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.

Bee Log #5

You can see three of our hives in the above picture. There is a swarm issuing from the center hive. The hive on the left was the weakest at the beginning of the summer but finished the summer as the strongest hive with no intervention on our part. The flowering plant in the foreground is cilantro going to seed. The bees loved the flowers and the chickens loved the seeds when they formed.

I did an exterior check of the hives today and there are lots of dead bees at the front of the hives (like 40 to 50 bees on each hive). The bees are active enough to move the bodies out of the hive but not active enough to cart them past the entry. I think this is just a normal fall die off and not a symptom of something worse. The temperatures are now in the 40's in the daytime with rain and wind. The bees still fly a bit when the sun comes out but those days are few and far between.

See the note in post #4 about the bee class. If you live in or near Seattle or Everett and you want to keep bees, consider taking this class. It looks like a good one.

Bee Log #4: November 15, 2009

There is a bee class offered by the Snohomish County Extension of Washington State University beginning in early January that sounds very good.

http://cahnrsnews.wsu.edu/reportertools/news/2009/beekeeping-workshop-2009-10.html

Check the link for information. I have signed up and plan to attend. It is a good first step toward becoming an apprentice master beekeeper.

The bees are mostly staying in their hives. The weather is cold and rainy. There are a few dead bees out in front of the hive and I can see a few dead bees as I look in the opening of the hive. The hives feel heavy as I lift up one side an inch or two indicating that the honey stores are good. I will check that periodically through the winter.

The picture is a swarm of bees from our hives. We caught the swarm and successfully hived it.

Bee Log #3: November 10, 2009

Look at the beautiful colors of honey collected over the summer of 2009!

• The lightest is from July 4. It had a taste of jasmine. Our neighbors have a wonderful jasmine trained over a chain link fence that was in bloom before we took the honey.
• The honey on the bottom right was from mid-August. It had a hint of fennel. Our neighborhood has several areas where wild fennel is growing.
• The honey on the top left was extracted in mid-September. It was not a viscous as the other honey we extracted and had a slight rose flavor.
• The darkest honey probably has some Japanese knot weed in it. I do not know of any patches of Japanese knot weed close around us but maybe the bees traveled to get this tasty full bodied treat. It was extracted later in September. The honey in urban areas is seldom from a single source. The major nectar sources in the Pacific Northwest are maple trees early in May to June and blackberry bushes in June to July. These are readily available in the city along with all of the cultivated plants in peoples yards.

Our neighbors had great crops of cherries, grapes and raspberries this last summer. It was a good summer for growing things but I think our bees helped make the harvest bigger with their pollination services.