I dropped a sugar board over one of my weaker colonies today. Here’s a 3-minute video to prove it.
I gave the bees some protein patties too. Hopefully it’ll keep them going until spring. An 11-minute cut shows up after the short version for anyone with the time for a deeper dive.
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Honey bees festooning, hanging off each other in chains that eventually seem to fill with beeswax that becomes honey comb.
I narrated — not exactly the word for it, but let’s just go with it. I narrated a 5-minute video today where I provide my best off-the-cuff explanation of festooning, that thing bees do when they hang off each other in chains and won’t let go.
This explanation should have taken 60 seconds, not 5 minutes, but that’s how I roll sometimes.
It looks like I talked myself into doing more beekeeping today.
I plan to place at least one more beehive in my secret location sometime in the spring because my colonies there are always in the best shape, better than any of my colonies anywhere else. Unlike most of my hives in other locations, including the hives in Flatrock next to my house, my secret hives don’t get much special treatment.
A 3-minute video that shows me adding a feeder rim to a hive just as it begins to hail.
Like yesterday’s video, here’s another beeyard update with more public domain old timey jazz, this time by Louis Armstrong and The Hot Fives and Sevens.
I smacked this together over my lunch our and I can hear now how the camera audio (my voice) distorts a bit in place, but I’m not going back to fix it.
A beeyard update I recorded on my cell phone on the way home from work.
It includes what I’ve been told is public domain music by Duke Ellington. In the past two years, I’ve become more of an aficionado of his 1950s and ’60s records, but only in the E.U. are those recordings in the public domain. I’d fill all my videos with that music if I could. I love it. But for now, I’ll test the copyright waters with these early recordings from the 1920s. Oh yeah, and I also check on how well the bees are consuming some sugar bricks I added a few weeks ago and a few other things.
I stuck a cheap cell phone microphone into some beehives and this is what I heard:
A 2-minute video that demonstrates and explains my idea for covering the inner cover hole with canvas. It’s followed by a 20-minute version for those interested in a deeper dive into all kinds of other things.
As always with these longer videos, I explain every little thing I do while I’m doing it so that new beekeepers unfamiliar with all this stuff might be able to pick up some helpful titbits of information. I know this format isn’t quick and slick and eye-catching, and my viewership has gone down the toilet since I started doing this, but when I look back on all the videos I’ve watched over the years, it’s usually been this kind of long-form walk-along video that I’ve learned the most from — the ones where I’m just hanging out with the beekeeper while they’re beekeeping. So I’m sticking to it.
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A 7-minute casual tour through the little snowy beeyard next to my house, recorded this morning around 9:30.
I re-examine the yogurt entrance shelters, the hive pillows and generally discuss where my bees are today and what I plan to do this weekend, maybe, if I’m not too tired.
I’ve enjoyed being able to check on my bees during my lunch breaks over the past while since Omicron shut down my normal office work schedule. What a lousy way to learn the Greek alphabet, eh? I’m burnt out from the pandemic like most of us, but being able to take a break from my office job and hang with my bees has provided a huge mental boost. Today, for instance, all I did was give some comb honey to a colony I suspected was hungry. It only took about five minutes, but it was so relaxing.
I did this so fast, it didn’t require smoke, a veil or gloves. The bees were too busy staying clustered to worry about me. The sun is beating down on the black hive now. What heat was lost will be regained quickly. I’m also planning to wrap the hive with silver bubble wrap to see if that helps.
Here’s a 5-minute single shot of what I hope are big and healthy winter bees. It took me about 4 years, something like that, to clue in about winter bees. They’re are not the same as regular summertime fun time worker bees, and I’m still not really an expert at it.
A 7-minute video of me dumping a 2.3kg (5 lbs) sugar brick into a hive where the colony of honey bees trying to stay alive is running low on honey. (Plus 15 minutes of bonus material for the truly dedicated.)
A wet hive pillow (or quilt box) that got wet and stayed wet because the super (or quilt box) lacked ventilation.
A short video demonstrating how a rim is added to the top of a hive to make room for sugar bricks, fondant or any other kind of winter feed.
Now I just need to make some sugar bricks.
My favourite way to eat comb honey is with blue cheese on a buttery cracker.
Beekeepers on a budget with minimal carpentry skills might like these little shelters I made from old yogurt containers to keep wind, rain and snow from blowing through the upper entrances of my beehives. Here’s a three and a half minute video that shows what I’m talking about. (It ends with a 15-minute extended cut for those who like to dig a little deeper.)
Dear Readers (all five of you — Hi Mom!):
I don’t see myself posting much of anything over the next few weeks. But here’s a playlist of personal favourite videos from my archives. Many of the videos are simply attractive shots that could appear anywhere, not just on a beekeeping blog. Slow and calm and pretty. Put it in full-screen mode and let ‘er rip.
I will still post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from time to time, but I also hope to unplug, so maybe not.
Take care and see you next year,
Phillip
I store frames of drawn comb over the winter by building a well ventilated hive in my unheated outdoor shed. Here’s a video that proves it:
The hive full of drawn comb (and some capped frames of honey) is well ventilated on the bottom and top using queen excluders so mice can’t get in. The hive can be built outside on its own too. No shed required.
Hold on to your hats.
An experiment. I’m making hive pillows using old cotton pillow cases. The pillow is full of wood chips and straw. I’ve been toying with these for the past couple of years because moisture quilts — or quilt boxes with upper ventilation — aren’t as convenient as I’d like them to be. They don’t hold in heat well either. My bees in Flatrock, where it’s unusually cold and damp compared to many places in Newfoundland, seem to need all the heat they can get, and moisture quilts, heat-wise, just don’t cut it.
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This is mostly a talking video of me explaining an experiment that involves drilling a hole in the super a few inches below the inner cover — with no inner cover entrance — with the intention of holding more heat in the hive during the winter.
Taking a peek under the hood of my Flatrock hives to see where the bees are clustering.
The excitement continues as I finally got all my hives protected with 6mm / quarter-inch mesh yesterday. I’m also pleased with one hive where the bees are clustering well beneath their honey and the hive is dry as a bone. I’m not going to mess with it.
It’s a 3-medium hive painted black, no wrap, the bottom entrance with mesh but wide open for ventilation, an open top entrance, a piece of silver bubble wrap insulation over the inner cover, the inner cover hole covered with screen but open, a ventilation rim over that, and a small hive pillow inside the ventilation rim.
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While ventilated quilt boxes and moisture quilts can do a great job at keeping beehives dry in the winter, they can be a pain to maintain… in the rain on the plains with stains on my cranes. You know what I mean. I’m looking to simplify what I do. So instead of dumping wood chips into a quilt box or moisture quilt, I’ve been dropping what I call a hive pillow over a slightly insulated inner cover, hoping for the same drying effect of a moisture quilt but without the loss of heat.
I know it looks like I’m working without a plan these days, but there is a method to my madness.
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My Flir thermal imaging camera is a finicky piece of gear that never consistently produces a readable or useful thermal image of my beehives or, more specially, the cluster of bees living in the hives.
I saw something the other day that made me think, “This looks like the work of shrews.”
Here’s a 40-minute video of me going through the last hive inspections of year for my bees in Flatrock.
I don’t make many beekeeping videos that are quick and easy to digest anymore. I’m more interested in documenting what it’s actually like to keep bees as a backyard beekeeper in Newfoundland.
I don’t know why people don’t like crystallised raw honey. Hard as rock honey, okay, I can see not going for that. But spreadable crystallised honey is excellent.
When I notice my honey beginning to crystallise, I tip the jar upside-down so the spreadable crystallising honey is easier to get at.
I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. Feeding honey bees a jar of crystallised honey because humans don’t want to eat it for some silly reason.
It’s a 75-second video that I shot as a 4K-test. About 100% of streaming video that’s labelled as 4K isn’t really 4K, but for anyone with a 4K monitor or TV, a “4K” video will look sharper than regular videos. And if you don’t know what 4K is, don’t worry about it.
These are some of the last hive inspections I’ll perform this year.
The parts where I’m actually inside a hive are written in italics.
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