Bee Log #10: February 2, 2010

The above pictures were taken at the Washington Park Arboretum January 15, 2010. The building shown is the Graham Visitors' Center, meeting place of the Puget Sound Beekeepers' Association.

I am happy to report that we have recruited 5 homeowners located in north Seattle that are very interested in having bees placed in their yards. Thank you to those homeowners. We are hoping to promote bees as a wonderful hobby that can be pursued by the average person and to increase our honey harvest.

My husband and I will be placing 2 hives each on 4 of these properties and one hive on the remaining property. We have ordered 8 packages of bees and will use one hive from our current stock. This is as big as we wish to get this summer. It is important that we not expand beyond our capacity to manage our bees since they are placed in an urban environment. All of the bee-placement homeowners are very enthusiastic and I aim to keep it that way! They are hosts of living creatures and we are responsible for the care of those creatures.

We have decided to use western size brood boxes with plastic frames for the interior. The western boxes are 6 1/4 inches high and much lighter than the standard deep box especially when full of honey and brood. The plastic frames come as one piece and don't require assembly or wiring. We also won't have problems with broken wires or frames coming unglued when we try to pull them out of the hive. The bees are said to do fine on the plastic.

I have gotten my apprentice beekeeper certificate through the Puget Sound Beekeepers' Association. My husband is currently studying for the required test.

The weather has been unseasonably warm (a record for January in Seattle). The bees have had opportunities to fly for a few hours each day. They are bringing in pollen of several colors! Many plants are blooming including the earliest plums and crocuses. One of our hives is especially active. Another hive is showing little activity (I know it is still alive and has sufficient stores of honey). We will see what this means for those hives later on. I do not have enough experience to do more than guess. I will wait for a few weeks to do an inspection of the interior of the hives as it not warm enough to risk chilling any baby bees (brood). Warm is a relative term in Seattle! The temperature has been in the low 50's rather than the usual mid 40's.

We are hoping to return to the Phinney Farmers' Market in early July. With more hives, we should be better able to keep up with the demand for local raw honey.

Bee Log #9: January 22, 2010

The flower above is a picture of a very fragrant Chinese witch hazel taken at the Washington Park Arboretum winter garden on January 15, 2010. Bee food is blooming when the bees can fly.

The other picture is the front of one of our hives taken January 21, 2010. The dead bees collect in the bottom of the hive and out in front of the hive.

We are starting to think about our bee needs for spring 2010. We want to have more hives in the neighborhood and are actively looking for people who want bees in their back yard. We would like to find 3 such yards for this summer. That means that we need to buy 12 bee hives if each location has 4 hives. We have not gotten as far as ordering new boxes or bees yet. We don't have any actual places to put them yet! If anyone is reading this and lives in the north end of Seattle and would like to have bees in their yard, let me know.


We have one hive of bees that is quite active. They are busy bringing in yellow and white pollen and the young bees are out front practice flying. That hive must be more cold tolerant than the other hives or more hungry. Why would one hive be very active at about 52 degrees and the other hives just sending our a bee now and then? I don't know! We shall look for great things from that hive this summer (or an early swarm).

We have not looked in the hives yet this year and won't for about a month. The weather is too unstable and too cold to risk disturbing the bees. If they are starting to raise young, then we could chill the brood killing them at a time when the bees are trying to build up population.

Puget Sound Beekeepers are meeting on Tuesday, January 25 at 6:30 pm for beginners and continuing at 7:30 for another talk. I want to be more involved but have yet to meet any other people at the meetings. I need to get more aggressive. I see that the Puget Sound Beekeepers have an introductory beekeeping class that has only two sessions. http://www.pugetsoundbees.org/

The Washington State Extension beekeeping class is currently meeting and is very worthwhile for someone who wants to keep bees. The meeting place is in south Everett and has people from 4 counties up and down the east side of Puget Sound attending.
http://snohomish.wsu.edu/Ag/workshops/beekeeping10.pdf
http://cahnrsnews.wsu.edu/reportertools/news/2009/beekeeping-workshop-2009-03.html

A sad event has occurred in our Seattle back yard. All of our chickens have been killed. The probable culprit is a raccoon. We plan to get chicks soon to replace our hens.