My last blog entry had pictures and details of the damage bears have caused to our hive equipment, and as I wrote about on the BackToBasicLiving blog last night, we found that something large and annoying had tried to get into the apiary. The electric fence was in pretty poor shape - but it did survive and apparently keep the unwelcomed guest out. I'm certain it was a bear. We had a lot of repair work to do this morning on that fence and I went to bed last night worrying about it.
At about 4:30 this morning, Bernie and I were startled out of our sleep by a very loud "thump". We immediately knew it was a bear. Bernie and I quickly flew out of bed and grabbed flashlights and a shotgun. We staggered out of the house, half awake and looking like insane asylum escapees, and immediately saw that the stack of bee hive supers was again strewn about. Bernie walked into the backyard and said "Oh, man." I screamed "WHAT????" He said "He got into the grill and knocked it over." About then we heard loud scurrying through the woods. I screamed "SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!" Bernie calmly explained it was pitch-black-freaking-dark and he couldn't see a thing. Soon we heard nothing at all. But we were both uneasy. The bear was heading toward the apiary.
I held the flashlight and Bernie quickly cleaned up the mess the bear left for us. Then we got into our little Trail Blazer and headed down to the apiary. All was calm. We sat there a while, and nothing happened, so we headed back to the house. Bernie couldn't get back to sleep, so he got up to watch CNN. I managed to doze a while longer and dreamed about bears the whole time. When I got up we went down to the apiary and fixed the electric fence. Then we put the stack of supers and all hive equipment into the sea container and locked it up. It would be nice if we could have left it out a while to make sure all the wax moths were dead and given the girls a chance to clean out any extra honey left over, but those darn bears spoiled all of that for everyone. I was sure to let the bees know exactly what happened.
On the lighter side, we checked out the weak hive today and found they had managed to slurp up 1/2 gallon of sugar water. We topped off the gallon jug and put it back in there for them. We checked on another hive to see if it was ready for another super, but they had only managed to cap off one frame with honey. But we did see them flying in with lots of pollen in their pollen baskets, so I guess we'll give them a little time and check again.
Those bears are really at the top of my list right now. I've never hunted bear, but I am going to do a little research on the best method. Next hunting season I'm planning on having a nice bear skin rug in front of the fireplace. And I plan to be eating on some nice bear stew while I lay on it.
Bee Happy,
Penny
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
Hey Hey, Boo-Boo - This is Better Than a Pick-a-nik Basket
Well, last weekend we took apart the hive that we lost and stacked it with some other spare hive parts in the back yard. We staggered between each super and brood box so that they would get sun and hopefully foil the plans of any wax moths that hoped to move in. Well, I think we accomplished that - but we also allowed the wonderful aroma of honey to fill the area and that was, apparently, taken as an invitation for our bear to come check it out and hunt for some honey. This is what we were faced with when we arrived:
The bear only tore apart two of the stacks we had put up - but he did a fine job of that. Many of the frames have been chewed upon. There were even a couple of frames he toted off a ways to enjoy in an area that apparently offered more ambiance: 
Here's a little upclose picture of some damage the bear inflicted on the front of this brood box:
We fenced up and added electric fencing to the apiary. I'm not sure how we're going to handle keeping bears out of the area we have extra hive boxes. We'll come up with something. I understand that it's hard to blame the bears for being interested in that wonderful honey. I just hope they understand that we shouldn't be blamed for wanting to see them laying in front of our fireplace.
Bee Free!
Penny
Monday, July 30, 2007
There is Hope Yet
Well, Bob from the Department of Agriculture came out for hive inspections today. We knew we had one dead hive, and Bob verified that for us. He also helped us take apart our weak hive and come up with a plan to get it rocking again.
Here's a picture of Bob when he first showed up. Does he not look darn happy to be here?
Bob got busy right away on our "weak" hive. Notice how Bob doesn't wear gloves, a suit, or a veil? Bob really rocks. But Bob has been doing this a while. We have not. We still look like we are practicing for a space walk when we enter the apiary. And we will probably continue to look like that until we have 100 years experience like Bob does. Rock on Bob!
We quickly located the queen in our weak hive. Bob is pointing the hive tool at her in this picture. Look exactly below the tip of his hive tool and you will see her long body.
Here's another picture of her. Look in the lower right corner. Isn't she beautiful?
So the bottom line is that our weak hive is doing OK. We just need to feed it. So we put a gallon jug of sugar water in that hive to help it along.
The remaining four hives are really bumping right now. We'll be robbing honey from them in the next couple of weeks.
All in all, it wasn't the worst of news. In fact, it was pretty good news. We lost a hive and that's not cool. We'll know what to look for next spring. We have a better than average chance of saving a weak hive, and we'll definitely be robbing honey from the other four!
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Bee Happy,
Penny
Here's a picture of Bob when he first showed up. Does he not look darn happy to be here?
Bob got busy right away on our "weak" hive. Notice how Bob doesn't wear gloves, a suit, or a veil? Bob really rocks. But Bob has been doing this a while. We have not. We still look like we are practicing for a space walk when we enter the apiary. And we will probably continue to look like that until we have 100 years experience like Bob does. Rock on Bob!
We quickly located the queen in our weak hive. Bob is pointing the hive tool at her in this picture. Look exactly below the tip of his hive tool and you will see her long body.
Here's another picture of her. Look in the lower right corner. Isn't she beautiful?
So the bottom line is that our weak hive is doing OK. We just need to feed it. So we put a gallon jug of sugar water in that hive to help it along.
The remaining four hives are really bumping right now. We'll be robbing honey from them in the next couple of weeks.
All in all, it wasn't the worst of news. In fact, it was pretty good news. We lost a hive and that's not cool. We'll know what to look for next spring. We have a better than average chance of saving a weak hive, and we'll definitely be robbing honey from the other four!
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Bee Happy,
Penny
Saturday, July 28, 2007
One Hive Down - But We've Got Beeswax!
Well, we arrived on the homestead this weekend to face a dreaded reality. We have lost one of our beehives. We've been figuring as much, but really refused to face up to it. I suppose if we knew what we are doing, we would have gotten a queen earlier and tried to save the hive. But we really are winging this right now and we had hoped the hive could hold up until we got Bob from the Department of Agriculture got out here with queens again, but I'm afraid we waited just a little too long. Bob will be here Monday. But he'll help us deal with five hives instead of six.
On the upside, I do believe we will have honey this year afterall. We have four really rocking hives, and one that's appears to be doing ok. I guess we'll know for sure after Bob gets here on Monday and helps us go through each hive.
It troubles us a little that we found honey robbers trying to gain access to two of the hives. I put some pictures up on The Bee Buzz website. It really is awesome to watch these girls doing what comes naturally - but it is hard to not rescue the poor victim. Instead, I got pictures. Check them out!
Bernie and I have been collecting Bur Comb as we inspect the hives, and we cleaned up a few old hives that John gave us when we bought this operation. As a result, we had a fair amount of comb. As I mentioned in my last post, I rendered some wax from it over the past two weeks. It wasn't as easy as I read about, but it wasn't all that hard either. It just took some time and patience. I thought I'd tell you how I did it. As a side note I would say that I really think there has to be an easier way. If you know of one, please help a sister out!
I put a bunch of comb in a large stock pot (16 quarts) and covered it with water - and then another 2 inches or so.
Then I brought the whole ugly mixture to a boil. I boiled it for about 2 hours and then removed it from the heat. This is what I was left with:
I let that cool overnight and the next morning I could see the beeswax had hardened!
On the upside, I do believe we will have honey this year afterall. We have four really rocking hives, and one that's appears to be doing ok. I guess we'll know for sure after Bob gets here on Monday and helps us go through each hive.
It troubles us a little that we found honey robbers trying to gain access to two of the hives. I put some pictures up on The Bee Buzz website. It really is awesome to watch these girls doing what comes naturally - but it is hard to not rescue the poor victim. Instead, I got pictures. Check them out!
Bernie and I have been collecting Bur Comb as we inspect the hives, and we cleaned up a few old hives that John gave us when we bought this operation. As a result, we had a fair amount of comb. As I mentioned in my last post, I rendered some wax from it over the past two weeks. It wasn't as easy as I read about, but it wasn't all that hard either. It just took some time and patience. I thought I'd tell you how I did it. As a side note I would say that I really think there has to be an easier way. If you know of one, please help a sister out!
I put a bunch of comb in a large stock pot (16 quarts) and covered it with water - and then another 2 inches or so.
Then I brought the whole ugly mixture to a boil. I boiled it for about 2 hours and then removed it from the heat. This is what I was left with:
I let that cool overnight and the next morning I could see the beeswax had hardened!
Then I took that lovely beeswax layer off (it was only about and inch thick) and was left with a bunch of goo in the bottom of the pot. I took that outside and disposed of it.
I don't have pictures of the remaining steps, but I will post some the next time. Next I took that layer of beeswax with all the trash in it and put it in a pot. I put the heat on medium low and stirred it until all the was was melted. Then I put a piece of an old cotton shirt over a bowl and poured the beeswax mixture into it. I let it filter through the shirt for a while, and then put on some rubber gloves and squeezed the balled up shirt to get as much was as possible out of it. As you can imagine, some trash made it through when I squeezed, so now I need to melt it all down again and filter it one more time.
As I said, rendering wax is a bit time consuming, but it is really rewarding! I made some more lip balm tonight with it and I am just tickled!
I'll be sure to get more pictures of the whole process next time. And I'll let y'all know how Monday goes when Bob shows up.
Bee Happy!
Penny
Monday, July 16, 2007
No Wonder Beeswax Costs So Much!
My niece and great-niece came to visit this weekend and we had a really nice time. We checked on the bees and everyone seems to be doing well. Even the weak hive seems a little busier with activity.
We focused on visiting with family this weekend, but I did manage to render beeswax from all the comb we've been collecting. I'll post pictures of the whole event later, but suffice it to say it was a lot more involved than I bargained for! It's not a hateful job or anything like that, it just takes time - and the process seems to be multi-stepped. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If you know an easy way to accomplish this (other than the solar method - we have plans to work on that) let me know!
We did see a bear in the yard this weekend. I wrote about it on the BackToBasicLiving blog. At the time he was making a little bee-line down to the apiary and it worried us a bit. But we checked the hives several times in the next couple of days and he must have detoured - or decided not to mess with the electric fence.
So our girls are safe and sound and staying quite busy trying to find some pollen and nectar during this dry time of the year.
Bee Happy!
Penny
We focused on visiting with family this weekend, but I did manage to render beeswax from all the comb we've been collecting. I'll post pictures of the whole event later, but suffice it to say it was a lot more involved than I bargained for! It's not a hateful job or anything like that, it just takes time - and the process seems to be multi-stepped. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If you know an easy way to accomplish this (other than the solar method - we have plans to work on that) let me know!
We did see a bear in the yard this weekend. I wrote about it on the BackToBasicLiving blog. At the time he was making a little bee-line down to the apiary and it worried us a bit. But we checked the hives several times in the next couple of days and he must have detoured - or decided not to mess with the electric fence.
So our girls are safe and sound and staying quite busy trying to find some pollen and nectar during this dry time of the year.
Bee Happy!
Penny
Friday, July 6, 2007
Render Me Amazed!
Not much to report on the girls lately. They have been busy collecting pollen and nectar and we've been busy leaving them alone. One of our weak hives really seems to be coming back, but one of them still isn't doing so well. Bob W. from the Department of Agriculture felt we don't have a queen in that hive, and he'll be coming out again in the next couple of weeks so we can check again. Hopefully he'll be able to bring a queen with him - just in case.
Today we rendered beeswax for the first time. I guess I really had no clue what to expect. I figured we'd throw all the bur comb and hive wax that we've collected into a pot on the stove and it would melt into beautiful beeswax that I could use to make candles and other things. Well, I was wrong! There's a lot of other stuff in there that isn't purely beeswax - way more than I would have expected.
I'm certain there are about a million ways to render beeswax because I've read most of them. I decided on a method that involved putting a bunch of wax in a piece of burlap bag, tieing it off, and then sinking it a large pot of very hot water and weighing it down with a rock. Well, that method turned out really sucking. We let the hot water stay on the stove at a near boil for about an hour and all it made was a mess. There was certainly beeswax floating on top, but man was it ever taking forever. I have no patience, so we scrapped that idea.
Bernie suggest using 2 of my old pots and making a double boiler to melt the wax. I thought it sounded like a wonderful idea! I don't have an official double boiler, so I decided his idea was as close as we would get and would likely even work. So that's what we did. We filled the larger pot with water, and then put the smaller pot on top of that one so the it floated a little on the water. Then we filled the smaller pot with wax and as the water in the bottom pot started to boil good, the wax in the top pot started to melt!
But it doesn't really melt - most of it was just black goo in the end, and a small amount of wax was on the bottom. So I kept feeding it wax until I thought it looked soupy enough to contain a cup or so of wax. Then we covered a pot with a piece of tshirt I cut up and strained the concoction through it. It actually ended up to be golden yellow wax! Wow - we were impressed! We were also really surprised of all the black goo left behind.
A couple of lessons learned:
1) Only use pots, pans, utensils you are willing to dedicate to nothing but rendering wax. You can not get all that stuff off your kitchenware once you get started.
2) Save old 1/2 gallon orange juice cartons and 1/2 milk cartons to put wax into. It gets really hard, really fast and it's difficult to get out of a pot, to say the least.
3) Rendering wax is a messy job - but it sure is rewarding.
So today was a learning experience, and we learned a lot! Tomorrow I'm making lip balm from the beeswax - which was why I needed to render some beeswax tonight in the first place. I'll let y'all know how that turns out.
Bee Happy,
Penny
Today we rendered beeswax for the first time. I guess I really had no clue what to expect. I figured we'd throw all the bur comb and hive wax that we've collected into a pot on the stove and it would melt into beautiful beeswax that I could use to make candles and other things. Well, I was wrong! There's a lot of other stuff in there that isn't purely beeswax - way more than I would have expected.
I'm certain there are about a million ways to render beeswax because I've read most of them. I decided on a method that involved putting a bunch of wax in a piece of burlap bag, tieing it off, and then sinking it a large pot of very hot water and weighing it down with a rock. Well, that method turned out really sucking. We let the hot water stay on the stove at a near boil for about an hour and all it made was a mess. There was certainly beeswax floating on top, but man was it ever taking forever. I have no patience, so we scrapped that idea.
Bernie suggest using 2 of my old pots and making a double boiler to melt the wax. I thought it sounded like a wonderful idea! I don't have an official double boiler, so I decided his idea was as close as we would get and would likely even work. So that's what we did. We filled the larger pot with water, and then put the smaller pot on top of that one so the it floated a little on the water. Then we filled the smaller pot with wax and as the water in the bottom pot started to boil good, the wax in the top pot started to melt!
But it doesn't really melt - most of it was just black goo in the end, and a small amount of wax was on the bottom. So I kept feeding it wax until I thought it looked soupy enough to contain a cup or so of wax. Then we covered a pot with a piece of tshirt I cut up and strained the concoction through it. It actually ended up to be golden yellow wax! Wow - we were impressed! We were also really surprised of all the black goo left behind.
A couple of lessons learned:
1) Only use pots, pans, utensils you are willing to dedicate to nothing but rendering wax. You can not get all that stuff off your kitchenware once you get started.
2) Save old 1/2 gallon orange juice cartons and 1/2 milk cartons to put wax into. It gets really hard, really fast and it's difficult to get out of a pot, to say the least.
3) Rendering wax is a messy job - but it sure is rewarding.
So today was a learning experience, and we learned a lot! Tomorrow I'm making lip balm from the beeswax - which was why I needed to render some beeswax tonight in the first place. I'll let y'all know how that turns out.
Bee Happy,
Penny
Friday, June 22, 2007
1000 Mile Checkup
I apologize for the delay in posting. You may remember in my last post that we had opened the hives for the first time and my friend, Iddee, had suggested we do a full hive inspection because he had concerns about one of the hives. Well we did that - and we had some serious concerns about a couple of the hives. We couldn't find the queen and it was looking like there was little or no brood. Not good.
I got pretty depressed about that. I know it sounds silly. We have six hives and four of them are doing pretty darn good, but I feel responsible for these girls and two questionable hives means we've done a pretty bad job at caring for them. I really couldn' t bring myself to post about it.
Out of desperation I called the Virginia Department of Agriculture (VDAC). I was hooked up with Bob W. (I know how to say his last name, but have no idea how to spell it). Bob was really cool. I told him of our concerns and he volunteered to come out and do hive inspections with us and help us figure out what's going on. So we set a date of two Mondays ago for Bob to come on out. As it turned out, my parents were here for a week long visit. That was cool. They seemed to enjoy sharing this experience with us.
I've got to tell you, I am really thankful for Bob. I was so worried before he showed up. But once he got here he was so calm and reassuring that I almost fell asleep. He talked to us for a bit while he started his smoker and then grabbed his veil and said "Let's take a look."
Bernie and I suited up and got my mom all set in a veil so she could go in with us. The three of us went into the apiary looking like we were ready for a deep space moon walk. Bob entered the apiary, threw his veil on the ground, rolled up his sleeves and began breaking down all of the hives. He was fearless and never got stung even one time - even though he picked up handful of bees with his bear hands to show my mother the difference in worker bees and drones. Bob rules.
Here's the skinny on how we ended up - we have one hive that has a drone layer and doesn't appear to have a queen at all. We have one hive that has a queen and some brood, but is very weak. We removed the super and left it with only the brood and food boxes. We have one hive that is really rocking and we added another super to that one. The other three have all swarmed and are doing ok, but need to get stronger. They each have one super on them.
My mom was there for each hive inspection and really did just great with all the girls swarming around her. I was really proud of her and snapped a picture to put on the website. Dad watched the whole thing from a distance and wasn't too interested in an up close and personal view.
Bob was really great and took a lot of time explaining what we are dealing with and offering some suggestions. I was so excited to get pictures of the bees and queen that I never even thought to get a picture of Bob! But not to worry. He agreed to come out again in a month and bring a queen for our queenless hive. I'll be sure to get some pictures then.
So that's where we are right now. It's not great news, but it's not horrible news either.
I'll update the website with some pictures - there is one of a queen that is pretty cool. Check them out!
Bee happy,
Penny
I got pretty depressed about that. I know it sounds silly. We have six hives and four of them are doing pretty darn good, but I feel responsible for these girls and two questionable hives means we've done a pretty bad job at caring for them. I really couldn' t bring myself to post about it.
Out of desperation I called the Virginia Department of Agriculture (VDAC). I was hooked up with Bob W. (I know how to say his last name, but have no idea how to spell it). Bob was really cool. I told him of our concerns and he volunteered to come out and do hive inspections with us and help us figure out what's going on. So we set a date of two Mondays ago for Bob to come on out. As it turned out, my parents were here for a week long visit. That was cool. They seemed to enjoy sharing this experience with us.
I've got to tell you, I am really thankful for Bob. I was so worried before he showed up. But once he got here he was so calm and reassuring that I almost fell asleep. He talked to us for a bit while he started his smoker and then grabbed his veil and said "Let's take a look."
Bernie and I suited up and got my mom all set in a veil so she could go in with us. The three of us went into the apiary looking like we were ready for a deep space moon walk. Bob entered the apiary, threw his veil on the ground, rolled up his sleeves and began breaking down all of the hives. He was fearless and never got stung even one time - even though he picked up handful of bees with his bear hands to show my mother the difference in worker bees and drones. Bob rules.
Here's the skinny on how we ended up - we have one hive that has a drone layer and doesn't appear to have a queen at all. We have one hive that has a queen and some brood, but is very weak. We removed the super and left it with only the brood and food boxes. We have one hive that is really rocking and we added another super to that one. The other three have all swarmed and are doing ok, but need to get stronger. They each have one super on them.
My mom was there for each hive inspection and really did just great with all the girls swarming around her. I was really proud of her and snapped a picture to put on the website. Dad watched the whole thing from a distance and wasn't too interested in an up close and personal view.
Bob was really great and took a lot of time explaining what we are dealing with and offering some suggestions. I was so excited to get pictures of the bees and queen that I never even thought to get a picture of Bob! But not to worry. He agreed to come out again in a month and bring a queen for our queenless hive. I'll be sure to get some pictures then.
So that's where we are right now. It's not great news, but it's not horrible news either.
I'll update the website with some pictures - there is one of a queen that is pretty cool. Check them out!
Bee happy,
Penny
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