Winter returns

I awoke this morning to a light dusting of snow.  The temperatures have returned to a more normal winter range.  Some deer were feeding in the front yard near the garden and I took a few shots in the dim dawn light.

The snow was falling with no wind so it stayed on the branches of the trees in my orchard behind the garden fence.

We didn't get much more snow than is shown here but it did add some beauty to the surrounding forest.

The bees were all staying in -- presumably clustered to stay warm in the middle of each hive.

Bottling honey

I have some days off between the holidays and took the time to finally get some of my honey bottled from last summer.  This is from the honey extracted in July.  I bottled 24 1 pound bottles and 24 12 oz bears, but still have quite a bit of honey left from that batch--probably more than 20 bottles more.  I also have about four gallons of honey harvested in October.  I think that this honey is a little lighter than the honey that I harvested in my first year.

So far the winter has been fairly mild with a LOT of rain, especially in the past few days.  The weather is turning colder now more like a normal late December - early January winter.  Temperatures have gotten into the 50s and sometimes low 60s in the past few weeks and the bees have been flying from all hives when the sun is out.  So far, so good.

The end of a beekeeping season

The temperatures got up into the low 60s today so I took the opportunity to give my hives their last early Winter oxalic acid treatment for mites.  Last weekend I had completed the other winterization -- putting up straw bales for wind-break, wrapping in roofing felt and putting on mouse guards. All but two of the bales were held over from last Winter by covering them with a tarp all year after taking down the wind-break in the Spring.   I also added a 16 pound sugar box on top of each hive with a "quilt box" of cedar shavings above that for some insulation and moisture control.

It was warm enough that the bees were quite active and were flying what looked like orientation flights in front of the hive.  They were so active that I kept putting off the treatments until later in the day and didn't start until 3 pm.   I have to put the treatment in through the front of the hive and all of those bees flying in front was a bit intimidating.

North hive viewed from the other direction.  You can see the bees crowding to get in the small holes in the mouse guard on the left side, and a few bees in the air.  This hive has always had a strong preference for entering the hive on the far left side despite openings all the way across.

The middle hive was also quite active, perhaps a little more active than the large North hive and therefore the most active of the three.

The south hive is the least active of the three generally and that held true today, but it has still shown a lot of life so I hope it makes it through the Winter too.










As it is the end of the beekeeping year now, perhaps I should record some things that I learned this year.
1.  STINGS HURT!  I had been lucky the first two years and only had a few very light stings that were hardly noticeable.  This year, though, I had ten stings and several of them caused some days of swelling and itching.  I think that the increased stings were mostly my fault.  I have become overly confident or comfortable with the bees and less wary of their stingers.  The first stings I got were on my fingers as I had decided to try checking the hives without gloves.  I took three stings on my fingertips the first time I tried before giving up and putting on gloves.  I tried again and got a sting on the back of my thumb that swelled up and looked awful for several days.  Since then I have been wearing gloves.  The other stings I got were when I was doing something to rile them up -- taking honey from them by trying to brush off each frame and being careless in putting dividers below the honey frames to do acid treatments squashing lots of bees in the process.  During one of these occasions I had smelled the banana scented pheromone that the bees give out when they are upset.  More smoke might have helped.  I also got some stings on the ankles just before vacation as I was trying to quickly re position boxes to give the bees better access to honey supers.  I thought it would be a quick in and out so I didn't use smoke and didn't wear double socks as usual, and got stung through the socks.  During the episode when I was taking honey, they had stung me right through my bee suit so I knew I really had them riled.  The lesson learned is take it slow, use protection and smoke and respect the bees.
2. DON'T LEAVE HIVES OPEN TOO LONG.   When I was pulling honey supers I had discovered that I was missing something, so left a hive with honey open while I went back to the house to get something. When I got back, things were going crazy with thousands of bees in the air!  I believe that I had set off a robbing frenzy and just put things back together and left the area.  I blame the demise of a nuc that I was trying to start on that event.
3. DO MORE INSPECTIONS IN SWARM SEASON  I didn't inspect the hives nearly as often this year as I have in the first two years, and all three hives threw a swarm out into the world in the Spring.  If I had inspected more, perhaps I could have prevented swarms or at least made some nucs or splits from the new queens that were being made.  On a related note...
4.  PUT UP SWARM TRAPS  If I had had some traps up perhaps I could have caught at least one of those swarms.
5. DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON A SWARM  I had a weird experience in the late Spring when I went to the apiary and noted that there was a loud buzzing of many bees coming from somewhere other than my hives.  I followed the sound to an area of tall weeds 30 or so feet behind my hives.  I could not see a swarm there but it sure sounded like one was there  I didn't have my bee suit on yet and didn't want to plunge into the weeds and find myself in the middle of the swarm -- it sounded that close.  I turned and went back to the hives, put on my suit and went back to the area and the buzzing was gone.  I searched around and found no sign of bees.  I couldn't have been gone more than two minutes.  I can only conclude that the swarm rose up and left while I had my back turned, not that I could have done anything about it other than see what direction it went.
6.  SCHEDULE TREATMENTS SO THEY GET DONE  I decided to try oxalic acid vaporization this year but it took me a while to get the equipment together so I fear that I didn't treat enough at the right time to really be effective.  I am hoping that I did enough to get through the Winter or this may be a harder lesson than I would like.
7.  USE TRAPS FOR HIVE BEETLES WHETHER YOU SEE THEM OR NOT  I had seem some hive beetles in the hive last year -- not many just 5 or 6 on one occasion late in the season in one hive and an occasional one a few other times.  I had become concerned about an infestation and was going to get some traps but didn't get around to it.  This year I didn't see any beetles during the year and was hoping they were gone, but after I pulled off the last honey supers in October and was putting them in the basement, I saw several beetles scurrying around on them.  They had been there all along though my bees were apparently doing a good job of keeping them corralled.  I quickly extracted the honey from those boxes and froze all the frames to kill the beetles.  Next year I will put some traps in to help the bees manage them.

There are probably other lessons but these are the ones that I can think of for now.

First snow

The first snow of this winter arrived overnight.  It was just a light snow but it made everything seem clean and bright.

My tractor and implements still sitting out without protection get a light coating of snow.

The orchard under a blue sky.

The black berry patch holds a coat of snow well.  I still after two or three years have yet to add support wires to hold these canes up.  Perhaps I can get that done before these leaf out in Spring.

Grapevines in snow.  These vines took a lot of damage from Japanese beetles this year so I hope they all make it through the winter.

Ice in a puddle.

Deer have a habit of scraping their antlers on small trees, and have done considerable damage to this weeping cherry tree in our front yard not far from our front door.  Unfortunately I didn't get the fence around it until the damage had been done.  I hope the tree makes it.

There was similar damage to some of the larger lilac bushes that are growing along the east side of the garden fence.  It has taken forever for these bushes to get to this size so I hope that the deer do not set them back too far.

Goldenrod in bloom

Goldenrod is in bloom providing some pollen and nectar forage for the bees -- the fall honey flow that helps them build up their stores for winter.

Here's a bee working the goldenrod near the hives.

I just inspected the North hive this day.  Though I intended the bees to use the three bottom boxes for raising their brood, this hive as always extended its brood into the fourth box (counting from the bottom up).  This frame from the fourth box shows a lot of brood.  My intent this date was to reduce the size of the hive as it had six boxes total.  I pulled out the frames that had little or no nectar in them, though I had to take frames from the top two boxes to do so.  The empty hive box is sitting in the background here on my new hive stand that is not yet in use.  I did have a nucleus hive on that stand earlier in the year but it died out apparently due to not producing a viable queen.

This frame has both capped and uncapped brood in it, showing that I seem to have a producing queen.

This frame was covered with bees and when I nudged some out of the way, I could see that they were covering some uncapped brood.

This frame from the third box shows some capped brood as well as some drone comb on the bottom of the frame  (on the right in the picture).  The bees typically will cut back on drone production late in the year and I was little surprised to see how much drone this hive was still producing.

Another frame from the third box shows a lot of capped brood.

This frame had a lot of honey on it and an odd structure in the middle with what appears to be drone comb.  I don't know why the bees built the frame out this way.

After the inspection there remained a lot of agitated bees on the outside of the hive.  These bees seem a bit more aggressive than earlier in the season and I suspect that the requeening with swarming in the Spring brought in some more aggressive genetics into the hive.  Bees are more defensive in the fall too, with fewer sources of nectar and a need to protect their honey stores, and that might explain part of their aggressiveness too.  I had a guard bee follow me all the way to my car and I had to walk down a road a bit to shake her off before taking off my protective gear.

Late summer hive inspection

The thistle is in bloom.  Though this isn't a flower that I see honey bees on, they are pretty and attract a lot of butterflies.

The goldenrod is just starting to open.  This is a flower that provides a major source of honey and pollen for bees late in the summer and early fall.

My three hives.  There is some activity on the front entrances of each hive, but there aren't as many bees out as there have been during some of the hotter and more humid days.

I was inspecting my middle and south hives this day.  I had inspected the North hive a few days before but my camera wasn't working then.  Here is a frame of solid honey though it has very dark capping rather than the usual white capping.  I'm not sure why that is.  The frame was very heavy with honey.

Here's anther frame of the dark capped honey, with some cells of bright colored pollen peaking through the bees in the bottom center.

When I opened up the brood chamber of the hive, there was some honey stored between the boxes, that broke and provided a treat to the bees.

Lots of capped brood in the South hive shown here.  I found a lot of brood in the middle box but got distracted by what I was finding and forgot to take pictures.

This frame from the South hive had both open and capped brood on it.

Here is a frame of capped brood with capped honey on the outer edges.

This frame from the South hive has capped brood surrounded by pollen and honey on the outer edges.

There is a lot of pollen on the bottom (left side here) of hte frame.  There is brood scattered around under the mass of bees above the pollen.

The South hive also had some solid frames of dark capped honey on the outer edges of some boxes, but not a full box full of these frames like the middle hive had.

Outside of hives just before honey harvest

Just had a chance to take some pictures of the outside of these hives.  I was pulling honey this weekend but the camera I use to photograph the inside of hives wasn't working.  I did extract 72 pounds of honey with the tallest North hive (on the right) providing most of it.

The South hive entrance is busy with lots of bees in the air.

The middle hive entrance is also quite busy.

The North hive also has lots of bees coming and going.  This has been my largest hive all year.

The nucleus hive that I have tried to start just recently was active with bees coming and going.  I put the grass in the entrance as a way of helping the bees orient themselves to a new hive.

Another hive inspection

Another inspection of the north two hives to see how they are doing.  The bees had built comb between the top two boxes and filled it with honey, so when I pull the boxes off and scrape off the comb it leaves some honey pooled on top of the frames.  Here you can see the bees eagerly lining up shoulder to shoulder (do bees have shoulders?) to lap up the exposed honey.

Lots of capped brood in the north hive.

This frame has some pollen around the outside edges (the orange color) and some brood in the middle.  You can see my new hives stand in the back waiting for future expansion.

Here is a frame with pollen on the bottom (actually that's the top of the frame as I am holding it upside down) and there are some queen cells along the top -- the peanut shaped cells.  This means that the hive is preparing to swarm and replace their queen.  This is an "old" queen entering her third year so I am not too upset about replacing her.

Here is a frame full of orange pollen from the bottom box of the north hive.

Here is a nice frame of capped brood from the middle box.  All of the hives seem to be doing well, though I only got into two of them today.

I have added honey supers to each hive.  Each hive has three boxes on the bottom for brood, and then boxes above that are for honey, called honey "supers" by beekeepers.  The two far hives have one honey super and the near hive actually has three supers on it at this point.  Obviously the near hive (my North hive) is the strongest most active one, but its also the hive that is preparing to swarm.