Bare minimum hive with no honey supers.
Necessary items not listed below are nails, screws and tools needed for assembling the hives; Mason jars or large pickling jars for inverted jar feeding; 40-80kg of granulated sugar for mixing sugar syrup and candy; paint for the hives; and the R5 hard insulation and Type 15 or 30 asphalt felt used for wintering the hive. (Again, see our How-To page for more info on all that.) Those extra items will come to about $100.
Then add $200 for a nuc box (i.e., the bees) from the one supplier of nucs on the island. (You can contact me for their email address, though I’m not sure they’re actually in the business of selling nucs anymore.) You may have better luck getting your bees from another NL beekeeper instead. (I might be able supply nucs by 2013.) But let’s just assume the bees will cost about $200 no matter where you get them.
Okay then, here’s the one-shot hypothetical order for anyone interested in starting up a single Langstroth hive in Newfoundland in 2012. It’s everything you’ll need for your first summer, fall and winter of beekeeping.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH NEW PHOTOS SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
Here’s a narrated video of us harvesting the last five foundationless frames from our hives this year. We cut out 28 small squares of honey comb from a little over 1 and a half frames. We crushed and strained the rest of it and bottled it the next day.
We meant to strain the crushed comb using the 3-bucket system that requires a paint strainer, but we put the paint strainer on the wrong bucket (the paint strainer goes on the bottom bucket), so we had to improvise a bit. That mistake cost us some honey, but it wasn’t too drastic.
P.S.: The Eating Raw Honey Comb video isn’t a bad following-up to this video.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
I bought a wasp trap because wasps (or yellow jackets) have been showing up in larger numbers around our hives for the past week. The young hives could be at risk if we didn’t have entrance reducers on them. We partially reduced the entrances on the full hives. They should be okay. I bought the “Green Earth” Yellow Jacket Wasp Trap and Lure as extra production, though.
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The plastic trap costs about $10, but it isn’t much good without the bait that cost another $6. (Not including the bait with the trap seems a bit deceiving to me.) I followed the directions and added apple juice and some meat (cat food) into the base of the trap. Then I added the $6 packet of wasp lure. Then I hung it up about twenty feet from the hives and hoped for the best. That was last weekend.
Read on . . . »
A new local beekeeper told me he was planning to feed his bees honey that he bought in the grocery store. Don’t. Grocery store honey sometimes contains spores for various foulbrood diseases — and in Newfoundland, if you have foulbrood, you have to destroy your bees and burn your hive. No joke. If you feed your bees honey, use only honey from your own hives. I believe that’s the general rule of thumb for most beekeepers. Another way to prevent the spread of disease is never to share tools or hive equipment with other beekeepers, just in case.
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What’s the deal with those big bags of sugar? The deal is that it’s the only type of sugar you should feed your bees. Not brown sugar. Not molasses. Just you good old fashioned white granulated sugar. In the spring, the sugar syrup mixture is a light 1:1 mixture (1 part sugar, 1 part sugar). For feeding nucs and topping off the hives before winter, it’s 2:1 (2 parts sugar, 1 part water). The big 20kg bags of sugar cost between $21 and $24 at wholesale stores like Costo and — in St. John’s — that place by the Avalon Mall that used to be called Atlantic Wholesalers but is now called something like President’s Choice Wholesalers. You don’t need a membership and it’s the cheapest place for sugar I’ve found.
I made this bottom board from scrap wood I found in my shed today:
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I cut the thick plywood 16.5 inches wide (about 42cm) and 2 feet long (70cm). The brace wood, if you want to call it that, was the same dimensions as a super, 20 inches by about 15 inches, something like that. The hive entrance (once a hive is placed on top) is about 1 and a quarter inches high, which is fine. It’s not pretty but the bees don’t care about pretty. I think it’ll work. I’ll post a photo of it in a day or two when I put a hive on top of it. I should have been making these all along. It’s way cheaper than ordering them from a supplier and having them shipped here. If you had to pay for the raw material, though, I’m guessing it would be less than $5.
I made some improvements to the design of my ventilator rim (a.k.a. a ventilation eke). It’s still cheap and easy to make and should do a fine job at improving the ventilation of any Langstroth hive. First, I cut four pieces of wood for the front, back and sides of the rim. Here’s a shot of the side pieces:
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THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
We wrapped both of our hives for winter today and did pretty much what David Burns does in his How To Wrap Your Hive for Winter video / beekeeping lesson. (I’ll post our own video in a day or two.)
Here’s the low down on exactly how we wrapped and prepared each of our four-month-old double-deep Langstroth hives for winter:
1) Built and installed the world’s simplest, cheapest mouse-proof entrance reducer and made sure to check the hive for mice beforehand.
2) Flipped the inner cover to the winter position (with the flat side facing up) and placed a piece of hard insulation over it. The insulation has a R-7.5 rating, whatever that is. Apparently, R-5 or above will keep the condensation from forming in the hive. It looks like this before the top cover is added:
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I ordered some beekeeping books based on recommendations from various beekeeping forums — and I’m looking for other recommendations if anyone has any. Here’s a photo of the first batch of books that just arrived:
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I’ll do a separate write-up for each of these books after I’ve read them. From left to right, the books are:
The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, by A.I. Root and E.R. Root — Originally published in 1877, followed by several revised editions, this is basically a 700-page beekeeping encyclopaedia. I have the 1947 edition. Other books with exactly the same title made shopping for it a bit frustrating. I chose this edition because it was the most affordable ($35 Canadian). I guess it’s good to have around.
The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden (Revised and Updated), by Kim Flottum — Detailed instructive photographs make all the difference when it comes to beekeeping guide books (and websites), and this book is packed with them. I’ve only skimmed and read bits and pieces of it, but it seems to cover all the bases. I can tell already it’s a good buy. I plan to read it before any of the others. ($20 Canadian.)
Fifty Years Among the Bees, by C. C. Miller — Originally published in 1915, everyone says I should read it because it’s still informative (most beekeeping knowledge doesn’t get old) and it just a good read. ($15 Canadian.)
First Lessons in Beekeeping, by C. P. Dadant — Originally published in 1934, it’s another classic everyone says I have to read, so I’m going to read it sometime over this winter with the rest of these books. ($10 Canadian.)
Has anyone read any books I should add to my list?
UPDATE (Dec. 21/10): I added “Bee Behaviour” to the related topics of this of this post because of some informative comments (and responses) about the behaviour of certain breeds of honey bees, which helped explain some of the behaviour of our bees.
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON DEC. 2, 2010.
We installed our honey bees four days ago on July 18th, 2010. We picked up our nuc boxes from the a Newfoundland bee company on the west coast of Newfoundland the day before at $200 a pop. (Check out my Honey Bees Are On The Way post for a definition of a nuc box and an explanation of the installation process.) I installed the first box of bees and Jenny video taped it. Jenny installed the second box of bees later and I took pictures. I can’t upload the video due to some technical difficulties which I’m working to fix. Until then, here are some of the pictures:
This is the first hive after we installed the bees.
The emptied nuc box on the ground still had a few bees in it that eventually flew back into the hive.
The upside-down Mason jar is full of a honey-sugar mixture. (Nov. 15/10 update: Don’t use honey unless it’s from your own bees. Grocery store honey often contains spores for various Foul Brood diseases which you definitely do not want in your hives.) The bees will feed on it for a couple weeks while they get oriented to their new surroundings. It also helps them build comb quicker. (Dec. 02/10 update: The bees are actually fed all summer long.)
Read on . . . »
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster the wait is over. I just got a call confirming that I can pick up my honeybees in 2 weeks. It will cost $400 for two nuc packages and I’ll have to drive eight hours to get them, but at least I know I’m going to have honey bees for two hives this year. Nuff said.
Okay, so what’s a nuc package and how does it work?
This is a nuc package. To reduce confusion, let’s call it a nuc box, because that’s what it is: a small box that contains the nucleus of a honey bee colony. A nuc box typically holds 4 deep frames (photo), several thousands bees and a mated queen. Three frames will contain a combination of honey, pollen and eggs, everything a colony needs to stay alive. One frame is usually left empty so the worker bees have something to work on while they’re stuck in the box during shipment to their new hive.
The installation of the honey bees from a nuc box to their new hive is a relatively straightforward procedure. Basically, the 4 frames from the nuc box, along with all the bees and the queen, are placed inside a hive body and left alone.
Read on . . . »
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