Hive Updates - it's been a while

This post is about a month overdue - sorry if you've been on the edge of your seats.

About a month ago my brother was in from Chicago and he wanted to take a peak in the Backyard Hive.  We got him all dressed up and we opened it up.  This hive has struggled to build strength, and I take the full blame.  I believe I waited too long to move the follower board back and that made them believe there was a limit to their hive...so they slowed down on comb production when the nectar was still flowing.  None the less, we moved everything back and they are doing better today.

This was the first time in a while I've opened this hive - I like the philosophy of the Backwards Beekeepers which says to let the bees do what the bees want to do.  John was very intrigued with what he saw in the hive. 

The first bar we pulled you could see capped brood, larva, eggs, and low and behold...there was Queenie!  Check it out - look at the second picture below and see if you can find her.  She's golden in color and quite long.

Here's a close up of her:

I harvested two bars of honey from KFH1 a few days before this - I'll post a few pics shortly.

McKinley Cut Out Install

So we've got a large swarm in a box with my 17.5 inch top bars that fit perfectly.  This was a very industrious swarm so I knew they would build quick.  The swarm was going to my cousin Theresa who had a brand new Langstroth hive ready for bees. 

She picked up the bees Sunday evening after they were all in the box and in order to get them in the new hive she had to wire my bars to the top edge of a lang frame.  The cool part was that my bars were a perfect fit on a assembled lang frame.

So all we had to do (which really wasn't easy) was to attach the bars to the top edge of the lang frame. We used two wood screws to do this and the result looked like this.

We attached five bars to the frames. Dropped them in the hive body, added a feeder and Theresa had a happy hive. Thanks to James and Heather Crouch for letting me tear up their house these bees will flourish. Here's a few more pictures of the hive.

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.