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.