Bees flying in mid-winter

The temperatures got up in to the low 50s today which brought the bees out of all of the hives, doing some orientation flights hovering in front of the hives and going in and out of the hives.

Here bees land on the South hives.  This hive was probably the least active of the three, but was still quite active.

The top entrance of the South hive was also busy.

The middle hive was the most active of the three, with a considerable number of bees hovering in front appearing to do orientation flights, particularly when the sun was out.

The top entrance of the middle hive was also active, but most of the bees seemed to prefer the bottom entrance.

The bottom of the North hive was also active, favoring, as always, the far left side of the entrance.  Overall, I was quite happy to see this much activity mid-way through the winter, showing that all hives were still alive.  We do, though, have a long way to go before winter survival can be confirmed.

Fog on snow

There was a light fog early Friday morning as I left for work that was rather pretty.

The fog put a coating of frost on the weeds and trees that it touched, but it only coated the bottom three or four feet.

The path to my little apiary was coated in frost.

We had a snow fall of about four inches this week that coated everything and was partially covering the front of each hive, though there was still room for them to get out.

The snow as accompanied by some pretty cold temperatures so some ice had formed on the front entrance of the hives.  A few days later, though, the ice had melted and a few bees were flying from each hive with temperatures in hte mid-40s.

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.