Category: Bees

Bee Apartment Building

Things are getting pretty exciting around here!

The little beehive is getting another box. Paul decided to raise another queen.

The new apartment will have its own entrance at the back of the hive.

This box has an observation window which is kind of fun. You can see in the hive without disturbing the bees.

Here it is. The apartment building. Paul took some frames full of brood from the big hive and transplanted the frames in the top box of the small hive.

We will see in a week or two if they made a queen!

How does a beehive cool off?

It’s getting cooler in the mornings, but it’s still pretty hot out during the day. A few weeks ago when it was consistently 100′ during the day we were worried about the bees getting too hot.

I guess we don’t have to worry too much about them, the bees seem to take care of themselves. When they get too hot in the hive, they hang out in the front of the hive. It’s called bearding. Because it looks like a beard, Ha! Crazy to see.

Why do they do that? It gets so hot inside with thousands of bees they need to relieve some of the body heat. Several bees move to the outside to cool off the hive.

Bees also blow in cool air by fanning at the entrance of the hive.

This is the cutest thing.

Who knew? 🙂

Honey

It’s been a while. Time to taste our hard work….ok, the bees hard work!

We removed a few frames from the big hive.

Cut around the frame.

Put it in a zip lock baggie. Zipped it up and cut a TINY hole on the bottom for the honey to drain.

Moved a table into my family room 🙂 Taped the bag of honeycomb to a computer monitor stand and let it drip.

Give it a few days and it will leave the wax in the bag and pure tasty honey in the jar.

Mmm… crusty bread right out of the oven. Honey out of the hive. Very tasty dinner!

Experimental frame update

A week or two ago we added a frame to the big hive.

This frame. To see if the bees will take a “broken” frame and move the wax to another part of the hive to save energy instead of having to make all that wax.

Looks like the bees are not moving the wax and they are just adding on to the wax.

It was a good thought, but I’m sad to say the experiment failed.

The small hive gets a second floor

The hive in our yard is growing. The queen is there and making her brood and her worker bees are doing a great job building up the hive.

Little hive is growing. The queen is making brood and we have lots of baby bees. Time to expand.

The little hive with a second box.

The rose of sharon bushes are in full bloom and their flowers are looking good.

I’m sure the bees are loving them.

Water for the bees and installing a queen excluder

It took forever to warm up and now it’s 100′ The bees are getting hot.

We went to the big hive to set up a watering system for them.

The horses always come over to say hello.

Eli called himself farmer Eli.

For the water jar, Paul poked holes in a mason jar lid.

This is boardman feeder. The jar is placed upside down in the feeder.

When the jar is filled with water and tipped upside down, water doesn’t come out. The bees walk up through the feeder and drinks from the jar.

Paul also put in a queen excluder. This screen keeps the queen bee down below and allows all the other bees to move up to the upper boxes.

Why?? To keep the brood out of the honey we collect.

The first two boxes will be brood and honey for the bees to eat. Above the queen excluder will be honey for us.

The queen excluder on top of box two.

Paul slid in the feeder so the bees can access the water from inside the hive.

Pretty cute!

Before we left, we had to feed the horses their treats.

He is so cute!

Love you little pea!

Little hive queen bee and worker bees full of pollen

The little hive is looking pretty good.

This is where the queen bee came out.

There she is. The queen bee. Paul successfully raised a queen for this hive.

You can tell the difference between the queen and the worker bees because of her size and stripes. She is longer than the other bees and doesn’t have stripes.

That bee made me laugh. She was busy doing something in that cell.

See the bee with the giant yellow pouches on her legs? That is pollen.

So far so good. The hive has a queen and they are making honey. This is becoming a cute little hive.

Welcome little bees!

Finally, we received the bees for our little hive. We had to wait a while because of the weather. It has been in the 50’sand it needs to be in the 60’s to open the hive or else the bees would get cold. If they get cold, the new brood will get chilled.

Paul purchased his beehives from Eco Bee Box. This is a picture inside the shop. It’s a cute little place.

The owner, Albert, has a lot of everything in his store 🙂 Lots of wax, candles, and lots of flavors of honey. Just ask, he will let you have a taste 🙂

Instead of purchasing 10,000 bees and a queen bee, Paul wanted to raise his own queen bee.

Wood to block the bees from coming out of the hive while we drive home 🙂

On the pole. Their new home!

Paul purchased brood (bee eggs) and bees. The bees in the hive detect there isn’t a queen bee so they turn one of the eggs into a queen.

How? By feeding the larvae royal jelly. The bee’s body can create royal jelly, wax, and honey.

We removed the wood and let them explore their new home!

Feeding the bees

Paul checked on the bees a few days ago and the bees drank the bags dry so he had to put a few more bags in the hive.

Due to the bees eating so much, we decided to remove the bags and install a bee feeder.

We filled the bottom part of the feeder with sugar water.

Snap on the top to the bottom. The bees walk down those tubes to the water, eat and walk back up.

Out to the pasture we went.

Like all great parents do, we brought our 4 year old to the hive. You know, to heighten the danger-factor. So I dressed him up in the bee gear.

He of course is not afraid of bees. He doesn’t understand they sting and he doesn’t understand what a sting is.

We opened the hive, removed a row of frames and installed the bee feeder.

The bees are busy!

We have to feed the bees for a few more weeks until the flowers around them bloom and start to produce pollen and nectar.

Only a few minutes of the feeder being in the hive, several bees found it so I think the feeder will be a success.