they get their bees by either buying a Nuc (Option 1) or a Package (Option 2) of bees.

‘Nuc’ is short for ‘Nucleus Hive’ and pretty much refers to a small hive body (When I say ‘hive body’, I am typically referring to the structure that the bees live in) that only holds 5 frames. To create a Nuc of bees, the seller takes a few frames from his existing hives and puts them in their own separate box (the actual Nucleus Hive Body), without a queen. They either raise their own queen or perhaps the beekeeper takes a queen from a swarm cell that he has taken from his existing hives. The point here is that the queen is usually from the seller’s own stock and the bees hatch her out, being by her side from day one. After about a month, the queen should be laying and the existing bees expanding into all 5 frames of the Nuc. I am a big fan of Nuc’s. You have a queen from your area (presumably she has traits that make her well suited for the environment) and a band of workers that have worked with her from the start. They are already a team.

A Package (Option 2) refers to a cardboard box of bees that you purchase from someone who is usually from another state. You receive a few pounds of bees in one package and a queen in another. This group is not a team yet (most of the time, the queen was not raised by the bees that were sent to you, so your bees have not become a team with your queen yet). Part of the initial job for a beekeeper who orders a package is getting them into a wooden hive body and then, over the next few weeks, making sure the bees and queen become a cohesive unit (i.e. your bees don’t kill your queen, thinking she is an enemy.) You also do not know if this group of bees has any genes that have thrived in your environment (typically, they are raised down South somewhere). I have never purchased a Package, but I have friends that have. So far, my bees have done better.

A third way to get some bees is to purchase an entire hive from another beekeeper. Most of the time that you see something like this advertised, it is simply a larger version of a Nuc. The seller has taken a bunch a bunch of old frames, filled them with bees without a queen and let them raise their own queen. The seller can get a higher price (double or triple) then what they would get for a Nuc. Getting a full hive, you have a lot of the same advantages of a Nuc, except you do not have an opportunity to learn from watching a hive grown from 5 frames to 20. There is so much value in these early lessons that I do not believe a new beekeeper should start with a full hive.

The final way to get some bees is through capture. These take the form of catching a Swarm, doing a cut-out or trying a trap-out. You are basically getting feral bees. I love these kinds of bees, but you once again do not get all of the great learning experiences that you get with a Nuc. A swarm can teach you a lot, but you have to really make sure that you have a queen after you catch the swarm. And, if you do not, you will not have any frames of eggs to give the bees to help them get started. So, although I believe you can learn a similar experience with a swarm (as with a Nuc or Package), I do not believe a new beekeeper should use this as their sole way of obtaining bees at the start.

So, that covers the main points about getting the bees. Since I am a Nuc man, I will spend a few minutes explaining ‘how to purchase a Nuc.’ The number one thing you want to do is to get it ordered right NOW! In fact, I would order my bees in the Sept/Oct timeframe, to ensure that I got them. If you wait, the entire order will be spoken for and you’ll be waiting another year.

The number 2 thing to do is to get a couple of deeps and frames to fill them. You will be bringing you deep to the seller and he’ll put those bees into your box (or he’ll give you a cardboard Nuc, but you’ll still be moving the bees into your empty Deep.