Bee Log #12: February 19, 2010

I did my first bee inspection of the year yesterday and again today. It was about 52 to 55 degrees and sunny both days. Bees were flying. Hive 1 was the most active and appeared to be robbing another hive. That hive may have been lost this winter. I took off the inner cover of the hive being robbed and saw that there were no bees clustered at the top of the frames as there should have been at this time of year. Yesterday, I tried to take out the frames but the bees had the frames glued in really well and the temperature was low enough that the propolis was hard and unyielding. I took off the top deep which was really heavy (indicating lots of honey stores)and peered in the bottom deep. There was not a cluster there either. There is little hope for that hive. I put an entrance reducer in to limit the opening so that, if there are bees, they can more easily defend their honey. If we did loose this hive, it is classic CCD (colony collapse disorder) with the bees disappearing while honey stores are still sufficient. That hive went into the winter as the strongest hive we owned.

Today, I got the frames out of the hive suspected to be dead and found as I thought that the hive had died. The third picture above is what I saw. There was plenty of honey around what appeared to be the last stand of the cluster (Cluster's last stand?). Notice the moldy bees in cluster formation. The cluster must have been very small. There were some dead bees in the bottom of the hive but not beyond what is normal in an overwintered hive.

One other hive also died in the same manner. We took the honey that was stored in those hives and put it in the healthy hives. Our loss this winter is 40% to CCD. Last winter it was 25%.

The other two pictures are of normal hives. I did not pull out frames in those hives. Notice in the one picture the bees clustered around the grease patty. It is a Crisco, honey, sugar, mineral salts, wintergreen oil mixture. The recipe was listed in a posting of November of 2009.

When it is just a little warmer, I will do a full inspection checking for eggs, larva, adequate honey and pollen stores and visible mites. I will switch the brood boxes so that the cluster is on the bottom instead of the top and clean off the screened bottom board. I will medicate for nosema if there is evidence of bee dysentery. If one of the boxes is free of brood and honey, I will replace it with two new smaller sized boxes (westerns). We are going to switch to all western sized boxes because the deeps are too heavy when full of honey.

Bee Log #11: February 9, 2010

My husband and I have become apprentice level master beekeepers. This means that we have passed a test given by the Washington State Beekeepers' Association. We can now start working on the much more demanding journeyman beekeeper certificate if we so desire.

Our plan to put hives in 5 yards in north Seattle is on track. We have ordered the boxes and the packages of bees. We still need to order frames, bottom boards, hive tops, queen excluders, inner covers and feeders.

Our current hives are getting a bit of flying time almost every day. They are bringing in a lot of pollen. I still have not looked inside the hives yet. I will wait for a day that is at least 60 degrees to avoid chilling the brood.

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.

Bee Log #8: January 6, 2010

This picture was taken in Hood River, Oregon in late September, 2009. A honey bee is in the center of the flower.

Happy New Year! The days are starting to get longer and the weather in Seattle is slightly warmer. It was warm enough today that the bees got a little flying time. The pussy willows are starting to bud out and the witch hazel is starting to bloom. I love spring. I love Seattle's spring which seems to last from now until July 4th.

We hope to be back at the Phinney Farmers' Market the first of July.

www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org/vendors/phinney-farmers-market

Check out the list of vendors for Wallingford Urban Honey.

Bee Log #7: December 10, 2009

The picture shows a healthy frame of bees. I included it to encourage us all that spring will follow winter. Today it is really cold for Seattle. I think it got down to about 20 degrees F last night. It has been cold like this for about a week or 10 days. We start to fidget in Seattle when the cold lasts like this. My washing machine is on an unheated porch in the back of the house. I have an electric blanket on it to (hopefully) keep it from freezing. However, the sun has been shining and that has been nice. When it is raining, as it usually is this time of year, it is a lot darker and gloomier.

The bees are occasionally seen flying out to relieve themselves. There are lots of dead bees covering the front entrances of the hives. If we were going to put mouse guards on the hives, we should have done that about the end of November. I think it is too late now. Last year we scraped about an inch of dead bees off of the floor of the hives (and no mouse nests) when spring came. The hives survived so I am not too worried.

We need to start planning for any expansion that we might make next spring. We will need new hive bodies and new supers if we get any more hives. We also need new yards to keep the bees in since we have the maximum the law allows in our yard now (four). I would love to have bees in three different locations in the Wallingford/Greenlake areas of Seattle. We would maintain the hives and the property owners would get all the free honey that they could eat and the pollination services of the bees.

Bee Log #6: December 2, 2009

So, what have I done with the ivy honey that smells funny? (Funny honey?) What does it smell like? It smells like old leaves and like fall and like sneezes. I use it to bake bread. Really good bread. I put the ingredients in my breadmaker set on dough. (The teflon is wearing off of the mixer and I can't get the baked loaf out of the pan in the breadmaker if I bake it there.) The recipe is as follows:

Mix together and let bubble to prove the yeast is good:
1 1/4 cups warm water (liquid measure)
1tsp. sugar
4 tsp. dry yeast

Put the yeast mixture in the breadmaker and add:
1 1/2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
1 1/4 tsp. salt
4 cups whole wheat flour

Mid way through the breadmaker cycle add:
1/2 cup pumkin seeds
1/2 cup millet
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Grease a bread pan with crisco and then dust the greased surface with corn meal. Form the dough into a loaf shape and pat into the bread pan. Let the loaf rise. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 400 degrees until the house is filled with bread smells and the loaf sounds hollow when thumped. Remove from the pan immediately and cool on a rack.

I hope that you enjoy this hearty loaf. You don't need ivy honey in order to make it!

The bees have had some flying time in the last week as the temperature climbed above 52 degrees. Otherwise, I don't see them much except for the few that come out to potty. They are on there own until the weather starts to turn in February. Then, I need to see if they need to be fed to get them through the rest of the winter.