The McKinley Cut Out

Got a call from my wife, who got a call from her friend Elizabeth, who spoke to her neighbor who had a swarm.  Got the call on Thursday night and went over to check it out.  By the time I arrived they had already entered the eve of the garage and were calling it "home".  I told James, the homeowner that I would be back the next day over lunch to try and and get them out. 

James was very understanding of why we want to save these bees and agreed to let me gently destroy his garage. ;)  I started by taking off a few trim pieces to see where they might be building comb.  Turned out they had already built about seven nice sized combs and were moving very fast. 

So I cut open the soffit with my handy Milwaukee Hackzall (everyone needs one of these) to reveal the comb and an absolute ton of bees.  It was awesome.

So my plan was to position my box below the swarm where I expected the queen to be.  I had some extra cardboard to build a few ramps or funnels to make sure most of the bees and hopefully the queen would make it in.  Then I was going to put my bars on top, open the entrance, and leave it be until the evening.  Here's what it looked like:

They dropped right in and I put my top bars on and taped it shut with the exception of the entrance.  The bees started fanning and I thought all was good.  Not so.  James sent me a text an hour later saying it didn't work and they were back in the eve.

Long story short - I went back again and this time I strung the comb to my bars and added a feeder.  Set up the box again and knocked them in again.  This time it worked.  Got a text from James that night saying they were in the box and going to sleep.  He read them a book and it was all good.

Wait till you see what we did with these bees next!  (Like the way I got you on the edge of your seat?  I'm getting writing tips from Fox News)

Really Cool Video and Web Site

Found my new hero in beekeeping...."Kirkobeeo" from Backwards Beekeepers.  Check out Backwards Beekeepers.  Great videos, great tips and ideas, and Kirk is quite entertaining.  One of my favorite videos is the one where he explains how to crush and strain honey with natural comb...it's called The Honey Harvest.

The second thing I found was this video about the difficulty bee's are having.  They visit some beekeepers in some areas you wouldn't expect to find them.  Here's the video link...it's called Every Third Bite.

Four Hives Now - Lots to update

Alper's Queen and Swarm 1

My friends Joe and Michele have two top bars in their yard.  They've been beekeeping for a few years and were instrumental in legalizing hives in the City of Louisville.  A couple weeks ago, while I was on a business trip to beautiful Cleveland, Joe contacted me about a swarm in his neighborhood. Being in Cleveland I couldn't get it so Joe and Michele captured it and had it in a box.  Their plan was to add it to their suspected queenless hive using the newspaper method.

They invited me over to watch and learn a little about this process.  First step was to insure there was no queen in the hive.  After about 90 minutes of thorough checking we found her.  See the video below, she's on the left side with a long black abdomen:

Alper's Queen

So, now that Joe and Michele have a good queen they offered the swarm to me.  I graciously accepted and installed them in the struggling hive I had a the Kois' Farm.  Here's a little video of the results:

Kois Farm Swarm 1

Taking over KFH 1

Moving in KFH 1



Swarm 2 from Kit

The beekeeping community in the Denver Metro Area is really helpful when you're in need.  I found a blog from a person named KitBo called the Kittalog.  After reading her blog and finding that she had been hearing of swarms I asked her to let me know if she needs anyone up north to pick up a swarm I could help.  Within a week she was letting me know about a swarm and my cousin Theresa and I went out and captured a swarm.  Here's the swarm we captured.

This is the swarm we put in the second hive out at Kois's Farm.  This hive is the same design as the one at my house that I will get to shortly.  I'll add a picture of the hive shortly.

Thanks Kit for helping me find a swarm for this hive.

2 Nuc's From Kris Holthaus

After losing the two packages I found yet another very helpful person north of Fort Collins named Kris.  Kris is one of the most knowledgeable people I've met regarding bees.  She keeps a number of hives in her yard, rear's queens, and builds nucleus hives or nuc's (nukes).  I had her look at my hive design to see if there was a problem and asked her to put together two nuc's for Karen and I to have in our yard hives.

After what seemed like a long time she finally had the nuc's ready.  They took longer to build because of the cool weather we had in May.  Although they weren't totally ready to pick up, she let me pick them up and do the feeding myself.

Last week Karen and I installed the nuc's in both of our hives and we're now up to 4 hives.  I'll add a few pictures at a later date.

Kois Farm Hive Must Be Queenless...

Jaimi, Maddi, and I went out to the Kois Farm Hive (KFH) today to see if we could find a queen.  My eyes aint what they use to be up close so we took some video to get some other opinions.

This colony has been in this hive for about 9 days.  They came from another TBH that did not over-winter for my cousin very well and we assumed it was queen-less...that was almost exactly one month ago so I didn't think it would even last this long.  So take a look at some of these videos and tell me if you see a queen...I've looked pretty hard and did not see one.

Video Links:

Opening Kois Farm Hive - KFH

KFH Bar One

KFH Bar Two

If you're seeing a queen let me know.

We've got Bees!

Today Theresa (cousin) and I took a nuc that she had that wasn't doing so well and moved it into one of my TBH's.  We're not sure, but the colony could be without a queen.  There's a chance that there's a laying worker bee that is laying eggs, but she can only lay drones (males), who really have no jobs in the colony accept to breed with a queen.

We had to take her 18" bars and cut an inch off to fit in my hive.  Keep in mind they had bees and comb on them and the comb was too wide so we had to cut away some comb too.  It was a bit of a cluster, but thanks to my Milwaukee Hackzall I was able to trim the bars quick.  We got the bars to fit and duct taped any openings so they couldn't get out.  But they did anyway.

Jaimi and I took the hive out to the farm and set it up and then put a baggie feeder in just in case.  The hive entrance is closed with a screen right now, but I'll stop by tomorrow over lunch and open it up.

We're not sure this hive will make it this year, but it seemed like a waste to let them just stay in the nuc box to die...and I had an extra hive anyway.

All for now...I'll take a few pics tomorrow and post them.