Harvesting our first super of honey

Today we removed our first super of honey!
About a month ago, Keith and I supered two of our Langstroth hives. We chose to put the empty super above the brood chamber, but below the other super of drawn honey comb.

Early in the spring the bee's we having trouble building on the comb without foundation, but Keith and I have chosen not to use foundation in our hives; in fact we are going to be phasing out our Langstroth hives and switch completely to top bar hives that are either Tanzanian or Kenyan top bar hives. In the meantime we chose to let the bee's continue on their way and draw out the comb. However with the progress that they have made, we decided to super them earlier than planned. With that progress that has led us to take the plunge, and harvest our first super of honey! Keith and I took the comb out carefully so we could harvest as much cut comb as possible. We took it home today (in our filled five gallon bucket!!) to crush the comb and extract the honey. We filled lots of lovely mason jars, various sizes and with both cut comb and strained honey, and are ready for the purchasing!

I must admit that it was simply thrilling to harvest our first honey super! It was so exciting to see all of that drawn and capped honey, and the variety of color! There was golden straw colored honey down to deep, almost molasses colored! The taste is magnificent! It's so floral, yet light, I don't want to brag, but I think our bee's have created the world's best honey! Plus, it's medication free. Many conventional commercial beekeepers choose to medicate as a preventative measure, but I, first of all, do not find it necessary to medicate something that is not sick, and secondly, to put an unnatural chemical onto a natural, agricultural, process that has been around for million's of year seems to me, pretentious. Hooray for honey! Save the honeybee!

I must also mention I have entered a new chapter in beekeeping by re-queening our first hive! Keith and I had noticed that we had a very creative, yet slightly unproductive, colony. We have a few pictures of the intricate comb they established, but that along with a heavy drone pattern (a lot of male bee's, which are not a integral part of the hive's survival) it is a sign that the hive should be re-queened to insure the entire colony isn't lost in the cold of winter. So far the progress has been promising, I think it has helped and we didn't even feel too guilty squashing the queen; but a little guilty, I must admit! Off to dream of sweet honey and saving our lovely honeybee!

Top Bar Beekeeping and the Nucleus Hives: To combine or not to combine?

So as mid-summer approaches, we find ourselves thinking about winter, and over-wintering our bee's. It also has us considering what path we want to take as beekeeper's. Are we in it for commercial production?For manipulating for maximum honey production? Or do we want natural, productive, happy and disease free bee's? Yes, the answer was that simple for us too. It's just a matter of making use of all the materials we have invested in. Not to say that every beekeeper out there is a commercial beekeeper that trucks hives cross country to pollinate and produce maximum stores of honey; but if you're a beekeeper that only practices beekeeping using the conventional methods, then aren't you really just participating in their weathered ways of beekeeping?

Beekeeping started out as a hobby, but the more we've read, researched, and learned, the old ways of beekeeping could be what is making our bee's sick in the first place. We've now dedicated ourselves to the research of honeybee behavior, and how we're manipulating the bee's, and ultimately extinguishing their population with our practices.

We have 12 colonies (13 if you count the hive that we sold!) four top bar hives, and eight Langstroth hives.

The hive we sold was also a top bar hive, we now have a new design that is easier to construct, has a bigger observation window on the side and is much lighter! Though the top bar hives are not as portable as the Langstroth hives, when you think about it, beehives do not need to be portable.

The great benefit of using the top bar hive is that it is self-contained. A standard Deep Super (Langstroth box) holds 10 frames and measures roughly 9 5/8 inches deep. On average, a strong colony will have two of those deep boxes for brood, or baby bee's. On top of that, a first year beekeeper could figure to have three supers of honey stores. The honey supers are more shallow than the brood boxes, measuring about 6 inches deep, but are still the standard ten frame hive. Within each of those frames is a stamped piece of wax foundation. You will also need a coil of wire to crimp into the foundation to hold it into place (meaning you need a foundation crimper as well.)

Using standard Langstroth hives, you must have this equipment on hand, but you cannot store the un-used equipment on the hive. The bee's are designed to fill the space they are provided with, but to do so at too quickly a rate overworks the bee's and stresses them out. The stress causes them to gorge on more of their stores; to have to consume more food to work harder to either heat more space or work twice as fast to establish that space. So the material must be stored appropriately elsewhere.

The foundation also poses another problem. It conforms the cell size to one universal size. This is easy for the beekeeper, but detrimental to the bee's. If that particular genus of bee is smaller than the cell size, then the excess space is left open to disease, mites, and bacteria. If that particular bee's genus produces larger bee's than the cell size given, the bee's are forced to develop sub-standard brood and thus rendering some of the population developmentally delayed, or even mentally retarded. Over time the constriction of the cell size will gradually de-evolve the bee, and they will begin to show deficiencies that they could previously stave off. Does that sound like foundation is the way to go? That's like saying that once size fits all, for everyone, even if you are a colony, a million bee's strong.

Though Keith and I have decided we definitely want to continue using our top bar hive system instead of the Langstroth hives, we have two weak Langstroth Nucleus hives we got in the spring, late May, that have stopped progressing, and we aren't sure the next step we should take. They are in the standard Langstroth hive body, but they are a hybrid hive of both Langstroth frames and top bar frames (The pictures at the top of the blog are of an enclosed standard frame, and that of a top bar.) we cannot decide what we need to do with them to get them strong enough to over-winter? We are considering re-queening the colony, by buying a new, mated, queen and installing her into the hive after removing and killing the defective queen. We are considering combining the two weak hives into a top bar hive and letting the superior queen kill the weak queen, and use the strength of the bee's combined to take splits in the spring and possibly get two or three colonies out of it. We are also considering a method we have never practiced: Two queen colonies. We sat in on a seminar about it at a beekeeping convention this winter, but we aren't sure they are strong enough to be that productive. One queen may gain dominance and kill the other queen, in which case we would still hopefully end up with one decent colony.

The deadline to re-queen a colony in time for them to build up adequate stores for winter is August 1st. So I will surely let you know the status of our dilemma!

The White House gets Beehives

You can even see the White House in the background! I think this is truly a breakthrough for the agricultural world! Honey bee's are responsible for every third bite of food that we consume, yet not even every third person knows this fact. I think it says tremendous things about what this President wants to convey during his term with his actions and I couldn't be more pleased! Regardless of the social and political views, it is the actions they take that will truly be there Presidential legacy. I cannot say I have agreed with everything President Obama has done thus far in office, or will do throughout his term, but I will tell you this: It gives me pride in our president to know that they are a family, with a backyard garden, a swing set, and most importantly, a beehive! The White Hose kitchen isn't the only thing to benefit. The Obama's will enjoy bountiful harvests from their vegetable garden with increased pollination, as well as an eight mile radius around the White House! Not only will you get a direct benefit of having bee's but the indirect benefits to you and to your neighbours should be more than enough to convince you! Michelle Obama is the first First Lady to plant a vegetable garden since Eleanore Roosevelt did after World War II, which she called her "Victory Garden." I certainly don't think we need to be involved in a war for our President and his family to see that we've lost value in the fact that we used to be an agriculture and farming land. Mass agriculture poses threats to humans as well as to our honeybee's, so why not consider alternatives? The alternative is something as simple as picking up a shovel and sowing some seeds!!

We've sold our first Top Bar Hive

We currently use four top-bar hives. We also have standard Langstroth hives with top bars in them in place of standard frames. We've found that we've had tremendous success and progress with our top bar hives thus far into the season. There are typically two honey flows in a given year. We have finished our first honey flow season, so now it's a wait and see with how well these top bars have progressed. We got up early and made our way out to Dearborn to meet our first clients that bought an observation top bar hive, which has a 4 in. x 15 in window in the side for easy viewing pleasure, and we put one of the feral swarms in the hive body! It's so thrilling to see our first business transaction go so smoothly!! Save the honey bee's! We'll post some pictures soon of the progress our hives have made so far, and a picture of our top bar hive that we hope to manufacture and begin selling on the market and at conference's! Lots of people looking for information and we're just dying to get our name out there!!

National Pollinator Week!!!

All Hail Honey bees (And Their Pollinating Pals)
by Deborah Franklin

In celebration of National Pollinator Week, NPR's Melissa Block checked in this afternoon with Tucson entomologist Steve Buchmann about the status of America's imperiled honeybees, and what backyard gardeners can do to help save them.

The precise cause of "colony collapse" among honeybees is still a mystery, Buchmann says. But he cites a glimmer of good news for farmers and produce lovers:
Mother Nature has lots of other pollinators -- typically five to ten types -- that visit a single plant.

Still, bumblebees and bats could use tending, too, he says. To improve their lives, try to plant local wildflowers and heirloom fruits and veggies. Native plants suited to the local climate and soil are likelier to flourish and feed bees. Steer clear of the ornately ruffled sophisticates that have spent generations in a hothouse.

Breeding a plant for our taste often inadvertently breeds out the goodies--the sweet nectar--that pollinators seek.

The Pollinator Partnership has an interactive online map to help you figure out what plants will please bees in your zip code. And you can hear more of Block's interview with the former beekeeper tonight on All Things Considered.

How are the honey makers doing in your neighborhood?
Have you noticed a bee decline?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/06/all_hail_honeybees_and_their_p.html

Mission: Capture established colony in cement building

I do think the pictures really speak for themselves. Keith received a call Tuesday that we may have another established colony to capture. The owner of the building says they have been there for probably three years and have never been a bother to him, but the neighbours have begun to complain. This looks like a very healthy colony. If they've been there for three years, I wonder what kind of comb construction they have established within cinder-blocks. We will have to just wait and see, Saturday morning we are heading to Holt to meet with the property manager and see what we can do about capturing these little ladies! We also met with some, potential clients perhaps? A couple that are friends with Keith's Uncle that are interested in beekeeping. They had been wrongfully misinformed that to become a novice beekeeper you must invest a exorbitant amount of money. This is very untrue.In our first year of beekeeping we succeeded with just a single standard hive tool (A small crow-bar looking tool) and a smoker (Billows to feed smoke to the bee's which calms them and urges them to gorge themselves on honey should a fire come and they have to leave the hive). We bought a standard box hive, called a Langstroth hive, and extra supers and 10 frames for each of those supers, and foundation to put into each of those 10 frames. With all of that included with the actual bee's, we only spent maybe $200. Looking at how we have changed our practices of beekeeping in just a year, we have seen that our expenses can be trimmed even more when we construct the hives ourselves, and better yet, construct our own hive designs. But with this couples interest in us constructing one of our top-bar hives for them to use, which is the type of hive we have located at Keith's Uncle's Bed & Breakfast in Ann Arbor, we may have just branched into a new area of business!! It's fascinating to see where the bee's take you! You may just find they can change your life!

Swarm season is over!

So bee's have a typical swarm season, which typically lasts from about May 15 to June 15, typically. So we are thinking that our first year of capturing feral swarms during their prime season has come to an end. All in all it was great! It was fascinating to see a feral swarm up close and to explore another chapter of beekeeping. We captured three feral swarms and one established colony in the past month, and two of the feral swarms and the established colony are still thriving. One captured swarm did vacate the hive and we did not relocate them. Often when bee's evacuate a hive to swarm, they do not stray very far from the parent hive. The queen is larger, and also full for laying brood, so it is more difficult for her to gain speed and altitude, as well as travel for long periods of time. But with no luck, we had to let that hive go and consider it a loss. There will always be more bee's, we will make sure of that!! So to date we have on record four Top Bar Hives, and eight Langstroth hives, for a glorious total of twelve colonies! I am eager to see the progress the hives make throughout the summer. We are daring to be a bit experimental with out bee's and are using a combination of Langstroth hives (Standard box hives) and Kenyan Top Bar Hives that Keith and I built ourselves. We built the top bar hives and constructed an observation window in one of them. We have bought as well as built our own Langstroth hives, and we choose to use a combination of standard hive frames and top bar frames. For more information on top bar hives, which I highly recommend should any of you choose to explore beekeeping, I prefer this site: http://bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm. It gave us a lot of information about how to work with our traditional beekeeping knowledge and incorporate more natural ways to tend the bee's and give them a more suitable, less confining, habitat. It also gives you information on how you'll have to work differently handling the frames and extracting, information is not something you can ever have too much of. Learning of new ways to house the bee's and then to see their progress is amazing! Just look at what they create and you'll want them to be happy and productive! Because that's what it's really all about; making happy bee's!

We've captured our first established colony!

So it was only a matter of time before we transitioned from just capturing feral swarms, to capturing a swarm that has established itself in a crevice of some sorts. Tuesday we got a phone call from Walter Pet. He's the head of entomology (study of insects, pollinators, etc) at MSU, and there was an established colony in a boarded up window of a martial arts academy! The coolest part about capturing a colony is that it is already established, meaning it already has drawn out wax comb cells with capped honey and brood in it! This is a good sign of a strong swarm and a good queen! The great thing about capturing this particular colony was that they were inside a window in a storage closet that had been boarded up, therefore it becomes an observation hive! We got to see the entire colony before opening it up and cutting it down!

We went in through the basement and looked at the colony, then it was off to work. The first step was removing the caulk and getting the plywood board down. We noticed that they had built comb long-ways in the hive from the inside, but when we removed the board, we noticed that they had built some extra starts of foundation in between the metal grate and onto the plywood!

Keith was like a superhero pulling the wood off the window and getting the grate off, then he went straight to work on getting each of the frames of wax down. They were well established, but probably had not been in that space for a long period of time. Sometimes, the progress of the honeybee can be astounding, but they can work mighty fast. I estimate that the colony had only been there for a month of two and had made a strong colony with good brood in that short period of time.

One issue we did run into when capturing an established colony is you cannot expect a feral colony to build all of their honey and brood cells to fit magically into the frames you'd like to transport them into. We ended up having to brush all of the occupying bee's into the hive body, cut down the entire comb, and cutting that down to string into different frames for the bee's to reattach. Over a short period of time, the bee's will take the cells that we had tied in there with cotton twine and reattach it with burr and bridge comb, and then they will cut the twine away and remove it from the hive! (Above is a picture of me holding a top bar frame with some established comb on it, and to the left, you can see some comb has been tied on with green string for them to reattach.)

We tried taking pictures of the capture, but unfortunately they did not turn out! Call us old-fashioned, but the only way to justly document our progress is on a real 35mm FILM camera!

We also feel more professional because we did break down and buy bee brushes and coveralls. The coveralls coming to the house was the first piece of official mail that has come addressed to Steller Apiaries! It's a small step but I'm easy to please! I'm also pleased my mom can sew and has the awesome ability to make patches, it'd be so cool to have company patches that say "Steller Apiaries" in a honeycomb pattern with my name on it and Velcro to close up my pant legs and arm sleeves; we've discovered those bee's like to climb!!

I hope every one's garden is coming along nicely, the rain has been healthy for our little green plants as well as for encouraging our lovely honeybee's to swarm! I'm excited to see what we harvest out of our hives as well as our multiple garden's this year with a grand total of 12 hives!!! TWELVE!