2017 A year of highs and lows and smokey days

March 24
It was a cold winter that seemed to go on and on. But by March 27 we knew all 4 hives had survived it. It had warmed up by the 24th enough to slip pollen patties in each hive and to see that the big hive had completely eaten their candy board. (all 5lbs of sugar)

April 8
Wow the bees are pulling in pollen, spring is finally coming. Some was yellow some orange.
April 21
Bees seem to be doing good. They all have honey leftover from the winter. Found new brood in hive 3.
May 2
Finally removed the winter wraps.
May 19
Need to check out the hive with my Russian queen. They don't seem to be very robust. Will tear hive apart tomorrow and check
May 20
Opened up the Russian queen hive and found lots of  pollen and nectar but no brood.  Queen Anna must of died, I couldn't find her. So I Robbed a frame of uncapped and capped brood from one of the other hives. Hopefully they will build a new queen.
June 1
Did a hive inspection to see if there was any queen cells in the russian hive. All the brood i put in there had hatched, so lots of bees, but still no queen. I will try one more time giving them uncapped brood from another hive. Checked all the other hives and everyone else looks good except for the "nuc" hive, it had way too many drones, and drone cells. We will replace the queen in that hive.
June 5
No sign of queen cells in the Russian hive, so out of desperation, we combined that hive with the "swarm hive".
Checked the nuc hive again, it had produced too many drone cells last time so wanted to check them again. Lots of new worker cells, everything looked good inside it.
June14
All hives out working. The combo hive is doing good, the paper has been chewed thru, so they are combined now.
July 31

Smokey days in McBride

Smokey days

Too busy at the motel to do any inspections inside hives. Bees appear to be doing good. During the weeks of the forest fire smoke they are very slow. Not sure how much honey we will get with all the smoke in the valley. It has also been a very hot dry summer.
Aug 1
Pulled 9 frames of honey. Looks like we will get more honey than i had thought.

Aug 15
I had ordered a bucket with gate valve and 3 filters so when it arrived we extracted the 9 frames of honey. To our surprise we got 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket full!

Aug 26
Pulled 6 more frames of honey, but will extract them later.
Sept 10
Finally got around to testing for mites. I had big plans to do a sugar roll to test for them but jeepers we were still so busy at the motel. So i made sticky boards. I also made up some syrup and will put
it in the hives tomorrow. I used 2 cups of sugar to 1 cup of water for this time of year.
Sept 12
Decided I needed to treat the mites. I was surprised to see how many mites were in one of the hives, not a ton but enough to treat.

Sept 14
Compressed all the hives down to 1 brood box and 1 honey super (plus the attic box with syrup feeders in it) added pollen patties in each hive also.
Sept 28
The weather has been incredibly warm and the bees are still bringing in  yellow and greyish pollen. I am still feeding syrup. (probably til early 0ct)
Oct 5. Bad day. Lost most of one hive, not exactly sure what went on. Some robbing going on, cant find a queen and not many bees left. The remaining bees were busy working still in the upper honey super. No time to waste, winter is almost here, i can't lose anymore of the bees so combined them into the next hive, so they have a chance to survive..
Oct 7
Made 2 candy boards yesterday and put them in the 2 hives today. (8lbs of sugar this time) Got the attic box all ready. Will insulate soon.
Oct 10
Put tarps up on fence to block the wind. Snowed hard, very damp out.
Oct 12
Insulated the attic boxes
Oct 14
Cold and windy. Panic set in that winter has arrived. Insulated the hives and got them all wrapped and ready for winter.

To be continued............

Very Creamy

So on Sept 7 of this year, i decided i wanted to play around with making creamed honey. Since then i have  made 3 batches.
The difference between regular honey and creamed honey,(also called whipped honey or spun honey) is the size and shape of the crystals in it. When honey naturally crystallizes the crystals are fairly large and sharp. You can definitely feel them when the honey coats your tongue. In creamed honey the crystals are oval and smooth, hence giving it a creamy mouth feel.  Under the right conditions, you can make creamed honey in a week or two depending on the temperature. Mine is taking longer as its been warmer in the room i have it stored.
So since this is the first time i ever made creamed honey, i had to buy seed. (fancy name for bought creamed honey). But next year i will be able to use my own. Make sure you start with clear crystal free honey.
Anyways in a jar of honey i removed a heaping spoonful of honey, then i Incorporated the same amount of seed honey. Stir to mix completely, you will see the white steaks when you first start stirring.
Once blended in, put the lid on and leave in a cooler place. Once set you can try it and feel the difference in the size of the crystals. Either way, both honey's are delish.

Bye bye summer, part 2

After our little snow storm and 3-4 inches of snow on the 10th, i thought i better get the bees wrapped for winter.
Oct 14
Panic set in, not sure if it was because today i turned 60 or whether it is the cold and wintery day. But i felt the urgency to get the bees put to bed. This year it involved more work than usual. The reason for that is, there is a chance the motel could be sold and we will get to go home mid winter. So we had to think about that when wrapping. If we were to move, the bees would have to be picked up and placed in our truck and taken almost 100km away. So we wanted to strap the boxes together so they wouldn't separate while moving them. James cut long strips of plywood that would be screwed from the top box to the bottom box, we put them on all 4 sides of each hive. Then we had to consider, what if there is ice and the pallet is froze to the ground and we cant pick it up. So we placed another pallet on top of the existing one. Then we set out to slowly move one hive at a time, up a ramp on to the top pallet. It worked really good and was way easier than we thought. The odd bee stuck its head out to see what we were doing, but all and all, they were pretty laid back.
Once the 2 hives were side by side on the pallet, we wrapped them up. So each hive this winter, have one deep super full of honey, whatever they had in the brood box for honey and a 8lb candy board. So all going well, that will keep them happy for the winter.
Oct 20
Beautiful mild day. The bees have been busy dragging out all the dead summer bees. Lots were out flying around too.
Oct 21
Winter has returned.
Hang in there bees...spring is only 5 months away.

Playing with wax

For me, one of my favorite things to do is playing with the wax the bees make. For some its all about the honey but I love the wax.
Bees are amazing little creatures, and the  fact that they make so many by products is genius. Did you know that the glands of worker bees convert the sugar contents of honey into wax , which oozes through the bee's small pores to produce tiny flakes of wax on their abdomens. Workers chew these pieces of wax until they become soft and moldable, and then add the chewed wax to the honeycomb construction. Like how did they come up with that???
So when i scrape off the burr comb or cappings when taking honey, i wash it and let it dry. I throw the bits and pieces in a bucket and leave it until i get enough to melt down.
Just recently i tried a new method of melting it down. I looked at the way a solar melter works and applied it to the oven. It worked like a charm. Next year i am hoping to make a solar melter so then i can do it outside.
So basically what i did was put a oven proof dish in the oven, i added some water in the bottom of that, oh maybe a inch. On top of the oven proof dish i placed a old cooling rack (you wont be able to cool your cookies on it anymore so make sure its a old one) Then i laid a couple sheets of paper towel over top the rack and spread out the wax bits.
Place in a low oven, i normally turn the oven on to somewhere between 200 and 225 degrees. It will take a while to melt all the wax.  Once all the wax melts it filters thru the paper towel  and lands in the water. Remove from the oven and let cool til the wax solidifies. Here's a few pictures

Add water in bottom of dish

                                               

                       Paper towel filter over dish with melted clean wax floating on the water

 This is what to expect the paper towel to look like, but it depends on how clean your wax is when you start

Being frugal I hate to waste things, so after the paper towel had dried out, i broke it into pieces and we use to to start fires with. It works really good and its not gone to waste.
Have fun.

   

Bye bye summer

Well it is October 17th. All signs of summer have gone and fall is definitely here. (even hints of winter are appearing)
I have managed to blunder through another season of beekeeping with hopes of having more time to care for the bees. But with all the forest fires and extreme heat, and a really busy tourist season, the motel kept me way to busy.
With the heat and smoke I didn't really expect the bees to do as well, honey wise, as they did. Such little troopers they are.

After we got the hives ready for winter, except for the wraps, the weather turned warm again at the end of Sept. The bees were busy collecting a few different kinds of pollen. By Oct 5th the weather started to turn cooler. Lots of frosts overnight. While checking on the bees one day, we noticed fighting going on with the hive we had combined during the summer. I also noticed the odd wasp just walking right in the front door. So that afternoon we tore the hive apart and was sad to find quite a few dead bees, no queen and not much honey in the lower box. There was still lots in the super and the extra attic box which housed a few frames of honey. Most of what was left of the bees were in the attic box, tending to those frames of honey.
I was sick. Was it robbing? Guess we won't know for sure. So once again we packed up what was left and deposited the remaining bees into a neighbouring hive.
Oct 6th
Went to work making 2-8lb candy boards. James was so nice to make me extra frames this year for all the hives.
Oct 10th
Put the tarps around the north and east sides of the fence enclosures. It was such a cold windy day and was snowing like crazy. We had gotten about 3-4 inches. Jeepers I guess winter is really coming......
To be continued

Takin care of business

Oh my goodness, I swore last year I would do better and get things done earlier. But alas....here it is Sept 12 and I am so far behind I think I am first.
The good new is, the honey is done. The bad news is I am not making too much headway on getting ready for winter.
Now I am sweating bullets that the weather won't warm up enough so compress the bees down into one box. I know it will but still, I do worry.
Today however I managed to get out there and treat for mites and get the sugar syrup inside for the girls.

Sept 14
Well I finally made it.
My mum gave James a bee jacket and gloves for his birthday this year, so I had a helper. It was great.
Mother nature was on our side, even though it froze overnight last night, it warmed up during the day. So once our motel chores were done, we made a bee-line out to the bee yard and got down to business. We managed to get all 3 hives compressed into one brood box, with their deep honey super on top. I left a empty super on top of the honey, as a attic box. This will be filled with insulation later for winter. But for now, it holds the jars of syrup and pollen patties.
Even though it only took an hour to do all 3 hives, it took all afternoon and into the evening to finish. The bees don't want to leave their frames of honey so they have to be coaxed off before it cools down for the night. I learnt this last year and lost a few handful of bees cause they stayed with the frames all night and it was too cold. Poor girls.
Anyways, they say we learn from our mistakes, which leads me to think I should be a genius by now...ummmm
So for now, the bees are all set until its time to wrap them up for winter.  So over the next 2 days, I have been experimenting with making "creamed" honey. I will let you know how that goes in a couple weeks..I should know by then. I also melted down the last of the cappings, which is one of my favorite jobs.
But for now, that's it. Will chat again soon.
Bee Happy!

                                                    Bumble Bee resting on a Marigold

                                                       Beautiful piece of honey comb

The new toy

Well here it is Sept 1 and summer is still hanging in there. Tomorrow will be a fine day to check on taking the last of the honey off.
While checking the hives last week I noticed lots of frames that were partially capped. I was hoping this week they would be ready to pull. The problem is uncapped honey, if the moisture content is too high, will ferment and will not keep. The bees will cap their honey with the moisture content is down around 17%, clever little girls aren't they!
So I started reading up on refractometers. These tools read the moisture content honey, along with things.
The neat thing about a refractometer is if you check the uncapped honey in your hives and it is around 17% you can pull it and extract it. Not only does it work out good for you and saves you time, it saves time and energy for the bees. They don't have to go to all  the work of making wax and capping it. They can go back to collecting nectar or whatever their job happens to be.    
Its a win win situation.
So once the decision was made to purchase one I started to research it. They ranged from a few bucks up to 100's of dollars. It didn't make sense to me to spends tons being a non commercial beekeeper but on the other hand I didn't want to buy something that was too cheap. I settled on one that was highly recommended and was very affordable.
I tried it out tonight and it proved to be very simple to use. Tomorrow we are going out to the hives and check the uncapped frames and hopefully we can pull them and get them extracted.

                                                                   The new toy

                                                              A beautiful frame of honey