A close-up of some bees hanging off the bottom of a frame last week:
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Look at the bee just right of the middle doing the splits. Ouch. I suppose this behaviour is a variation of festooning.
Drawn and partially-drawn comb looks much prettier on foundationless frames. Here’s what some partially-drawn comb looks like on a frame with black plastic foundation:
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Here’s a half-drawn comb on a foundationless frame:
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Now don’t tell me that ain’t way prettier.
I saw some of the bees feeding or cleaning each other in front of the hive today. I don’t know. But they were out in large numbers again, so I’m happy.
THE 480p HIGHER DEFINITION SETTING MAY PROVIDE SMOOTHER PLAYBACK.
The bees haven’t been too active for the past week. I thought maybe I squished the queen during my last inspection. I usual, I don’t know. But the temperature went up and they were back to normal today. If we get a warm, dry September, I think both of my hives will have strong populations and plenty of honey stores for the winter.
This is the first video we’ve posted that shows what it’s like to pull out frames full of bees — the real beekeeping deal for anyone who’s curious to see what it’s actually like. It’s a short video of our recent full inspection of Hive #1, showing off some natural foundationless honeycomb the bees built from scratch in 13 days.
THE 480p HIGHER DEFINITION SETTING MAY PROVIDE SMOOTHER PLAYBACK.
We included four foundationless frames in the hive when we added a second brood box. Two of the foundationless frames were fully-drawn and filled with honey and brood within 13 days. One frame was more than half-filled. The fourth frame, on the outer edge of the box, showed the beginning of some natural comb. Not bad.
Thirteen days ago, we added a second brood box to one of our young honeybee hives and included four foundationless frames as an experiment in backwards beekeeping. Six days later, we took a quick peek at one of those foundationless frames and found this:
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Today, we took another look at that same foundationless frame — and look at it now:
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But that’s nothing. Check this out:
Read on . . . »
I checked out the bees while I was home for lunch today. The sun was shining and it was 19 degrees Celsius in the backyard. I’ve never seen so many bees outside Hive #1. I could smell the honey, or the pheromones from the bees, from a distance. I could hear them from a distance too. Here’s a quick video:
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I assume they’re just really healthy bees and not bees getting ready to swarm.
We plan to install these frame feeders as soon as possible. They arrived today from beemaidbeestore.com. The feeders have bee ladders: tubes of plastic mesh the bees crawl down as a way of drinking the syrup without drowning in it. The feeders hold 7 litres of syrup and take up the space of two frames in the brood chamber.
Our Boardman feeders attract ants, wasps and even big ugly slugs. It’s not a problem for Hive #1 because their numbers are so high. But Hive #2 is weaker and having wasps around probably doesn’t help.
Not having to poke around the hives as much may be another advantage of switching to frame feeders. Hive #1 sucks up about a litre of syrup from the Boardman feeder every three days. If the bees continue at that pace, it could take them up to three weeks to empty 7 litres from the frame feeder, though we’ll likely refill it every two weeks after regular inspections regardless.
Read on . . . »
Mud Songs is not so much a gardening blog anymore, not since I got hooked on beekeeping. But it was never much of a gardening blog to begin with. The only thing we did in our garden that got any attention was the potato tower from last year, which was replaced this year by some potato mini-towers (we’ll have to see how that works out). But generally, most of what we’ve done in our garden this year and last year is pretty basic stuff. We filled everything up with 100% organic compost; sprinkled in a bit of lime (turns out it wasn’t enough lime this year); planted everything as soon as we could; then fertilized and watered all of it on a regular basis — and that’s it. I posted photos and videos every few weeks or so, but for the most part it was just a bunch of photos of vegetables slowly growing in a garden. There’s not a whole lot to see or talk about between the time we plant the vegetables and harvest them. Yup, everything is growing. Or not growing. Uh-huh. Yup.
Did I mention I’m about a thousand times more engaged with beekeeping these days than I ever was with growing vegetables? I love hanging out in our backyard, and a large part of it has to do with the fact that I’m surrounded by green things growing like mad all over the place. But it’s the honeybees that complete the picture for me.
Read on . . . »
We have two honeybee colonies in our backyard, both started from nuc boxes 35 days ago and housed in Langstroth hives. Hive #1 has been fed a water-sugar mixture just about every day (with some honey mixed in for the first three weeks). We added a second brood box a week ago because 9 of the 10 frames in the hive were partially or fully drawn out — the colony was ready to expand.
Hive #2 wasn’t fed until the second week, but for the past week has had two Boardman feeders installed. It doesn’t get as much late-afternoon sun as Hive #1, and the last time we checked a couple days ago, only seven, maybe eight frames had partially or fully drawn out comb on them. (We also pulled a huge ugly slug from the bottom of the hive the same day.)
Those are the differences between Hive #1 and Hive #2. Here’s a quick video I shot today that illustrates the differences:
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Read on . . . »
The foundationless frames are working. YES! This is what it’s all about. This was the big moment of truth — and the bees did it. They had no problem building comb from foundationless frames. I’ll quote myself on this:
“Foundationless frames have nothing but a little strip of plastic or wood near the top called a starter strip. The bees hang off the [beeswax-coated] starter strip and construct their comb like they would in nature, creating cells the size they want them to be, not the size that’s imposed on them by following the pattern on a plastic foundation.” It’s argued that a colony is generally healthier when the honeybees are allowed to build comb as they would in nature — and this is about as close as it gets in a Langstroth hive. It’s the Backwards Beekeeping approach and it’s what got me hooked on beekeeping long before I had any bees. I just wasn’t sure it was even possible in the cold climate of Newfoundland. But now that I see evidence it can work, I’m inspired. I love it. These honeybees are incredible. Here’s how it played out:
Read on . . . »
One of the first things I noticed about our honeybees is how they line up in front of the hive, hold their ground and beat their wings to cool the hive. (I assume that’s what they’re up to.) I usually see 3 or 4 bees in a row, but today I saw about 6 of them forming one long line from the edge of the bottom board going right into the hive. I suppose you have to hang around bees for while to get excited about this. At any rate, I grabbed the camera and managed to record about a minute of it. The line wasn’t as straight and unbroken by the time I hit the RECORD button, but still, bees are cool…
THE 480p SETTING MAY PROVIDE SMOOTHER PLAYBACK.
UPDATE: The bees probably aren’t cooling the hive. I’m not sure what they’re up to, but I saw them doing the same thing today when it was cold. I can’t imagine they’d want it even colder on a cold day, but maybe. As is often the case, I don’t know.
I got an email from someone who noticed our cats in a few photos. They asked, “How well do your cats get along with your honeybees?” The short answer is: it’s not a problem.
We have two cats, a young cat and an older cat. The older cat, Nigel, is so completely laid back, it’s absurd. He doesn’t even notice the bees, and so far the bees haven’t taken much notice of him either.
The younger cat, Winston (seen in the photo), will chase after anything that flies. He approached the bees cautiously when he first saw them. Then he got bolder and sat in front of a hive entrance one day and tried to catch a few bees — and got stung in the face. He didn’t make any noise when he got stung, but ran away and tried rubbing the sting off with his paws. A couple minutes later he was back to normal and hasn’t tried to catch a bee since. He will notice bees crawling on the ground once in a while, but even then he’ll just sit there and look. Cats learn fast.
We began pulling up baby carrots from our flower boxes last week, and of course the carrots are delicious. The carrots grow until they reach the bottom of the flower box. Then they grow sideways.
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The regular carrots in our raised garden bed are still growing slowly.
In other riveting garden news: Our zucchini plants are producing so much that we can’t keep up with them. We’ve been eating peas and beans for the past couple weeks, though not in large numbers. The beets are coming along, slowly. The celery looks beautiful but not large enough to harvest yet. Cucumbers are just beginning to grow on the vine. And our run of fresh strawberries for dessert every night is over. It lasted about 3 weeks. Oh — and we cut the splitting head off our garden bed broccoli last night and had it with some pan-fried cod. The broccoli was okay, but hardly worth the 2 square feet of garden space we sacrificed for it.
Lots of changes for the garden next year. This is still a gardening blog, right?
I found some dead baby bees outside Hive #1 today, and now I’m thinking I may have made a mistake when I added the second brood chamber over the weekend.
Sad looking, isn’t it?
The forecast called for sunshine today, but the sun did not come out.
It was cold and wet all day, not a good day for bees, especially after I split up the brood nest the day before — and that’s probably what I should not have done.
Read on . . . »
Here’s a video of Jenny and me inspecting Hive #1 two days ago, scraping some honey off the frames and adding a second brood chamber.
SWITCH TO THE 480p SETTING FOR SHARPER AND SMOOTHER VIDEO PLAYBACK.
The editing isn’t the greatest because I asked our friend, Vanessa, who was shooting the video, to take some photos during the video as well. I read in the manual that my camera can integrate photos while still rolling on video. But it didn’t work like I thought it would, so I had to cut out most of the integrated photos. It’s a choppy edit. Details on expanding the hive were posted yesterday in the Adding a Second Brood Chamber post.
Related posts: Dead Baby Bees and Foundationless Frames.
Another long post packed with photos…
We added a second brood chamber (or deep body or brood box) to Hive #1 yesterday. As far as I can tell, it went well. The bees were extremely calm being misted with sugar water, way less agitated than when we’ve used the smoker on them. All the frames had drawn out comb except one. We put about half the drawn frames in the new box on top with empty foundation frames between them. We installed 4 foundationless frames in the original box, placing them between drawn out frames. The honey and the brood seemed mixed together on the frames, so there were no all-brood frames or all-honey frames. There was brood in just about every frame we inspected. We saw some honeycomb hanging off the bottom of one frame, but no swarm cells. Hive #1 appears to be doing great. We’ll see how the colony adjusts to the new box and having all their drawn out frames spaced out. The big experiment is the foundationless frames in the bottom box.
Here’s a shot of the bees after we removed a few frames from the hive:
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I’ll upload some video of the procedure soon. (UPDATE: The video is posted.) Until then, allow me to present a big load of photos and descriptions of what we did. (The full series of photos can be view on my Picasa page.)
Read on . . . »
I introduced some foundationless frames to Hive #1 this weekend. I’ll tell you why and I’ll tell you how. Here’s one of my foundationless frames:
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Back in July, more as a lark than anything else, I filled up some so-called green grocery bags (cloth and vinyl bags) with organic soil, planted various crops in them, hung them along my fence throughout the yard and hoped for the best. I called them Bag Crops.
One bag had a zucchini plant growing out the bottom and it looked like this on July 27th and it only got better.
Read on . . . »
The Newfoundland Beekeepers Association does not exist. As of August 11th, 2010, there are only two professional beekeeping companies on the island of Newfoundland. One, Paradise Farms, is located near St. John’s on the east coast of the island where I believe they have about 20 honeybee hives. The other is The Newfoundland Bee Company (who should hire someone like me to redesign and modernize their website — I’ll work for bees). They’re on the west coast and have about 100 well-established hives.
There’s not much point in having an association of two, though, is there? So there is no Newfoundland Beekeepers Association.
But there is an interest in beekeeping in Newfoundland at least among backyard beekeepers like me. The Newfoundland Bee Company sells a fair number of nuc boxes every year to beekeepers across the island. I know a few people in the St. John’s area who recently started up a honeybee hive or two within the past year, and I met up with about half a dozen more wannabe beekeepers earlier this spring at Paradise Farms.
So I know they’re out there, and if they’re like me, they probably wouldn’t mind talking to other local beekeepers — because there’s a lot to know about beekeeping in Newfoundland. I specify Newfoundland because, although cold-climate beekeeping isn’t anything new, beekeeping on a big cold rock in the middle of the North Atlantic likely poses some unique challenges that are best handled by talking to other beekeepers dealing with the same environment.
An informal association of beekeepers on the island would a valuable resource. Even if it’s a bunch of amateurs comparing notes over the internet — you got to start somewhere. So I’m starting here, right now.
I’ve set up a distinct page on Mud Songs called Beekeeping Q&A just for talking about beekeeping in Newfoundland, or at least beekeeping in the St. John’s area of the island — or cold climate beekeeping or beekeeping in general. Whatever works. Comments are still welcomed on regular beekeeping posts, but questions and comments about other beekeeping topics can be left on the Q&A page. I may also use the Q&A page for small updates about my own beekeeping adventures if the topic doesn’t warrant me writing an actual post about it.
In all likelihood, the Beekeeping Q&A page will be ignored by most people who visit this website. It could be me and one other person talking back and forth for a long time. Or just me talking to myself (which is my modus operandi for Mud Songs anyway).
But I guess it can’t hurt until something better comes along.
Here’s a short video I shot yesterday of the bees orientating themselves to the hive and bringing in pollen. I also let the bees fly around my head and I show off one of the board feeders.
SWITCH TO THE 480p SETTING FOR SHARPER AND SMOOTHER VIDEO PLAYBACK.
See the previous post for a close-up shot of the bees loaded down with pollen.
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