Sunday, April 29, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 28, 2012

Hive weigh-in
Queen Anne: 48.5 lbs (+5 lbs from last week)

Today I talk about how important bees are. I give my list of 5 ways that everybody can help save the bees.
  1. Stop using pesticides.
  2. Educate ourselves. Start by watching Vanishing of the Bees.
  3. Support organic agriculture. Buy local. Support your farmer's market.
  4. Plant bee-friendly plants in your yard/garden.
  5. Keep some bees.

The entire family gets in on today's inspection. Tammie, Rachel, and Adam show no fear by approaching and standing by an open hive with no protection. The bees are very gentle and show no signs of aggression. The comb is coming along very nicely. Lots of capped brood. The hive gained 5 pounds in the past week, but used very little syrup. So I'm wondering if they are finding another good source of nectar and not taking as much of the syrup.



Monday, April 23, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 21, 2012

Today I went to bee school. Just a one-day event hosted by the Portland Metro Beekeeping Association. It was really fun and informative. The air was filled with bees, which was a little off-putting at first but I got used to it.

The first class I took was about the state of the bees. The second was about natural beekeeping. I was looking forward to that one the most but was pretty disappointed with it. Maybe my hopes were too high. Maybe I expected something more than just how to test for varroa mites (that's really all they covered). I go on a minor rant about it in this video.

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After returning home I immediately went to inspect my bees. During the inspection David quickly spotted the queen, so we got a good look at her. The brood is developing nicely. Most of it is capped, which means new bees will be emerging within 2 weeks. There was a little more drone brood than I was expecting to see, but the percentage is about normal.

Since I'm using foundationless frames, the bees are free to build whatever size cells they want/need. With typical plastic or wax foundation the bees aren't able to build drone comb, so they end up building a lot of burr comb to accommodate the drone brood they want to raise. During the bee school event I noticed quite a lot of burr comb filled with drone brood.

One of the fundamentals of natural beekeeping is just let the bees do what they want. So I'm not worried about the drone brood. I'm not going to cut it out and remove it. The bees know what they need better than I do, so if they want to build it I'm just going to let them. But, when I first saw the drone brood my initial reaction was worry that the queen wasn't mated, because all I saw (at first) was drone brood. But then the next frame was mostly filled with some good looking worker brood and my fears were averted.

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 14, 2012

A very nice day for an inspection! I was able to get a good look at the comb the bees have built out. Queen Anne has been very busy laying eggs.

I got the design ideas for the portable hivescale from BeeHacker.com. It's a great tool to have and was relatively cheap to build.


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It's swarm season here in Oregon and I'd like to try to catch one. I built and installed a bait hive in my backyard. The internal dimensions of the box are 14" tall, 19-3/4" long, 8" wide. Some 1x2 on the sides allow the frames to hang. It's a little tricky getting the bottom row of frames in, but they fit just perfectly.


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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 10, 2012

Checking in on the hive to see if the queen is released. It started raining on me in the middle of the inspection and I made a few new mistakes. Still learning...

Also, this was Rachel's first visit out to the hive. It came as a huge surprise to me when she announced that she wanted to come along with me. Up until a few days ago she had an extreme fear of bees. I'm talking run the other way screaming type of fear. Today she was very brave and stood by and watched, showing no signs of fear or anxiety. She still says she "hates" bees and calls them "monsters," but I think she's all talk now and is starting to like them. I'm not going to push the issue though and see how far she's willing to take this on her own.


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Sunday, April 8, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 8, 2012

Yesterday when I installed the package I (intentionally) left the cork in the queen cage. Today I removed the cork and put in a marshmallow. The bees will chew through the marshmallow and release the queen. In these videos I light up my smoker for the first time and swap out the cork for a marshmallow.


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Saturday, April 7, 2012

Bee Vlog - April 7, 2012

The bees are here! My first day as a beekeeper. In these videos I describe my beehive equipment, install a package of bees, show my bee waterer, explain my reasons for beekeeping and why I choose to use the natural approach, and show the bees moving into their new home.


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