Taking a peek at a colony I plan to split this year. I hope.
I’ve got at least two colonies that are in tip top shape.
00:00 — Top box packed with bees.
01:35 — Review of my basic hive set-up. Includes open bottom entrance, top notched inner cover entrance, black-painted hives and a ventilation rim with a pillowcase full of straw and wood chips.
03:55 — Defensive bees.
06:05 — An open feeder used properly.
An update from my junkyard / backyard / beeyard.
I’m not upset about my dwindling winter colonies. This is how beekeeping plays out sometimes, whether through human error, environmental conditions or combination of both. Just look at the losses commercial beekeepers in Canada experienced this winter. Most of those losses are likely related to Varroa, which we don’t have in Newfoundland, but wintering losses are part of beekeeping no matter how you look it. I think it’s fair to say it happens to everyone eventually, even small-scale beekeepers.
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I put a beehive in the back of my car. So? You gotta problem with that?
A problem with the Mountain Camp method of dry sugar feeding is that sometimes the bees toss out the granules of sugar like they’re garbage. Maybe the bees are less likely to do that if they’re starving. All I can say for certain is that I use the Mountain Camp method — pouring dry sugar on newspaper over the top bars and sometimes spraying it with a bit of water — only when I can’t do anything else. Only when I don’t have sugar bricks available.
12 minutes of super fantastic beekeeping.
The bees seem healthy, but none of my colonies are making it out of winter strong so far.
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A 3-minute shot of honey bees drinking from a leaky rain barrel.
My small backyard near downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland, where I first kept bees.
Putting a small hive next to my house where I can see the bees from my living room window coming and going on sunny days is the smartest thing I’ve done in years.
Here’s a 2-minute clip that shows off the waterlogged bottom board I found a few weeks ago in one of my winter hives that got soaked to the bone and was full of mould that made my bees sick.
I have waxed-dipped bottom boards from 10 years ago that are still going strong. I plan to paint all of my inner covers and bottom boards with beeswax for now on. I don’t know if that’s the scientific thing to do, but I’m doing it.
I know better than to remove the 6mm / quarter-inch mouse and shrew proofing mesh from the bottom entrances of my hives while temperatures are still cold (like they are now), but hope springs eternal whenever the sun comes out like it did a couple weeks ago, and silly me, I removed the mesh from about half of my hives. Then it got cold again — like it always does in April — and now it looks like I’ve got critters trying to find a warm place to cuddle into. Nice move, Phillip. Way to go. I have to keep reminding myself not to remove the mesh until the first full hive inspection of the year — when it’s warm and stays warm… At least I think it’s a mouse making a mess of my bees.
The video taps into other topics, but the mesh is the main one.
Is this a Pickwick Crocus? Maybe. (April 16th, 2022.)
I don’t know what crocuses to plant for honey bees, but, at least in my cold, damp climate of Flatrock, the big ones seem to be the better ones. They hold up better in the weather. I believe they’re called Giant Crocuses. The delicate ones wilt away quicker. From what I can tell (and I don’t know anything about crocuses), the Pickwick Crocus is the big winner in my front yard. The Jeanne d’Arc Crocus seems to hold up well too. But yup, bigger seems to be better.
A wet mouldy frame of uncapped syrup and/or honey. (April 16th, 2022.)
I’ve had to deal with a few hives in a wet condition this spring and I think I know why.
The furnace tape I used to seal in the cracks between supers was a mistake. I’ve used duct tape for years with no issues, but I’ve found more moisture beneath this tape than anything I’ve seen before. It was so wet under some of the taped up supers that the wood was beginning rot. So I’m thinking tape made of cold-conducting metal wasn’t a good idea?
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Honey bee in a crocus flower (April 15th, 2022, Flatrock, Newfoundland).
Here’s yesterday’s video played back at 57% normal speed because someone mentioned that the bees — at normal speed — move like they’re hepped up on caffeine. Hang around with the bees long enough and all that looks normal and calm. But I can understand how their movements might seem a bit jittery. So here’s the main shot of the video again, but played back at a more relaxed pace.
I watched this video last night on a big TV in my basement. It was relaxing. I think it works just as well with the volume down too.
Here’s a short video of a homemade sugar board that was gifted to me. I normally don’t use sugar boards or candy boards because I’m not sure they provide enough upper ventilation for my bees in the winter, but this one seems to have worked out well. What I like about it is that there’s enough sugar in it to keep the bees fed for a long time — when or if they run out of honey. I love anything in beekeepng that let’s me set it and forget it.
In this 5-minute video, I take a look at some wet winter hives. The use of cold-conducting silver furnace tape to seal the cracks between my supers seems to have been mistake.
I’ll add more details once I have time. A 19-minute deeper dive follows the opening 5 minutes.
April 12th, 2022: I had the bees in this wet, damp, mouldy hive tested and they have Nosema. It’s stinky and dirty, but it’s not the end of the world. I’m on it. Just for the record, I went 11 years and 9 months without a serious case of Nosema in my bees. That’s not a bad record. I hope. The dirty hive will be treated safely and effectively with Acetic Acid. As much as I would like to document that process so that others might learn from my experience, I’ve decided to hold back on it due to the overzealous policing element that continues to be nuisance to so many beekeepers in Newfoundland. And I’m not referring to anyone who mentioned that Nosema needs to be reported to the provincial apiarist. I’m totally cool with that.
I have reason to believe that the hive I found full of poop recently might not have Nosema, but I’ve been dealing with it, just to careful, as if it does have Nosema. Here’s a long video of me digging into the mess and dealing with it by knocking the colony down to a single medium super. I may update this post with more information later. I’m kinda busy at the moment trying to become an expert on Nosema. (Update: In the video, I leave an open feeder full of thin sugar syrup so the bees could clear out their guts of possible Nosema spores, but I changed my mind and removed it the next day. The risk of spreading Nosema through the syrup seemed too great. Maybe the risk is low, but I don’t want to take any chances.)
So…
The specks of poop in the sugar could be signs of nosema, a mild case of it. (April 4th, 2022.)
I think I may have discovered Nosema, possibly a fatal case of it, in at least one of my colonies — and I’m not posting a photo of that one just yet because it’ll make you barf. When everything inside the hive is covered with feces as if the bees were locked inside and couldn’t get out for cleansing flights, even though the front door is about two inches away from the cluster — that pretty much screams Nosema with a capital N. It could be dysentery, which is also gross and not as troublesome as Nosema. Still, everything points to Nosema at the moment.
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So I have a teenie tiny colony that’s pretty much toast. I knew going into the winter it wasn’t in great shape. It was result of a late season queen that was mated sometime in September, which is not good for all kinds of reasons I won’t go into now. But essentially it was (is) a small colony with a poorly mated queen that I should have combined with a strong colony before winter set in.
In any case, Marc Bloom, another beekeeper here on the Isle of Newfoundland going all-in like me, because, come on, there’s no turning back now, dropped off a 5-frame medium nuc box for me the other day and I thought now would be a good time to dig into this dying colony, transfer it to a smaller, probably dryer hive box, and maybe give it a fighting chance. So that’s what I did. Here’s the video, including a sort of post-mortem looking through the dying colony’s old frames.
High clustering bees clinging to the inner cover. (March 19th, 2002, Newfoundland.)
Here’s a 7-minute video of me taking a peek inside some stinky beehives.
Here’s a quick video I made over my lunch break yesterday that shows how I use Google Maps to figure out where my bees might be flying.
So here’s how I use Google Maps to calculate the approximate forage area of my bees (if you didn’t watch the video):
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These bees should be stronger by now. I plan to combine this weak colony with a strong colony in the spring as soon as I’m able.
A 20-minute video full of talkin’ and pseudo philosophising. I posted a 3-minute version of this video on February 28th.
What can I say? It cost about $3.00 to make a brick of sugar that has the potiential to save my bees if they run low on honey when I’m not around to save them. So here we go again.
Two colonies got only sugar bricks. Another one got a protein patty and a sugar brick. I’ll say this, though, these three colonies seem to be in good shape. They’re full of bees and I can still see frames of capped honey up top.
Last year some of my colonies didn’t break above the top bars until April. This year, all of them except one (out of 10) have broken above the top bars. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re running low on honey, but, like I said, a few dollars worth of sugar ain’t no thing to make sure they’re okay.
Today I made some sugar bricks using a big hardware store bucket instead of my usual metal mixing bowl, and now that I’ve done it, I’m never going back. It’s bucket mixing for now on.
Honestly, I’m not out to publicly shame natural beekeepers who believe that sugar is bad for honey bees. I just happen to be dumping sugar into some of my hives because some of my colonies might run out of honey before spring. Here’s a 3-minute video that demonstrates how I dump sugar into my hives when I’m too lazy to do anything else. (I also posted a 20-minute version of this video too.)
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.
