The Russians have swarmed three times. We failed to capture them, but each time they have come back to the hive. Time to split them.
Smoking the bees to calm them down before we take off the top of the hive.
That bee is poking his backside out! So cute!
This comb has some larva or baby bees. This hive is doing well.
We moved half of the full frames from the brown hive on the left to the white hive on the right. Then filled both hives with empty frames. I failed to get a final picture of the completed hives.
From left to right, we have Russians, Carniolans, Carniolans, and then Russians.
Miniature horses in the pasture today.
We did take a full frame of honey from from the Russians. 🙂
Removing the wax from the capped honey to expose the fresh honey.
This is a treat. Paul won’t let me take honey from the hives very often!
We had some excitement last week with the bees. This is where we are currently.
Hive from the left to the right:
The brown hive has Russian bees.
The white box has Carniolan bees.
The decorative box with the cute roof has Carniolan bees. This is the hive that swarmed last week.
The hive on the right will be full of Russians after Paul splits the brown hive. That is if they haven’t swarmed and left already. We received another phone call saying the bees were spotted swarming again and then flew off to the North. Paul told the bees, “Good luck.” He doesn’t like working with the Russian bees because they are aggressive. Apparently the other breeds are calmer.
Paul doesn’t like the Russians and I don’t like the Saskatraz. Last year both our Saskatraz hives picked up and left around October. They took every drop of honey with them!
The two smaller hives in our backyard didn’t make it through the winter. Paul was diligent in brining them into the garage during the coldest part of the winter and we thought they were good. Two weeks before spring the warm weather tricked the bees and the cold snap that followed froze them. Paul said he won’t replace them until we move, because he doesn’t like mowing around them. I’m going to miss having a hive in our yard this summer.
We will have to see how our three hives do this summer and which hive makes it through the winter.
Yesterday, Paul’s parents neighbor said she saw the bees swarm, so we rushed over there, but didn’t see anything.
Paul went over this morning to check on the bees. The first hive he checked was the hive with the swarm he caught last week.
It’s doing very well!
How do we feed the bees? That top box is a feeder. We mix 1 lb of water to 1 lb of sugar. Heat the sugar to dissolve and then cool.
Pour the sugar water in the top tray. Both sides. The bees come up from the bottom of the hive and drink through the holes. They can’t get into the water and drown. After they drink, they go back down into the hive.
Paul went to the brown hive, the one suspecting of swarming yesterday. Paul didn’t get a chance to look inside.
Before Paul could open the top, he noticed bees were spilling out of the hive. Then the bees were flying everywhere. Maybe the neighbor did see them swarm?
A few minutes later they started to gather. Within 6 minutes we had a swarm on the top of the greenhouse.
Paul was about to get a broom and sweep them into a box, but he didn’t get a chance. As quickly as the bees arrived, the bees quickly left the green house and moved back into the hive.
The hives were quiet again, like nothing had happened.
Why are they swarming this year? Maybe because this is the first year were able to keep the hives alive through the winter. The brood has hatched so now they are too many bees for the hives. No room for all the bees so they pack up and move out.
Paul will be gathering some boxes and frames to split the hives. Hopefully we can be ready by this weekend before they swarm again.
My parents arrived at our house to pick up Paul so we could carpool to Vernal. Just as they finished packing the car, Paul received a phone call letting him know our bees have swarmed.
We knew this was coming. One of our hives was over flowing with bees. They were bearding on the outside of the hive and thousands of bees were on the ground next to the hive.
Paul went out and put another box on top hoping the would go up instead of out.
Well, the box didn’t work. The bees packed up and headed out.
They swarmed from the pasture to the bush in Paul’s parents backyard.
Paul grabbed his bee suit, a hive box, and they all went over to his parents house to gather the swarm.
With a shake, they went into the box. Easy as that 🙂
20,000-25,000 bees?
Their new home. Paul plugged the entrance so they can’t leave. They need to get used to their new home. If the entrance isn’t plugged, they will pick up and fly away again.
Time to get our tasty honey that the bees have been diligently making all summer.
Before we can remove the honey super, the top box with all the honey, we need to remove all the bees. The bees need to be pushed down and out of the honey super, and gather into the bottom brood box.
Paul took off the top layer and put on a layer with a maze.
When the bees go into the maze, they can only go one way. Down to the brood box. The maze doesn’t allow them back in to travel back up to the honey super.
The bees eating honey on the queen excluder. Paul took the queen excluder off and replaced it with the maze.
Eli hanging out with the cutest and curious miniature horse! He really wanted to know what Paul was doing and why he couldn’t go any further.
A few days later the maze was removed along with the honey super. The box was heavy and the frames were full. Nice, thick, dark honey. The bees did an excellent job this summer!
A tool is used to scrape off the wax caps.
Fresh honey exposed.
We borrowed our neighbors honey extractor.
Put the frames in the extractor.
Close the lid and give it a spin. The honey spins off the comb and onto the sides of the extractor.
Out comes the fresh honey. The honey goes through a fine strainer to the bottom of the bucket. From the bucket, the honey goes into jars.
Paul was up early to check on the hive in our yard. He was really worried. The hive was crazy! He didn’t want to get close to take video or pictures, because of the wild bees. Without a queen they were flying EVERYWHERE. They were flying around the house, buzzing around the windows and doors, and many were landing and hanging out on the back of the house. It was quite scary.
We needed to get a queen quickly. Paul called Knights bees to see if they had a saskatraz queen. They had one and told us to come down and get her.
Paul went into the garage to get the queen to take with us, and….
And she was was alive!!! She must have warmed up in the garage over night. Good thing Paul put the plug in the cage!
We fed her some left over sugar water from last night. How do you spoon feed a bee? With a toothpick!
We dipped the toothpick in the water and put it in the cage. I was surprised it worked. She ran over and started eating the droplets of sugar water.
She was getting very nervous, so we put her in the little hive on our kitchen island while we called Knight bees. We weren’t sure if the hive would accept her, because they were without a queen for some time. They told us to just put her in.
Again no pictures, because of the wild bees. Paul duct taped his pant legs shut, and taped his veil on because the bees were acting so wild he was worried they would fly up an article of clothing a sting him.
Again, no pictures 🙂 After the queen was put in the hive, a few minutes later ALL the bees went into the hive. All the bees that were hanging out on the side of the house flew into the hive. It was pretty amazing. It was pretty amazing the bees were so lost without a queen. Next time – if there is a next time- I will make sure video is taken.
It’s finally spring and warm enough to go pick up our bees!
We purchased our bees from Knights bees.
Look at all those bees! Each bee bus has 10,000 bees. This year we purchased 4 hives worth of bees. So 4 bee buses with 40,000 bees!
We are going to put 3 hives at Paul’s parents house and the other one at our house. I’m a little nervous to have a full hive in our yard with Eli running around, so we will see how it goes this summer.
Eli feeling all the bees legs that are poking out 🙂
Several bees were flying around in the jeep as we were driving home. This is the part I dislike, having 40,000 bees in the back and all the stow away bees flying around.
Paul surprised me with my very own veil. Last year I was without and was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt filming, now when I’m covered in bees I will have a little protection.
He even purchased some gloves for me as well!
Where was the 5 year old? Feeding the horses, of course!
With the first hive we tried something different. Instead of shaking them out, we just set the bees in and let them crawl out. In a week we will come back to see if they crawled out and if this is an effective way of putting bees into a hive.
We removed some of the frames.
That was easy enough. Now my turn to put bees in a hive! 🙂
I started with the queen bee. Removed the cork, put the candy cork in and placed her in the hive.
The I dumped the bees in. That was pretty fun!
We did the same thing with the third hive.
Each hive is a little different. Each hive opens differently, has a different size of frame and different breed of bee.
The hive above has Russian bees. The hive is a simple, traditional hive with long frames. A light top with a rock on it 🙂 They all have rocks on top.
Our second hive is the first hive we had last year. We put Carniolan bees in there. This is my favorite hive. It’s so cute, with lots of detail carved into the wood. This hive has smaller frames.
Our third hive has Saskatraz bees. This is our largest hive, has smaller and larger frames and opens differently. This hive will have a post of it’s own!
We left to our house to do the last hive.
It was quite late when we got home. I put Eli to bed and Paul decided to put the bees in the hive by himself. He was doing fine, and was almost done, when a bee got into his veil. Paul dropped the queen in her box trying to let out the trapped bee.
It was so cold out, we didn’t find her in time and we lost her. We found her crumpled up body and put it back into her cage, put the cork back in and put her in the garage. We are hoping Knights bees have extra queens. We will have to call in the morning.
Our hive is complete, minus the queen. This is a smaller hive, but significantly larger than the cute little hive last year. This hive is small, but long , has smaller frames and lots of wood carved details in the side. The breed of bees in this hive are saskatraz as well.
It was a very busy day, but we got all 4 hives done!
Went for my run this morning and look who was out? It’s hard to see them, but there were two antelopes enjoying the same field I was running in. .
It was a beautiful morning with clear skies and 44′. A nice day for a run and harvest some honey.
Out of the two hives we have, the big hive has been fun to watch. I don’t know why. Maybe because there are thousands of bees in this hive and only a few hundred in the smaller hive?
Anyway, the end of the year is here and time to harvest our honey. Our honey is in the top box, so we need to remove the top box and shake all the bees out and into the other two boxes.
Lighting the smoker to encourage the bees to move from the top box to the bottom boxes.
This is what a 4 year old does to keep busy 🙂
We have a lot of good frames of delicious dark honey.
Still entertaining himself 🙂
The hive has been reduced back down to a two box hive. The bottom box still has brood and the top box is full of honey for the bees to eat throughout the summer.
A few of the frames.
Look at all that honey!
We cut out the comb from a few of the frames.
Put them into bags. Taped them onto the computer monitor arm 🙂 . Cut a tiny hole out of the bottom of the bag and let them drip.
We let the honey drip into a double sieve. The bottom sieve is finer than the top sieve to catch the wax that escaped from the bags.
The honey drips from the sieve into the bucket that has a spout that will make it easier to drain into jars.
No two hives are the same. Every hive varies in color and had has different tasting honey. This hive has been producing dark, thick, delicious tasting honey. I can’t wait to bottle it up!
