Fall 2014 meeting of the Missouri State Beekeepers Association

Yvonne and I attended the subject meeting that was held at the Truman Hotel in Jefferson City, Missouri on Friday-Saturday, 24-25 October 2014.  Quick summary:  we had a GREAT time.  We met a lot of interesting people and came away with a lot of new ideas that I need/want to digest for possible incorporation into my bee operations.  There are four topics I particularly want to comment on.

Horizontal Hives Before the formal program started we visited the vendor displays and saw a table with a huge, long box with frames in it.  It was a display by Dr. Leo Sharashkin who is an avid proponent of horizontal hives as described by the Russian author/beekeeper Fedor Lazutin (Keeping Bees With A Smile).  Fedor was fresh into the U.S. from Florida for this meeting (and a workshop in Columbia, Missouri) and led off the meeting with his presentation on "Natural Beekeeping in Russia & What We Can Learn" which is well covered in his book (which I purchased).  His English is not strong so he delivered his talk in Russian which was translated by Leo.  His apiaries are just a little south of Moscow which is very far north compared to us in Missouri  (winter weather stopped both Napoleon and Hitler!) so his descriptions were very interesting.

I had heard of the horizontal hive and had  visited Leo's website (www.horizontalhive.com) but I didn't really grasp its significance.  A few minutes with Leo cleared up a lot of that.  To summarize the horizontal hive is a modification of the more-or-less standard Langstroth hive (NOT to be confused with a top bar hive) which uses standard movable frames.  The difference is the frames are on one level (no stacked supers) and, in Leo's model run to 31 standard deep frames.  Seems strange to someone used to stacking supers to increase space for the bees but the advantages of the horizontal arrangement as explained by Leo make a LOT of sense (to me, anyway).

The brood nest tends to stay on one end of the hive and honey frames are added to the end of the stack as needed.  When starting a new colony that needs only a little space, a division board is used to block off unused parts of the volume until needed by the expanding nest.  Because the entrance (a long, narrow slot) is towards the end of the box, the queen tends to stay close to the fresh air when laying and there is no need for a queen excluded to keep her out of the honey regions.  There is rarely any need to disturb the brood nest which can be covered with a cloth (or some-such) cover when the lid is lifted off the manipulate the honey frames.  The heaviest thing ever needed to be lifted is a full frame of honey (assuming the lid is not too heavy and it can be hinged to open like a foot locker or cedar chest).

Leo reports excellent winter (and summer) performance.  Leo recommends the walls be made of 2X lumber (1.5" thick) and to insulate the lid heavily.  The hive is heavy and not conducive to moving to richer forage or pollination sites (minor factor for me).  Preparing for winter is a matter of removing the surplus honey frames (which can also be done on a piecemeal basis throughout the season without disturbing the brood nest), installing the division board behind enough honey to get the bees through the winter and closing up.  It is good to make sure the brood nest (cluster) starts out as close to the end as possible so the bees will move toward the division board (more or less in the center) as they consume the stores.  Should the cluster be a bit away from the end it is easy to move the offending frames between the cluster and the end and to slide the cluster over, again without disturbing the cluster much at all.

Fedor showed that he uses an extra deep frame (like 18 inches deep!) in his hives in Russia. He had to make a custom extractor to accommodate them, but a picture of one showing a huge brood area with a six or eight inch wide band of honey at the top and wrapping around the top corners showed how well the bees/queen like it - convinced me.

I spoke with a couple guys from Iowa who built and stocked a horizontal hive this spring (with a package) and the bees have almost filled it by now (late October).  However they made it deep enough to hold TWO deep frames (held together by clips so they can pull them out).  Leo has plans for such an arrangement on his website (above).  These monsters hold 52 deep frames (equivalent to 5.2 deep 10-frame boxes - seems like overkill to me.

I definitely want to build at least one of these to try next Spring but I think I will stick to the single frame layer.

Backyard Queen Rearing Cory Stevens presented a three part presentation on queen rearing which was so popular they had to change rooms with a competing presentation.  Cory gave all the reasons beekeepers should work to produce local queens and more-or-less convinced us how easy it is although he concentrated on grafting while ignoring other means (he doesn't bad mouth the other ways, just is comfortable with grafting because he has ambitions to go commercial with it someday).  He says his main interest is producing high quality, locally adapted queens but, with some 70 hives, some honey does come out of his operation.  I accept his techniques without question or comment but was mostly interested in his strategies and applications.  He sells only cells ($10-15 each?) but does maintain a reserve of laying queens in nucs throughout the summer for re-queening in his apiary as necessary.  He just pinches bad queens and combines a handy nuc (which he has been able to evaluate for queen performance).  He tries to maintain one nuc for each production hive (70 or so).  He carries his nucs (5-frame deeps) through the winter with no supers or other preparation (checking for weight in the fall and feeding sugar if needed).  He is always willing to sell a nuc to someone who needs it but says he stores no boxes.  If he has a spare box, he puts bees into it.  The other key is he only makes queens when the bees are wanting to do it anyway which means when there is a strong nectar flow on.  He often is able to make queens and splits in August and if he has a laying queen by September 1, he says he can overwinter them with no problem.

Sustainable Beekeeping  Grant Gillard (past president of MSBA) gave an excellent talk entitled "Sustainable Beekeeping:  What It Is and Is It Important".  He went through all the familiar arguments concerning chemical treatments of bees, etc but stated quite clearly that his interest is harvesting surplus honey for sale.  But he reasons that developing local, resistant queens, etc is consistent with that goal and, in fact, gives a measure of how well one is doing.  But he eschews the "James Bond" strategy of live and let die.  If his bees are starving, he feeds them sugar.  If they have a huge mite infestation, he tries to correct it,maybe with formic acid or thymol or introducing a new queen with better genetics.

He also espouses adopting a strategy of living with at least some losses.  He gave a mathematical example of a goal of having 40 hives to produce honey in a season.  If you start with 40 "good" hives in the fall and lose 25% you will have only 30 in the spring.  Of these you can only expect 66% (or 20) to produce a good crop.  So, using a bit of reverse reasoning, if you want to have the 40 good hives you need to have 52 survivors of the winter and about 78 hives going into winter the fall before.  Sounds like a lot of work but compare that to the cost of treatments and/or new packages/queens and you can sustain your operation.

He says a weak hive will not get better.  Best to re-queen or combine right away than wait for the inevitable.  He also recommends splitting about June 1 (depending on the weather) more-or-less following  Mel Disselkoen's theory but he suggests waiting a bit longer than Mel recommends to have a stronger foraging force.  Move the queen out with a few frames and let the remaining bees make a new queen, freeing up the nurse bees to forage during the brood break.

Buckfast Bees?  I had a fascinating discussion with a couple from South of St. Louis about their experience with some Buckfast bees ordered from Bee Weaver this spring.  They started with a queen and a 3 pound package which they installed in a 10-frame deep with foundation only about May 1.  They didn't pay a lot of attention early on and the bees swarmed by early June.  When they looked they found the frames all drawn out and considerable honey stores.  They added another 10-frame deep super and the bees swarmed again in July.  Altogether they report the bees swarmed 5 times this summer.  Even given that they were raw newbies and might have been able to do something to prevent the swarming, does this say something about how fast Buckfast bees can build up?

Thinking about a plan

I guess I'm the type who needs some amount of structure in my activities and my bee activities are no different.  I read a lot and watch a lot of YouTube videos (thank you Al Gore for inventing the Internet) and talk bees with anyone who will reciprocate.  I'm rapidly learning there are a lot of ways to do virtually everything with bees and different folks have different plans.  I'm not ashamed to pick up ideas from wherever they can be found, nor to ignore well-meaning advice when it doesn't fit my personality.

Early on I saw two distinct paths (beyond just having bees) - producing honey and producing bees (with the full range of mixing the two).  I also believe it is okay to "keep score," even to the practice of monetizing the counters.  IE, producing a $100 worth of honey counts the same as producing $100 worth of bees.  (I have also become acquainted with some folks who are happy with producing beekeeping equipment.  I have enjoyed making my boxes, etc so far but don't see that as a separate path for me.)  I guess the strongest attraction is realizing that I can work WITH the bees to maximize whatever result I go for.  There is a lot of learning, trial and error, etc that I thrive on.

That being said, I've decided I want to do both - produce honey and bees.  That means learning how to maximize honey production in my area while also growing more bees (to both produce more honey next year and, maybe, sell some bees).  I don't know how it will evolve yet but here is the plan with which I will start:

I will start a "calendar of activities" beginning with a strong, over-wintered hive in the Spring.  (How I get there will show up on my "calendar" in the Autumn.)  Also, this is a modular approach, ie, if it works for one hive I expect to copy the method to as many hives as I might desire from time to time.

In late Winter, always keeping an eye on the weather and how Spring is likely to develop, I will try to stimulate brood rearing by feeding - sugar syrup and pollen patties.  In our area (mid-Missouri, 38th parallel) I would hope to split the mother queen into a 5-frame box (with appropriate brood and stores, but feed if necessary/advantageous) about April 15 leaving the "main" hive to make a new queen.  I first heard of this plan from Mel Disselkoen.  The idea is to produce a brood break to discourage Varoa and that the brood-less hive will go to work storing honey instead of feeding it to brood.  The new queen should start laying by mid-May.  If something goes wrong with the new queen I will still have the old queen to fall back on.

By July 1 (10 weeks for the mother split and 6 weeks for the new queen) both hives should be strong again (3 boxes with 24 frames) and I can think about making a 4-way split of each hive.  I will want to keep one of these to go through the Winter and start the cycle over again.  That would leave 7 available for sale.  If I can have a laying queen by August 1 (implying she started as an egg on July 1), the start I want to keep over Winter will have some 9 weeks to build up (for our typical fall weather).  The for-sale nucs would have 5 frames each (seems to be a standard practice) but there would be 13 frames available for "my" nuc (2 24-frame hives  = 48 frames with 7 5-frame nucs sold off leaves 13).  The 5-frame nucs with a laying queen on August 1 have a good chance to be strong enough by Winter to make it through so a reasonably good "product" for the customer(s).  (If I couldn't sell them at that time, I could try to bring them through the Winter and expect a good price in the Spring.  I could also give each one a 6th frame to better grow each split.)

Mel Disselkoen's splitting technique would make the 4-way split with 3 queen-less nucs but with notched cells to make new queens and this would have to be done on July 1 to have laying queens by August 1.  It seems to me there is a better way.  I need at least 6 new queens (I would have two in the pre-split hives) but maybe 8 if I replace the old queens.

What I'm looking at is known as the Hopkins method wherein a piece of comb with eggs/newly hatched larvae are placed horizontally in a hive such that the downward facing cells will be turned into queen cells.  This could easily produce the 6 (or 8 or more) queen cells with only a minimal sacrifice in brood-rearing in one hive (presumably with the best queen mother).  These queen cells would be available about July 15 when the 4-way splits would be made from hives that have continued raising brood, collecting honey, etc for 15 more days than the "old" way of splitting earlier. The splits would only be brood-less for 15 days instead of 30 or so.

So, to summarize the plan: for each overwintered hive I would hope to get a good honey harvest from that hive by making it queen-less at the start of our Spring flow.  I would hope to produce 7 strong 5-frame nucs for sale and a new hive to go through the Winter to continue the cycle the next Spring.

As always, comments are always welcome.

Hive Inspection 20140424

I went into my new, growing split this afternoon.  Things looked to be in good shape although I plan a little more detailed examination shortly (see below).  There were no queen cells, a few drone cells, lots of honey (probably from the sugar water I've been feeding), and some pollen (I'm not experienced enough to tell if it was a lot, sufficient, or what).  The pollen patty strips I put on one week earlier were all gone.

As I took out and examined each frame I took a picture of each face with a digital camera.  I was able to identify and estimate how much capped brood was on each face.  I used Paint to draw a rectangle that I estimated to more-or-less identify the capped brood.  Paint gives the dimensions of the rectangle in pixels.  By measuring the height of the frame (5.625 inches) in pixels I could convert pixels squared to inches squared.  As there are 25 cells per square inch another multiplication gives the number of cells (hence, bees).  See the image below.

All told there were 14 faces containing at least some capped brood.  The smallest patch was about 6 square inches (150 cells) and the largest was 63 square inches (1,575 cells).  All together there were 482 square inches which computes to 12,050 cells of capped brood.  As capped brood exists for 12 days we can estimate the average number of eggs laid starting 21 days prior and extending to 9 days prior was 1,000 per day.An estimate of the total brood can be made by figuring 3x1,000 eggs and 6x1,000 larvae for a total of 21,000 covering 840 square inches or 6 1/2 equivalent frames at 60% coverage.

Is this a good, bad or indifferent value?  I don't know.  Only by comparing to other queens/hives or other times (this was a new split originally and I think the queen may have been hampered by insufficient space as the workers drew out more comb).  But it is a real number (within the bounds of the estimation technique).  Based on the analysis in the previous post, this hive could ultimately level off at some 40,000 bees.

Bees by the Numbers

Bee Arithmetic

A medium frame of 4.9 mm/cell comb has about 30 rows of 88 cells for a total of 2,640 on each face. The area of the face is about 65,800 sq mm. A worker bee occupies about 88 sq mm.

Ergo:

• A medium frame completely covered with bees would have some 750 bees on each face, total 1,500 bees.
• A queen might be expected to lay in about 2,000 cells (80%) in each face.

Consider that ALL of the bees will be in the hive overnight. The 'carrying capacity' of the hive will be 1,500 per frame times the number of frames. Each box of an 8-frame medium super can hold 12,000 bees. This has nothing to do with how much room the queen needs for laying or how much is needed for stores, it is merely the 'parking space' needed to keep all the bees out of the night air. One must plan the number of boxes based upon how many bees are expected/hoped for. Too little and the queen may stop laying while waiting for capped brood to be evacuated and cleaned up.

How many bees are ultimately in the hive depend crucially on how many eggs the queen lays per day. Death rates, will ultimately limit the final population as bees start dying at about the same rate they are being born (if the queen continues at the same rate – if she declines, the overall population will also decline).

We can model this with some basic assumptions:

• On the day the queen starts laying in earnest there will be some initial population, perhaps the survivors of winter and some limited brood that will hatch out over the next 21 days. We will be interested in the results 40 days out from when we start counting and these bees should all be dead by then.
• We assume the queen starts (or is) laying at a more-or-less constant rate of X per day.
• For the first 21 days there will be no 'new' bees – hive population will be more-or-less steady.
• Starting on day 22 there will be X 'new' bees every day – the population will start to climb.
• These newly hatched bees will spend about 10 days in the hive before venturing out to the risky business of foraging for nectar and pollen. At the end of the first 10 days the hive population will have increased by 10 times X.
• So, on day 11 after the first 'new' bees emerge X bees will become foragers and these bees can be expected to live for 30 more days. In the 30 days before the first foragers start dying (also at the rate of X per day) the hive population will add 30 times X more bees. From that time on the number of foragers that will die each day will be X and the total population will have leveled off.
• The leveling off point is 10X + 30X = 40X.
  
  

So, we see that X marks the spot! Or, at least, is the key figure in hive strength – but we knew that all along. Now we have some understanding of how to analyze any given hive and, maybe, what to do about it.

We've heard folks talk about queens that lay 2,000 or more eggs per day, of 'strong' hives, of hives 'full of bees.' From above we can see that such a wonderful queen would need at least 6 medium boxes to hold every one of her children in rainy weather. I would be suspicious of any claim that a 2,000 egg per day lady is happy in a 3-box setup. Likewise, it should be easy to quantify what 'strong' and 'full of bees' mean by simply counting frames covered with bees and estimating the percentage coverage of those not completely teeming with bees.

As to what to do about this new found knowledge of the state of one's hives it appears that the danger would be to hold a good queen back by not giving her and her babies enough room. We can estimate how well the queen is doing by counting frames of brood. We don't need to search for eggs and young larvae, it is enough to count the sealed brood because, once the first 21 days are past, there will be 12X cells of capped brood at all times. Assuming a 'full' frame is some 2,000 cells a 2,000 eggs per day lady will have 6 frames (both sides) of sealed brood. (If you saw 6 frames of capped brood early on before the first 30 days have past, would you prepare more boxes – the possible population could hit 80,000 bees? Hmmm, that also implies that there were some 15,000 bees in there to cover 10 ½ frames of brood to keep them warm.) Needless to say(?), only 3 frames would indicate a 1,000 eggs per day queen, etc.

Now all this last assumes that the queen has room to lay, the nurse bees have enough food to feed the larvae, there are enough bees to cover the brood to keep it warm in cool weather, etc. The first two are in the control of the beekeeper, the third is why a strong hive coming out of winter is so important (also explains how moving bees from a weak hive to an other-wise stronger hive makes sense).

Actually, there is another variable under control of the beekeeper that might advantageous – frame spacing. Michael Bush (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesframewidth.htm) reports that if the faces of two opposing brood combs will only allow one layer of bees, that number of bees will be sufficient to keep the brood warm, take care of the larvae, etc. That means a given number of bees can cover and care for twice as much brood as when there are bees on both faces of the brood. If the limitation on build up is the queen's capacity or lack of comb, the bees freed up can work on making more comb (or go out and forage).

BUT, hearkening back to the start of this post, there is still a need for 'roosting' surfaces to accommodate everyone at night or on rainy days. Squeezing the frames together cuts that 'roosting' space in half and the beekeeper will have to compensate somewhere. Perhaps the close spacing would only be used when the hive is not so populous (early Spring?) and would be relaxed as the numbers build up. Or, maybe extra supers might be provided. I'm thinking close spacing would be very useful with new splits or packages when brood rearing and comb making are paramount and there are no dangers of overcrowding.

Please comment if you have something to add.

More on Swarm Traps

Cool, rainy weather gives more time in the shop which I have used to continue making boxes, most recently 5-frame boxes to use as nucs or I want to experiment with building up some 5-frame colonies.  But I can't give up the idea of catching swarms this Spring and these boxes won't be needed for many weeks.  In an earlier post I showed how I used some nuc boxes to make up a swarm trap so I thought, why not do it again.

I didn't want to make a big ol' hole in my nice new boxes, though, so I thought why not make the hole in the bottom?  I doubt any scout bees would care where the hole is as long as it smells good (lemon grass oil).  So I found some pieces of siding material in my scrap pile to make tops and bottoms and used the cabinet latches described in the previous post to attach two nuc boxes to make a two story 5-frame trap.  The picture below is worth a thousand words.

More Bee Arithmetic

I want to follow up on the previous post on Bee Demographics, trying to reach a better understanding of what's going on in the hive and, maybe, get some management insight.

Starting off with some assumptions:
1) the bees are well fed and have plenty of room.  Both of these are under the control of the beekeeper.
2) the queen is capable of laying 2,000 eggs a day (and will do so if the above condition is met).  We will discuss how the beekeeper can verify or re-estimate this number below.

After Spring build up and the queen has been laying for 21 consecutive days, we can see that the brood will consist of:

3x2,000 = 6,000 eggs
6x2,000 = 12,000 larvae
12x2,000 = 24,000 pupae (capped brood)

The eggs and capped brood need only to be kept warm by the workers.  The 12,000 larvae need to be fed and 2,000 need to be capped every day.  This is the maximum work load on the workers.

A medium frame of 4.9 mm cells contains about 6,500 cells (both sides).  Therefore, a queen laying 2,000 eggs per day requires 7 FULL frames to keep her busy.  Once this is reached there will be 2,000 empty cells vacated by emerging workers every day to make room for the 2,000 new eggs to be laid.  The actual location of the total brood may migrate but the total area should stay the same.  In practice the queen probably won't fill any given frame edge-to-edge because the workers tend to put honey and pollen in the corners.  The beekeeper will need to estimate the percentage of brood (in any stage) in each frame to estimate how well the queen is performing.  Thus, it will take 14 frames with 50% coverage, 11 frames with 70% coverage, etc for a queen performing at 2,000 eggs per day.  More is better, less is worrisome.

In my readings, I've seen advice to give a weaker hive (ie, a hive with significantly less brood) a frame or two of brood from a strong hive (ie, one with a queen that lays 2,000 eggs or more per day).  I've also read advice to do the opposite but haven't seen a reason why (except, of course, some master found it worked better!).  This analysis tells me what appears to be a better approach.  If a colony with a weak queen is give a couple frames of brood there will be a temporary burst of new bees in the hive, but afterwards the amount of brood will settle back down to the previous level which is solely determined by how many eggs the queen can lay per day (always keeping condition 1 above satisfied).

Say you've got a hive where the amount of brood indicates a queen with only 1,000 eggs per day capacity.  In 30 days she will produce 30,000 new workers.  Sounds good, but compare it to 60,000 new workers per month!  Nipping her and allowing the workers to make a new queen will cost you a month of new bees (30,000) but a 2,000/day queen will make that up in a month and then go on building even faster.  If you can get a ripe queen cell (or mated, ready-to-lay queen) you can put the drawn comb an other resources in that weak hive to use even faster. (As I write this - April 2014 - I see mated queens offered for $25).

Comments always welcome.

Bee Demographics

I've been reading a lot and I keep coming across various numbers that must be "magic."  For example, I read that 8 frames of brood seems to be a happy number for a strong hive, more are better and fewer often need to be strengthened.  I also see various estimates of how many eggs a queen can lay in a day and 2,000 seems to indicate a "good" queen, more a "great" queen and fewer a "so-so" or even "bad" one.  With all this are the truly magic numbers of 3 days in the egg, 6 days as a larva and 12 days as a pupa before a new worker bee emerges so I did some calculations that, to me anyway, are enlightening.

Let's consider a queen who lays 2,000 eggs a day and has plenty of room to do so.  On day 1 she will lay 2,000 eggs and so on.  On day 4 there will be 2,000 young larvae to feed, on day 5 there will be 4,000 larvae to feed and so on up to day 9 when there will be 12,000 larvae to feed.  I don't know how many larvae a nurse bee can feed per day but I would think only a moderately sized population could handle this load.  But on day 9 2,000 larvae will be capped to pupate so from there on there will be only the same 12,000 growing larvae to care for.

Our queen will continue laying 2,000 eggs a day (if she has room) and by day 21 she will have laid some 42,000 eggs.  On that day 2,000 new bees will emerge thereby freeing up 2,000 cells for the queen to lay in again.  So, allowing from some down time to clean up these cells for the queen we can estimate that a queen only needs some, say, 45,000 cells to keep busy laying all her life.  We can also see that this amount of brood in the hive, once built up, will stay about the same as long as she is laying at that rate.

I estimate a medium frame of 4.9 mm cells to contain some 6,000 cells (both sides).  A deep would have maybe 10,000 cells.  If the cells are the "standard" 5.4 mm there would be only about 80% of these numbers (5,000 and 8,000, respectively).  Given that brood frames often have honey and pollen stored in the corners so not all of these numbers will be occupied by brood and assuming 70% would be thus be used, we see that 8 deep frames of the 5.4 mm cells would contain some 45,000 available cells  and we have linked the ideas that 8 frames of brood and a queen laying 2,000 eggs a day are a happy combination.

I don't know it the old-timers made such a calculation or even if it makes much difference (their experiences, which we can take advantage of, that a queen that produces 8 frames of brood is good gives one a measure to evaluate hives).  But for me (and maybe others) who use the smaller cells and medium frames we can guess that the comparable measure is 45,000 divided by 4.200 or 11 frames.  Seems reasonable.

As far as managing with this idea, we can see that starting from a 5-frame nuc that we will need to double or triple those 5 frames as soon as possible.  It also suggests (to me, anyway) that the idea of splitting into 2-brood nucs might ought to be upped to 3-brood nucs.

Hopefully, some food for thought.  Comments welcome.

Adding another box and feeder

Yesterday there was a brief warm, partly sunny period between waves of thunderstorms (2 1/2 inch rain total) so I wanted to peek in the new hive and check on the ladies and put a hive top feeder on for them.  When I built my boxes earlier this Spring I sorta made a mistake in that I ended up with a 9-frame size instead of the 8-frame I thought I was making.  Oh well, we'll just call it an experiment!  But, I recieved 9 full frames with the bees so I thought I would start a new box with foundation to give them room to expand.  I also made up some dummy frames (a top bar with a 1x board the size of a drawn frame) to cut down to an 8-frame size.  I will put the dummy in the outside position and that will be the first one I take out whenever I go into the hive.

I decided to pull two of the frames from the bottom and put them in the middle of the new super with 6 frames of foundation and the dummy frame on the outside.  I didn't want to spend a lot of time this first look into the hive so I didn't make a thorough search for the queen, I just gave a quick glance on both sides of each frame and moved on.  I did look for honey, pollen and brood though.  There seemed to be quite a bit of honey but I didn't see much, if any, pollen.  And I was somewhat disappointed by how much brood I saw.  There was capped brood and I saw some fairly large larvae but couldn't be sure I saw eggs.  The larvae and capped brood were undoubtedly before the split 4 days before when we definitely saw the queen.

I put a pollen patty on top of the bottom box, put the new super above that and the hive-top feeder with about 1/2 gallon 1:1 sugar syrup on top of that and closed up the hive.  BTW, I used very little smoke on the entrance and none from then on (of course, the smoker went out!) and the bees were very calm.  I think I could have easily worked them without gloves.  As of dusk last night there was no sign that the bees had discovered the sugar water.  The feeder will not let the bees escape so I can just lift the cover and peek without really disturbing them - although the light that gets into the hive draws some attention, probably because they suspect and invasion.

Given what I think was a low supply of pollen maybe the small amount of brood is understandable.  Hopefully, the pollen patty will  remedy that situation and they will take to rearing a lot more brood very soon (there were quite a lot of bees who could do the job).  We'll see when I peek in again on some warm day (it WILL get warm someday, won't it?).

Swarm trap

Another thing we didn't do back in the old days was catch free swarms.  We bought package bees with a queen.  I guess with inflation the prices nowadays are probably in line, but at $100+ the idea of catching swarms sounds mighty good.  On the other hand, I have no idea about my chances to actually catch one (or more) but it seems worth the effort to put out at least one trap.

Accordingly, I scanned the Internet and YouTube for ideas and settled on a double 5-frame nuc box with 10 frames of foundation.  It has about 30 liters of volume which someone said was what is needed.  While learning to use my table saw and dado blade making my medium super boxes I came across a plan for making 5-frame nucs out of plywood and I had a piece left over from some long ago project.  So I made three of them and had them on hand for this project.

I had seen a video wherein the fellow made the two-deep design with solid walls and ends.  He commented that it was difficult to get the frames in and out of the bottom compartment and I thought to myself "yeah, and wait 'til that box is full of bees!".  So I wanted to be able to snap together two of my existing boxes and to be able to unsnap them if , and when, I catch some bees.  The answer is a pair of drawer snaps which can be found at most hardware stores.  Hopefully, the pictures below will illustrate the idea better than more words.

I also figure to screw on the top in lieu of nailing as it will be much quieter when it comes time to remove the swarm and put them into a permanent box.

First Nuc Ready to Come Home

For the first time in over 35 years I am a beekeeper.  The weather was very cooperative so I went to Sam's place to put the over-wintered nuc he had selected for me into my own box.  His nuc consisted of two 5-frame boxes and we selected 5-frames to start my first colony.  The bees were strong and we picked out 5 frames with lots of capped brood and developing brood.  There were also ample stores of honey and pollen to carry them through the first few days.  We found the queen and made sure she was included in the transfer.  As the bees were flying (and we saw some bringing in pollen) we left the new box in the same location as the nuc had been sitting so the foragers could find their way back to their new home.  At first, the ones returning seemed a bit confused at the new entrance but they soon overcame their uncertainty and entered the hive.  At dusk, Sam will close up the entrance so I can pick up the hive in the morning without losing any bees to the field.

This shows me examining one of the frames as Sam watches closely.

More tomorrow when I bring the ladies home.

(March 31)  The trip home was delayed as Sam decided to add the rest of the frames from the (now) queenless nucs.  So the sisters had to get reacquainted after their overnight separation and that meant some foragers would sally forth doing bee business.  So after they all come home tonight, Sam will close the door to keep them in and I will pick them up tomorrow morning (I hope he's not planning an April Fool joke!).

(April 1)  I picked up the hive this morning and brought the ladies to their new home.  I haven't had a meaningful conversation with them yet and it is a bit cool this morning but a few bees have poked their heads out the entrance to look around.  They appear to be orienting themselves and, I guess, going back into the hive to inform their sisters that this might not be too bad a place to live.  The weather folks say it might get to 60-62 F this afternoon, so maybe more will come out to look around.

Honey-nomics

I suppose most beekeepers are hobbyists and not particularly concerned about making a profit.  But even then there are costs to consider that might give some folks pause.  Thus, many of us make a lot of our own equipment (and can have a lot of fun there, too).  For me, I like to learn all I can about beekeeping and the economic side is of interest too.

I've often heard that drawn combs are like gold (that seems like monetizing wax).  I'm beginning to recognize that drawn comb has great advantages in splitting hives to gain new hives and to help get new hives started, for example.  Old comb can make swarm traps more effective.  It takes time for the bees to draw out the comb and that could mean missing some prime time for various nectar sources  (to paraphrase an old maxim, time is honey!).

If one is just starting out, you're sorta stuck with waiting for the bees to make comb that the queen can lay in and, hopefully later, store excess honey.  But I got to wondering what is the cost?  I tried to find references on the Internet to how much wax is in a comb (medium size for my interest) and I came up with an estimate of 2 ounces.  Maybe someday I will be able to actually weigh a finished comb (or maybe someone else out there has already done it) and can refine that estimate.  But one can also find references that the bees have to digest about 8 pounds of honey to produce one pound of wax.  That means for our drawn medium frame with 1/8 pound of wax in it, about one pound of honey was consumed to produce it.  Currently (Spring 2014) honey can be sold for 6 dollars per pound or more.  Hence, we can conclude that one medium frame of drawn comb costs about $6.  Drawn comb for an 8-frame super would then cost about $48 (more than the cost of the super and frames!).

This really comes home, even for the small producer, when it is time to harvest that honey.  If you use the crush and strain method (or even sell comb honey) you will be destroying $48 worth of comb to get whatever honey you get.  If you can extract it, thereby saving the comb for re-filling at no extra cost, it will only take 4 or 5 supers to save enough money to buy one of the smaller extractors listed in the catalogs (ie, the extractor would pay for itself with only 4 or 5 supers).  True, you would get about one pound of wax from each super that you could purify.  I don't know for sure, but I doubt greatly if you could sell that one pound for $48?

I'm going to look hard at buying an extractor (or making one) even from my anticipated low honey surplus in the early days.  If I can grow my operation, it will be a real money maker.  It would also be good if an extractor "co-op" could be formed to share the capital investment.

Please comment if you find anything wrong with this analysis.  I'm always ready to learn.

First steps

I kept bees some 35 years ago but got away from it due to career changes, etc.  When I heard that a new beekeeping group was starting up in Bourbon, Missouri I went to the first meeting and the old fascination with bees was rekindled.  I now have more space (4.5 acres) and more time (retired).  So I determined to go back into beekeeping.

From the first I realized that a lot had happened in the past 35 years.  Mostly, we now have the Internet and Youtube and other such communication media.  Ideas new to me made the prospect even more enticing.  In particular, the idea that one could (and should?) grow ones own bees by splitting existing hives into two or more, even sell off any extra hives thus derived piqued my imagination.

Back in the day, we ordered package bees and a queen in a separate little cage ("bug in a box").  I guess that is still possible but I discovered it was possible to buy "mini-hives" in 5-frame boxes (called "nucs" - short for nucleus) from local suppliers.  The advantages seem to be great - you know the hive is thriving when it is delivered or picked up, the bees are local and more likely adapted to local conditions, etc.  So I took the plunge and ordered two nucs for delivery in Spring 2014.

Meanwhile I had no equipment.  I had purchased a used table saw at a farm sale in the Summer of 2013 thinking that maybe I could use it for "something" someday.  The idea of building my own hive bodies and accessories sounded like fun (I don't do anything that isn't fun - at least not for long), plus it should be more economical.  At the beekeeper meetings there were examples of home made equipment that inspired me.

Discussion at the meetings made me reconsider my old ideas that a hive consisted of two 10-frame deep bodies (9 1/2" deep) for the brood and honey supers could be added on top as needed.  Instead, the idea of  three 8-frame medium bodies (6 5/8" deep) made a lot of sense as any given box would be much easier to handle.  Using medium depth boxes for honey also makes sense as it would seem to be better to keep all the boxes the same for manipulation of frames as needed.  Since then I have also become intrigued with the use of 5-frame boxes for some purposes (more later).

I found nice plans for Langstroth hives on www.beesource.com, bought a dado blade (wobble blade) for my saw and set about making up six medium bodies in the 8-frame width for my two planned hives.  I also made bottom boards, top boards and covers from the plans.  Everything was painted with a good quality exterior latex paint (white - but I plan to use different colors on further expansions).  Along the way I re-purposed some lumber pieces I had been hoarding and made up three 5-frame nuc boxes for future use.

I ordered a beekeepers hooded jacket, a hive tool, some nice goatskin gloves and a smoker from Glory Bee and 60 molded plastic frames (wax covered), 10 pounds of pollen substitute patties and some smoker fuel from Mann Lake to have the basics for working the bees.  I'm basically ready for my bees (but I still have to make a couple of top feeders for them - I have the materials and it shouldn't take long).