Honey Bees

We are officially backyard beekeepers! We got our bees the first week of May. We bought a four pound package for each of our two hives. The packages come with the queen in a separate cage, so the worker bees are already used to her scent.

Before putting the bees into their new home, we got everything set up between our fruit trees. The middle frames are removed just to make room to put the bees in. In order to get a new hive established, we gave them a pollen patty (brown thing laying across the top of the frames) and sugar water (canning jar). The bees only need to be fed until they have enough of their own honey to thrive. We now only provide water in the jar. We wouldn't have to provide water, but this prevents the bees from finding their own water source such as a neighbor's kiddie pool.

The new bees were put into their new home by shaking the box until most of them got out. A lot of the bees went into the hives, but a LOT of the bees were flying around the hives. We left the bee boxes near the hives so the stragglers could get out and into their new home. After dumping the bees out, the queen in her separate cage was put in the hive. Her cage had a candy plug in it. Over the course of a few days, the worker bees ate the candy plug which allowed the queen to escape. By the time the queen was free, the bees felt right at home.

Success!

Right now we are checking our hives weekly. This is more often than necessary, but is a recommended schedule for a new hive with new beekeepers. We are definitely still learning everything to look for during inspections. Cool smoke is puffed into the hive during inspection. The smoke makes it difficult for the bees to communicate (via smells and dancing) what the target to sting is. Most honey bees are docile (unlike hornets, wasps and some other bees). They are only aggressive when defending their home or honey, although many are not even very aggressive then. We chose Italian Hygienic Hybrid bees because they are a very docile breed and they do well in our climate.

One of the main purposes of each inspection is to make sure we have a healthy queen. Since there are thousands and thousands of bees and only one queen, it is easiest to look for signs of a queen (eggs and larvae) rather than the queen herself.

We also have to watch for when to add boxes to the hive. If the bees feel crowded, they will swarm. After the bees have filled about 7 of the 10 frames in a box, it is time to add another. The bottom two boxes are referred to as brood boxes. These boxes are for the bees to raise new bees and for the honey they need to survive through winter. Any boxes after that are called honey supers and hold the honey we get to harvest. A queen excluder is placed between the brood boxes and the honey supers. Since the queen is larger than all the other bees, she is unable to go into the honey supers so there will not be any eggs or larvae in the honey we harvest.

On one inspection we noticed this honey filled comb. Unfortunately, the comb wasn't built in the correct shape for the frames because we hadn't put the frames back in with the proper spacing after the previous inspection. To clean things up, we scraped off this comb. The kids took the honeycomb and sampled the honey by dipping toothpicks into the cells.

We did lose the queen in one of our hives. It took us a little while to realize we didn't have a queen, since we were still seeing eggs and brood. However, these eggs were non-fertilized eggs from a worker bee in a vain attempt to save the hive. We are learning to see the difference between drone brood from a worker bee and brood from a healthy queen.

Normally when a hive loses a queen, the worker bees make a new queen by what they feed the larvae. Since our hive was not established when we lost the queen, the worker bees were unable to make a new queen. Without a queen, a hive is doomed. We will have to wait until next spring to get a new package of bees for that hive. Although, we were able to add the bees from the hive without a queen to our hive that has a queen. We put the hives together with a divider between them for a few days. That way the bees could get used to the smell of a new queen and their new home. This helped strengthen the hive that did have a queen.

We were bummed to lose one of our hives, although we knew that will happen from time to time. Right now we have one hive that seems to be doing well. They have filled up both their brood boxes and we have added one honey super so far. With this new hive, we most likely won't get as much as an established hive (40-100 lbs.) but we are still excited for our honey harvest!

The bee activity you can see in this picture is what the hive looks like during the day when most of the bees are out foraging for nectar and pollen. There is an increase in activity when the bees leave in the morning and come home in the evening. Except for within just a few feet from the hive, we can be anywhere in our yard anytime without giving a second thought about the bees.

The kids are not afraid of the bees at all. It is not an issue for any of their friends to be in our yard either. Occasionally, I'll notice our kids just enjoying watching the bees around the opening of the hive. Jared has watched one of the bee inspections up close. The other kids are also anxious to watch an inspection up close instead of from the middle of the yard, but we need to get a smaller beekeeper's veil and such first. The whole thing is pretty fascinating and we are having fun learning about our new project.

We have noticed an increase in bees pollinating our berries and fruit trees. This may be largely due to the fact that we are really noticing bees now. Bees will pollinate an area up to two miles away, but we hope our bees are courteous enough to at least pollinate our yard!