Living in Season

Honey supers for sale on Craigslist

Since we can barely walk through our garage between strollers and beekeeping equipment, Grant is trying to reduce a bit of the clutter by selling a stack of honey supers. There are 11 shallows with fully drawn comb that have been used for about 3 years. We don't have as many hives so he hasn't used these for several seasons. He's asking $220 for all of them. These are great for anyone expanding their apiary or starting new since they're ready to go, and having fully drawn comb will save the bees time and energy when the nectar is rolling in and needs to be stored.

You can see his ad on Craigslist.

Making Mead - The Drink of the Gods

Are you one of the lucky ones who has a surplus of honey? A great way to use it is whipping up a batch of mead, a quirky high octane adult beverage that is super simple to make. I have an article in he current issue of Mother Earth News, How to Make Mead from Honey, giving step by step instructions on how to do it.

Mead makers are  different kind of folk. We seem to like a challenge, and enjoy the varying results since different honey produces different flavors. And even though the drink is technically a wine, it's not one you can drink in a matter of months. Mead takes at least a year before it's palatable.  So you have to be patient if you're going to tackle this project, but for those who like a light tasting (usually), sweet, earthy beverage with a kick it's defnitely worth the wait.

Honey Harvesting Time

The honey is in for the season, and it was far short of a bumper crop. Grant pulled off seven partially filled supers last week, and took a few hours to spin out roughly 100 pounds of honey. It's a far cry from last year when he struggled in October and November spinning out over 700 pounds from 23 very cold supers. There's always next year.

Harvesting honey starts in the early summer. When the nectar flow begins, Grant places the supers, the smaller boxes seen on stacks of hives, to collect the surplus honey from the hard working bees. During out best year in Kalispell, the bees filled a super - about 30 pounds of honey - in a single day. Keep in mind, this is an 1/8 of a teaspoon at a time. One hive produced 270 pounds during the summer. That's a lot of bee spit.

The bees dehydrate the honey to approximately 16% moisture level, then will cap it with a thin layer of beeswax. This end product will keep almost indefinitely. In the late summer or fall, once most of the honey is capped, Grant removes the supers. and blows the bees off with the Shop Vac. Any stragglers are sucked up at home so they don't end up in the honey.

When he brings the supers home, he scrapes the cappings off of the top of the honey to allow it to flow with a fork like tool. Some people use a heated knife to remove the capping from the frames, but we've found this takes away much of the honey, too. (The cappings wax will be fed back to the bees, and they'll clean up every bit of honey mixed in with it.)

The honey extractor is a long stainless steel tub with a motor that rapidly spins the inside arms. Grant places four frames vertically in the extractor, turns on the motor and hangs on. The honey is forced out of the frames and drains to the bottom. Once one side of the frames is clean, Grant turns them over and does the other side. Obviously, the process goes much smoother when it's warm outside, which is was this year making a short crop spin out even faster.

As the extractor fills, he pours the honey into five gallon buckets. There's still a considerable amount of beeswax and some bee parts in the honey so he'll filter it through cheesecloth before selling any. The "wet" supers - the ones that are recently drained of honey - are put back on the hives for a few days for the bees to clean up. They'll move any drops of honey left in the frames down to the main hives to add to their winter stores. We leave them 30 pounds of honey to make it through the winter, and keep an eye on them in case they need extra early in the spring... just before everything starts again.

The Girls are Hard at Work

When Grant moved the hives to the alfalfa fields it became awfully quiet around here. I was very concerned for several weeks that he would have to bring back a hive to ensure decent pollination  because the bees were no where to be seen. It would be pretty embarrassing to have beekeepers have to hand pollinate their veggies!

Last year, I planted bachelor's buttons, as well as lots of annual poppies, and they reseeded all over the garden. Of course, since it's against my nature to pull anything that's durable enough to come back we have flowers all over the garden. It's been an enormous blessing because not only are they gorgeous, they're a veritable buffet for the bees. When we go out in the morning the area is literally buzzing with the hard working girls, and they're obviously hitting the veggies, too, since there are plenty of squash and tomatoes setting.

A friend of mine in town is definitely having an issue with the lack of bees, although they have hives just down the road. She's been using the paint brush on the squash blossoms. Where she's done it, they produce. But the ones she missed are dying quickly. There are too many other fun things to do in the summer than to play worker bee at home! So, plant those flowers to bring in the bees!

Capturing a Swarm

Just as things were looking bleak for the bee yard, Grant received a couple of phone calls concerning swarms. He's listed on the Montana Department of Ag site for people to call if they have a honeybee swarm. Unfortunately, one was in Cutbank (a bit far to travel), but the other was at the bottom of the hill at a local RV park.

He said it was a small bunch - probably 3000 bees or so - twenty feet up in a tree! The park loaned him a ladder so he could climb up to retrieve them, and it sounds like he drew quite the crowd. Capturing a swarm in a public place is definitely a good place to educate people on how bees do their thing since he got questions on whether he was gathering the honey or if they're "bad bees." The retrieval went well (outside of having to carry a nuc box and smoker 20-ft up a ladder), and it adds one more hive to the collection.

This is actually an odd time of year for bees to swarm, which makes receiving a couple of calls within minutes even more unusual. Bees swarm when they're overcrowded or when the queen is no longer performing very well. (After laying 1000+ eggs a day, I don't know who would be performing at maximum capacity after a couple of years.) Typically, a scout will locate a suitable area, then half of the hive will up and leave. Many times they produce their own queen making them even more valuable. Grant didn't see a queen in this bunch so he pulled a hive full of eggs from one of the established hives, and put it in with the swarm hive so they will hopefully draw out a few queen cells and produce their own.

Being on the list to capture swarms is a huge blessing. Bees can be hard to come by - and practically impossible at this time of year. Plus, they're becoming increasingly more expensive. A 2 lbs. package (about 6000 bees) is nearly $70, and even purchasing a single queen will cost $18 on the low end. (Some are sold for $1500... yes, that's over one thousand dollars for a bee!) So, a quick run up the ladder was well worth it.

The Girls are Looking Good

We're back in a more typical winter weather pattern, but last weekend was a brief taste of spring. Grant took advantage of the moderate temperatures to take a peek in the hives. Thankfully, he reports the hives are looking strong overall. Whew!

The queens should start laying shortly. They typically begin in February when the days are growing longer. They start out slowly now, but by spring a good queen will lay 1500 eggs per day. It won't be long until spring is here, and the girls can get back to work.

Planting for the Bees

Another winter storm hit us yesterday. I woke up to a fairly light snow - no big deal - but by early morning it morphed into a full-fledged blizzard with winds coming straight out of the north. The temperature dropped forty-degrees during the day. I have no idea how much snow actually fell, but I do know a lot found it's way into our attic again through the roof vent. Any opening is fair game to this nasty stuff.

Of course, this makes me wonder how the bees are doing with yet another go' round of brutal conditions. Grant shoveled the hive entrances free a few days ago to allow them to vent, as well as fly out if necessary. There were a surprising number that came out even though the temps were only in the thirties. He also said one cluster was fairly close to the snow-shut entrance. Thankfully, it does have strong insulating qualities; I just hope they moved to the middle after he took away their blanket.

Quite a few friends in town have major difficulties with pollination this year. Silvia was tremendously frustrated with her lack of zucchini. It would begin to set, then die off the vine. I'm trying to talk Grant into taking over a hive, even if it's a nuke, to help them with their orchard and garden. I can definitely see a call for "urban apiarists" in the near future when people pay beekeepers to bring out hives for a certain amount of time to ensure adequate pollination to home gardens.

One thing gardeners can do is incorporate the flowers bees love directly in their veg garden. Diversity is a good thing, and this is no exception. I talked to a couple at the end of the season who have their veg and flower beds mixed in with one another, and he said they had no issues with a lack of bees. On the contrary, he had to warn folks who don't like bees to watch certain parts of the garden.

Even though we have a hive or two nearby - whether our own or our neighbor's - I'm planning to plant more flowers to encourage the bees to visit. Perovskia, also known as Russian Sage, is a fantastically hardy plant (even in this area) that bees adore. I planted one last year, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the indeterminate "Chocolate Cherry" tomatoes. This year I'll bring it out on its own.

Oregano is another bee favorite. When I used to harvest cart loads of oregano for drying, it was common to have bees touching my hands and landing on my arms as I cut down their buffet. The only time I was ever stung was when I squeezed on between my fingers. They don't like that so much.

I'm debating whether to plant borage. It makes terrific bee food, but is terribly invasive. One plant quickly turns to one-hundred and so on. The flowers make a delightful addition to salads with a mild cucumber flavor and gorgeous blue color, but the plant can be a battle.

This is the same with chives, although they are easier to control. I think Silvia gave me some seed, so I'll have to have at least a few plants. I'll have to keep close tabs on the flowers to leave them long enough for the bees to enjoy, but cut them back before they reseed absolutely everywhere.

The thing I like about the bees utilizing the garden, besides efficient pollination, is the honey has a much better flavor, in my opinion. The very light alfalfa honey is the "preferred" product according to the National Honey Board, but for those of us who enjoy honey for a more unique taste, the home garden honey is a delicious manifestation of a successful summer.  

Winter Bee Worries

It was a good year for the bees for most of 2008 with relatively mild temperatures and reasonable weather. Granted, our record breaking -8 degrees on April 21 was an unwelcomed surprise, and the June blizzard wasn’t much of a help except for providing much needed moisture, but the hives weathered all of it without a problem. Now I’m not so sure.

 

We’ve endured sub-zero temperatures for over a week with many, many nights dipping below -20F. A few days have cracked single digits, but for the most part, we’re the epitome of a big deepfreeze.

 

Grant stacked bales of straw along the west side of the hives to help buffer them against our gale force winds, but particularly with last week’s blizzard, there was virtually no way to adequately protect them. Any tiny crack – whether in the garden shed or the front of my truck – allowed snow to fill an area. I shudder to think how much found its way into the hives.

 

Honeybees live through the winter by clustering in the middle of the hive keeping the queen warm in the middle of thousands of tiny bodies. Grant placed a thermograph in a hive years ago (although not squarely in the middle), and one on the hive’s exterior to record the temperature variation. At times there is nearly a one-hundred degree difference. It can be -20 outside, and a healthy hive will stay well above 80-degrees inside. This is pretty remarkable considering these tiny creatures keep it warm through muscular contractions. Basically they’re shivering to produce heat.

 

But with temperatures this cold for this long, it can be tough for the girls to hold it together. (The drones were kicked out after the first hard freeze, by the way. There’s no room for slackers during the winter.)  In winters past, we’ve insulated the hives with the rigid foam, but for so many seasons it’s almost caused more trouble than it was worth since the temperatures weren’t as extreme. Plus, ventilation issues and allowing the bees to venture outside of the hive during warm winter days is extremely important, and can be difficult if the hive is tightly sealed.

 

On sunny days some bees will fly outside to defecate since they are fastidious when it comes to cleanliness within the hive. Unfortunately, just because the sun is out doesn’t mean they’ll make it back without falling to the ground, particularly when the temps are still barely above freezing. (This is evident in the photo – there are many dead bees in front of the hives where they flew out and chilled.)

 

It’s obviously not prudent to peek into the hives now, but if a warm Chinook wind blows through the area (oh please, please, please!), and it might be worthwhile to check them to see if we need to combine hives to help them pull through the rest of the season. Only time will tell.

Blowin' Bees

   It was another windy day in the Electric City yesterday. The weather service reported gusts of 65 mph in the region, and it looked like a mini dust bowl roaring across the nearby fields.

Although the house rattled, and I watched the bulk of the mulch Grant and his brother just spent an entire day spreading blow away, the beehives also took a hit. Several lost their lids and feeder boxes, and were in jeopardy of chilling the brood chamber. Since package bee costs have climbed exponentially - I recently heard a 3 lbs package was selling for $140 - we can't risk losing a hatch.

   Thankfully, I happened to look out the back window, and saw the equipment scattered in front of the hives. In a semi panic, I called the neighbor gal to watch Sam while I donned a suit, and replaced lids. The gusts were so strong I had to keep a firm grip on the lids so they wouldn’t be ripped from my hands. I didn't even bother replacing the boxes that were set over the jars of sugar water since I figured they wouldn't quickly be blown down again.

   To keep the lids in place I scrambled to find anything heavy. Rocks, bricks… even the jack out of my horse trailer. But everything stayed put for the remainder of the blustery day.

New Girls on the Block

   I’m sure the UPS man just loves us. He knocked on the door last week letting me know our bees were here. Four, three-pound cages filled with roughly 3000 bees and a queen, sat secured together with wooden slats on the front porch. Unfortunately, it had snowed a few inches during the night, and I don’t think these California girls liked their new home. It looked like half the bees were piled on the bottom of the cages, and we wondered if they were going to make it. Thankfully, they warmed up after sitting on the dining room table throughout the afternoon, and by the evening they were buzzing loudly. It's a little disconcerting for some to have 20,000+ bees humming in the dining room, but it's normal for us.

   We had to order in bees this spring due to winter losses. With the recent development of Colony Collapse Disorder, a puzzling situation where hives simply vanish, we wondered if our unusually high loss is from CCD or simply stress. It’s hard to tell. With CCD hives, one week they’re be vigorous with no apparent problems, the next week they’re greatly diminished if not completely gone. One of our hives was weak going into the winter and the late fall was pretty harsh in Kalispell, so it’s hard to say what caused the losses.

   The price of packaged bees has increased, possibly as a result of CCD. We paid over $100 per package (with shipping), which is at least $20 higher than in past years. Regardless, we were happy to find packages to boost the numbers of colonies before the nectar flow that will start shortly. The dandelions are already blooming. I’ve also learned the golden currants along the Missouri Rivershould be starting soon, and I'm hoping for a strong sweet clover bloom this spring. It will beinteresting to see how the honey does on this side of the  mountains, and what our primary nectar source will be.