Day 62- First honey

We decided it was time to 'tax' the bees. We took two frames, one with all capped honey and one with 90% capped honey and a little pollen. We took these from the stronger hive only.

I got my first bee sting on the tip of my finger, Ana had her first sting last visit when a bee was caught in the folds of her suit.

Since we have only two frames to process and we don't have an extractor, we used a simple 'scrape with a spatula' method. It was a hot afternoon in the shed and the honey was quite runny. Although this method uses very simple tools I did mange to wreck both

We collected the honey and wax in a cloth and hang it for around an hour for the honey to drain through.

Extracting honey

The two frames yielded approx 2.6 kg of honey. It should be a mixture of clover, manuka, kanuka and eucalyptus as well as other species.
I am very happy with the honey and it has a 'smokey' after taste.

First ever honey

Day 52 - adding the third brood box

Time to add the third 3/4 brood box. The stronger hive seems very ready for it, the weaker could wait a while but easier to do both together.

Hard at work

We did not bother going into the bottom boxes on this visit but did look through the top box. All looked good, lots of capped brood and our first sight of some drone brood.
Ana had trouble turning the frames over to inspect especially those with a lot of honey, the weight is just a little much. Having full depth frames would be even worse.

Lots of flowering still going on so it will be interesting to see what they get up to this week.

Day 43 The height of summer

A hot day today 30+ degrees Celsius. Luckily we were in the bee suits for a short time. I feel for someone dealing to hundreds of hives in this heat.

Time to check the progress of the new boxes on the hives. On a warm afternoon lots of bees should out foraging so a little easier to access the hive.

Ana opened the beta (weaker) hive first and first impressions were good, lots of new activity. All but the outer 2 or 3 frames with some drawn comb.

Frame of foundation being drawn into comb

Some fresh honey and nectar in some cells. Noticed some cells with, I assume, pollen with a purplish hint to it. Would have been good to have someone experienced with bees right about then.

The bottom box was also looking good, much more active than last visit.
Ana found the queen easily.

Queen bee in the centre of the photo

On to the alpha hive

The alpha (stronger) hive was still visibly stronger, but the difference with the weaker hive was not so obvious as previous visits.
They still have a couple of frames to draw in the top box but I think I will add another box to each hive next visit.

Lots of capped honey in the top box

I thought I should taste some honey so dug my finger in to a frame and took a finger full and into the mouth. I momentarily forgot the veil and ended up with honey and wax dripping from the mesh.
Laughs all round...
Deftly sucking it through the mesh ensured I was able to taste it all the same. Jolly nice too.

Original nuc frame, honey around edge.

The frame, above, is one of the original nuc frames. Has a little capped honey lower left corner otherwise pretty full of brood.

Day 31 Add a box of frames

I checked the hives yesterday and the 'A' hive had drawn foundation on almost all the frames so I thought it time to add another box of frames with foundation ( I have no drawn frames as yet). The 'B' is increasing and all but the outermost frames have some drawn foundation, so no hurry for this hive.

Today I added a box to each hive. In the 'A' (strong) hive I moved up two frames from the outside of the bottom box that were partially filled with honey. These were placed in the centre of the new top box and replaced by frames of foundation.

The bees are wanting to pack away the honey and may have been running low of room for storage and consequently constrict the laying of the queen.

Day 21 - bee hive inspection

Our talented daughter is back from a year OS and used her considerable photographics aesthetics to produce a visual record of a visit to our new hives. This is the first time she has experienced them 'up close'.

We were checking the state of the 'B' hive, the 'weaker' nuc and the one with the nearly drowned queen. Not a huge amount of 'growth' in the hive size but it was looking and smelling nice. Still early days.
Found the queen, very active. Lots of larva, but had trouble sighting eggs. I'm almost certain there are eggs but  cloudy day, lack of eyeglasses and general inexperince account for lack of sighting them.

We didn't open the 'A' hive just left them to it and will check both next time.

First Time

Bee smoker

Queen bee

Inspecting a bee hive

A frame of bees

Day 14

Things look a bit better today. I feel very relieved.
Had a look for the queen and found her looking much healthier than she did yesterday.

She was moving well. We will keep an eye out for eggs, didn't see any during our quick inspection.

Queen on her capped brood cells

Day 13

A small disaster today...
We went to clear away the burr cells from the top of the frames and put a propolis mat on top of the frames to prevent the bees from building new cells. The other task was to remove the frame feeders as they are not really needed now.

Started with the weaker hive, not much change over the last week, couldn't find the queen. Cleared the wax and removed the feeder, noticed it had quite a few drowned bees in it so decided to take it away and empty it to count them. When I did this I noticed one bee trying to crawl away. On closer inspection she looked very much like the queen... a small panic set in, it was the queen and not looking too hot either.
Carefully collected her and took her back to the hive where she crawled down the frames. I will have a look in a day or two to see how she is getting on.

Frame from smaller nuc

The other hive is much stronger and more active. Found the queen,

Queen bee

This hive is looking good, plenty of brood and stores.

Frame of bee brood

Day 7

Had a quick look through each frame of both hives.
Alpha hive is more advanced with bees drawing foundation of both adjoining new frames, beta hive has no drawn foundation yet and they are working the original frames. Sugar syrup was gone from A but quite a bit left in B.
Hive A was the stronger and more active from the time they arrived, it will be interesting to see if it catches up.
Capped brood and larva were found in both, only saw the queen in A.

Day 2

I am a little surprised at how excited I am about the bees. Who would have thought they could be this much fun.

Well, I managed to wait until it warmed up a bit before visiting them (it had been quite a cool night) and was happy to find activity. Mostly they appeared to be making short flights just in front of the hive, reorienting themselves to their new home I suspect. A very few were making longer flights.

After lunch more bees were making longer flights and the activity level had increased markedly.
I closed up the Hive Doctor base to its winter setting so that the opening is much smaller. When they have nearly filled the box I will open it up to the full summer setting.

Day 1

Day1.

The Nucs are ready, at last!

A poor queen mating season has meant the nucs are a month later than anticipated. The clover is bursting everywhere and we have had no bees to work it, what a waste.

We took a scenic drive to pickup the nucs from Kereru, what a magnificent view.

Site chosen

 

 

 

 We left nucs on their new bases overnight to let the bees settle down. A cover was placed over them and the entrance unplugged.

Bursting to get out

 By morning the bees were obviously keen to explore their new home. One box appeared a lot more active than the other. I worried that the entrance was blocked as I could not see any bee exiting so lifted the roof a little to allow some air.

Unpacking

 

 

I needn't have worried, the box was full of happy bees.

 

 

 

Find the queen

 As we transferred the frames from the nuc box to the hive box we checked each frame for the queen. The queen is not marked but was not difficult to spot.

 

 

Second box

 The second box had more bees than the first. We carefully transferred these frames to the new hive having spotted the queen easily again.

We'll leave them be for a week before opening the hive again.

In the rush to get them settled I didn't really examine the frames as much as I would have liked to, maybe next week.

 

What size hive?

The next decision is what size hives to use. I have decided to use all ¾ quarter boxes, brood and honey. With such a small number of hives it makes sense to have all the same size boxes. Since Ana is no body builder, she might just be able to manage a ¾ quarter box full of honey but no way she could lift a full depth box of honey.

Since I didn't trust my building skills we bought two complete hives from Trevor Gillibanks, ready made with wooden frames, Hive Doctor bases and prewired with foundation.

These were beautifully made and well worth the cost.

In future I will buy kit set boxes and make them myself.

What bees to start with?

I soon decided the best way to start is to buy two bee nuclei. This is a small box with four or five frames containing bees, a laying queen and brood, honey and pollen.

Nuc Vs swarm

I helped a friend catch a swarm some weeks before my nuc was available and was tempted to also use a swarm as a start. A swarm costs nothing, except time and fuel to get it but it does have some drawbacks. It is hard to know the heritage of the swarm, are they quiet, gentle bees or bloody ratbags.

The queen is likely to be older and will need replacing in the autumn.

You do not know the history of varroa treatment.

Since the bees have swarmed once you increase the likelihood of swarming in the future.

Although a nuc can cost from $150-200, when bought from a reputable supplier, you get a known strain of bees with a new queen and recently treated for varroa.

We bought our nucs from Beeline Ltd

To begin at the beginning

I've had a long interest in bees but had not thought seriously about owning a hive until I noticed how few bees were around and how poor pollination was in our fruit trees.

I read a few books from the library and quickly realised some sort of beginners beekeeping course would be very useful.

Luckily, the local Hawke's Bay branch of the National Bee Keepers Association were about to run just such a course. Two hours each Tuesday night for 6 weeks with a practical bee visit on one Saturday. Run by a wonderful teacher, Deanna Corbett.

Beginning bee keepers learning from John Berry