Frances and the Bee

It has been a while since I shared our harvest and winter is in full swing here. Winter style? Insulation is in, people! Here you can see what our hive looks like in the winter. There are endless ways to winter hives, but I'll explain how we do it. We put R7 insulation around the hive and reduce the entrances to be just big enough for bees to get through but small enough to keep mice and the cold wind out. You can't see it, but the uppermost super (box) is filled with cardboard - to wick away moisture - and insulation for warmth. We leave a 3/8" hole at the top for air circulation and in case the bottom entrance gets blocked by a snow drift Bees need to take "cleansing flights" - they don't poop in the hive, and when temps are high enough, they get out to go! On the back side of our winter base, Mr. Bee made a door that we can open in order to scrape out dead bees. Even if the colony survives winter, most of the bees will die over the course of the se...

  We have finished our harvesting for this season, and we're thankful for another year of beekeeping. For the first time, we ended up with two colors of honey this year.  The lighter and darker golden honey came from the two harvests, one early and one late August. Not only is this really neat, but it highlights the way that bees access various plants, flowers and trees - and different varieties of nectar - throughout the year. The girls have been gathering the last bits of pollen and nectar available outside, and they are certainly preparing for winter.  Here is some of the last nectar we'll see this year:  ...and some of the last flowers: We are certainly holding on to fall, but this is the time of year when Minnesota beekeepers make decisions for winter.  We did an inspection two days ago, and here is what we found: Hive 1, we'll call it, is looking fine.  The bees have stored up more honey and the queen ha...

Well, August is here and we have updates! Days after my last update, we got a call from Mr. T. He had been walking through the yard and noticed something out of the corner of his eye.  One of our hives swarmed.  This doesn't mean they flew at someone in an angry cloud like we used to see in cartoons.  It means they had made a new queen and half of the hive left with her...and they were temporarily in this tree: Photo Courtesy Mr. T. Bees are not aggressive in this state since they don't have a hive to protect anymore, but this was not good news.  There are ways to collect a swarm and re-hive it, and some beekeepers get all their bees this way, but this was a difficult location, a difficult time of day, and an unlikely success.  The bees normally move on quickly to a home in the wild, and they did move on just a hour or so before we were able to get there. Although we like to look at this in a positive way, that we helped contribute a new hive to the wi...

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last update. Is it July already? We have been taking more of a hands-off approach to the bees this year, and since our inspections have been so simple and quick, I hadn't been taking photos.  Now, I miss having the photos, so I'm back to it. Both of our hives are doing well.  The queens have been making great patterns and there is already some capped honey in the hives. Below, you can see an excellent coverage of brood comb.  We look for not too many empty spaces. To the left, which is actually the bottom of the frame, are larger cells that hold drone (male) bees. It's normal for the hive to produce these and I will try to get a photo of a drone so you can compare. The rightmost bee is next to a brand new emerging bee, which we know is a female because of the shape of the cap on the comb.  The bee will chew her way out and start her life by cleaning the cell for the queen to lay a new egg in it.  Can you ima...

Last week, we were back down to freezing temperatures, which was a little scary knowing about all the new bees waiting to hatch. This week, in typical Minnesota fashion, temperatures are back up and the bees have been busy.  Below, you can see a new bee hatching, or emerging. Can you see her antennae and front eyes sticking out? Both hives are looking healthy and I'm guessing we'll add another super to each by next weekend. They have also been working hard to clean up some of the comb from last year that we put in the hive to try and give them a head start.  They're doing a wonderful job.  We are enjoying the progress of the bees, and also the progress of spring and the hope of summer.  Little Miss Bee is just over a week away from finishing Kindergarten.  We're starting to eat watermelon and playing outside as much as we can. We hope you are enjoying this season, too!

Our bees are busy... In the photo below, on the right side, you can see a bee entering into the hive with some nice, light yellow pollen on her leg.  Hooray! The trees have already passed the budding stage here, dandelions are in bloom (to my delight but the dismay of many), and more wildflowers are on the way.  In case you're choosing flowers for your garden, honeybees like blue and purple blooms the best.  It looks like both queens are busy laying eggs and, any day now, new honeybees will start emerging from their cells and will get to work.  Since a good queen could lay 1000 eggs each day, we would hope that about that many bees would be added every day once the hatching rotation is in full swing. A honeybee's first job is to clean out her cell. Below is a photo of a brood frame from one hive.  You can see what we'd call a very nice pattern of brood.  That means that there aren't many empty cells, which would be ones  you can see here ...

Mr. Bee and I, and our little bees, are very happy and feeling very blessed to be officially starting our fourth year of beekeeping. We'd like to say a special thank you to Mr. T. for letting us do this on his land.  We appreciate his love of nature and his friendship with our family. Last Sunday we went out to make sure everything was ready for the hives and to let our newly-painted boxes air out a bit. Everyone helped. Little Mr. Bee and Little Miss Bee Mr. Bee picked up our new bees last night and we had gorgeous weather today - just in time to put them in. Introducing...our two new hives! We purchased two 2-pound packages of Carniolan honey bees and I thought it was funny that they traveled from California to Minnesota via "Bee-Bus". We work more efficiently each year at getting the bees in the hives. We remove the can filled with syrup (food for the bees' journey) and carefully remove the queen's separate, very small box.  You can see ...

Hello, again! We're back to planning for the beekeeping year ahead.  Since none of our bees made it through winter, we will be buying new bees and starting each hive brand new this year. There is not a lot of news to share at this point, but we are thinking about having two hives and what is new is that we are considering trying to keep a different "stock" of honeybee.  We haven't made any final decisions yet, but you might be interested in what difference a "stock" or breed of honeybee might make. Beekeepers have known that genetics make a big difference in honeybees - they can affect temperament, disease resistance, and productivity. Although there can always be "exceptions to the rule," here are some quick  characteristics of some of the two types of stocks we are talking about: Italian This is the type of honeybees that we have had every year so far.  When I say we have Italian honeybees, I usually hear jokes about their accent, but thes...