Seattle Urban Honey

Honey (and Craft) sale: Bee Log 67

2011-12-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

Honey for sale Saturday, December 3 from 10 to 3 at 1208 NE 100th St, Seattle 98125. Other crafts will also be for sale including wonderful homemade Maple Leaf Soap and Fine Handcrafted Jewelry.

On Saturday, December 10, another craft sale will be held at 5745 Kirkwood Pl N, Seattle 98103 from 10 to 3. This is the home of Seattle Urban Honey. You can see the hives in our backyard (but not the bees because they are clustered for the cold weather).

Please join us for conversation, coffee and a chance to do some truly local Christmas shopping. I make the jewelry and my friend (and hive host) Clara makes the soap in her northgate area home. The bees that make the honey are here in Seattle.

Bee Log 66: October 6, 2011

2011-10-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

The photos above are dead varroa mites that have been wiped off of a collection board left under the screened bottom board of a hive.

We did not think that we had a mite problem this year. We have been checking drone brood for mites as we worked our hives this summer and saw very few mites compared with other years. We had run a few tests with a drop board under a hive and seen two or three mites after a 24 to 48 hour time period. Other beekeepers in the Seattle have been reporting light mite loads. We did not think we had a problem.

We ran a test. First, we put drop boards in 7 of the 8 hives that we keep at the Urban Horticulture Center. The mite counts after 48 hours were under 10 except for one hive that had a count of 55 mites. 3 hives received Hopguard and 3 got Mite Away Quick Strips and one got nothing. The first product is derived from Hops and the second is a slow release pad treated with formic acid. Neither product is considered a pesticide and both are approved for use while the honey supers are on the hive (our honey collection is done for the year).

The difference in results was dramatic. In the hives treated with Hopguard, there was a subsequent mite drop of from 10 to 15 mites in 24 hours after treatment. In the hives with the formic acid treatment, the mite drop was in the hundreds for all three hives. The six treated hives are in a row and the treatments were alternated. The hives treated with Mite Away Quick Strips were not as active as the other hives so we want to keep the experiment going past the 7 day treatment period to see how the bees fare. The weather during the application period was overcast or rainy with a daytime high in the low to mid 60's.

Bee Log 65: September 5, 2011

2011-09-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Her Majesty was not deposed. The throne is still in the hands (wings?) of the nasty grumpy queen. We hunted all down through the hive-all 6 boxes and 60 frames of angry buzzing bees trying to find her. Then we went back up the whole six boxes looking again. We did not find her. We put the hive back together but took enough honey and empty frames out that there are now only 4 boxes. We will have to try again soon.

Bee Log 64: August 30, 2011

2011-08-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

I am not happy today. This is the result of 3 bee stings to the face through my bee vale. I am puffed up like a chipmunk trying to stash seeds. I guess this goes with the beekeeping territory but I wish I did not respond so spectacularly.

We have a grumpy hive. This is usually due to genetics so the cure is to re-queen. That means that we have to go through 6 medium bee boxes (westerns) and find the queen. We are not using queen excluders this year so the queen, bless her non-heart blood system, could be anywhere in the tall,populous hive. That means really upsetting the bees to find her.

Last night we moved the hive after dusk from the host yard to a more remote location. We tried to secure all entrances immediately but the bees poured out a poorly secured top entrance. Then the front entrance plug came part way out. So we loaded a hive that had nasty bees crawling all over the surface. My husband got it in the ankles and wrists and I got it in the face each time my vale brushed the skin. We brushed the bees off of each other, got in the truck with our bee suits on and drove to the remote site. Unloading was as unpleasant as loading but at least we were alone and did not have to worry about the residents. Husband took a few more hits on the ankles. Boy those bees love his black fuzzy socks.

We stopped at a grocery store after all was over and I tried to find meat tenderizer made from papaya. I found some but it had salt in it and that did not sound too good so I bought a ripe papaya. When I got home, I cut off a piece and rubbed it all over my face concentrating on the sting sites. I also took Benedryl and ibuprofen and went to bed with an ice pack. I think the papaya helped.

It is overcast and threatening rain today so we will not attempt any search for the nasty queen today.

Bee Log 63: August 20, 2011

2011-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yes! We have honey! It has been so cold this spring and summer in Seattle that I did not think that we would ever get honey. The bees have been packing it in. We took our first honey August 1 and got another harvest this last week. The result is honey to sell at the Phinney Farmers' Market on Friday evenings from 3pm to 7pm.

Our honey is tasty and unique. We are selling most of the honey by hive location. For instance, we have had a nice lot of honey from 98103, 98119 and 98125 so we sell that honey by zip code. We can only guess at the source of the honey because we know what was blooming before the harvest. I know blackberry is one of the components of the current honey as well as Linden trees and clover. Japanese knot weed will be next along with the little yellow dandelion things (I think a wild aster) currently blooming in yards around us. Each group of hives produces a unique taste. Honey is a bit like wine as each harvest has an individual taste.

We have been busy with our bees. 25 hives has us working about 2-3 days a week this time of year. Some of the hives are more productive than others. And the production in an individual hive varies through the season.

Come see us at the market if you live in Seattle. Phinney Farmers' Market is a smaller, family friendly market with a great selection of fruit and produce and a wonderful set of vendors.

Bee Log 62: July 26, 2011

2011-07-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

Honey bee working a leek that has gone to flower

A full frame of honey that is almost ready. Note the whiter area along the top of the frame. That honey has a thin wax cap across the top indicating that the bees have decided that it has been sufficiently dehydrated. We take frames of honey from the bees when they are at least 80% capped. Go bees go!

A family, visiting from California, is watching my husband work a hive in our back yard. We love to educate people about bees when we get a chance.

I got stung on the leg two days ago. My body over-reacts to bee venom. So far treatment has consisted of ice, Benadryl, hydro-cortisone cream, and ibuprofen. I looked up some folk remedies and tried a few but I think I was too late for them to have any effect. Ice seems to give the most relief.

This has been a most frustrating summer for beekeepers and presumably for the bees. We have had cool overcast day after cool overcast day. I look at the weather across the nation and see the temperatures in many parts of the country hovering around a humid 95 to 100 degrees and am thankful I don't have to brave that but on the other hand, it does make beekeeping difficult when the bees can't get out to the flowers that I know are blooming. Our bees are finally able to bring in nectar in excess of their needs. We are seeing a lot of uncapped honey that we hope will be ready sometime this week of next week. The bees put a thin coat of wax over the cells of honey when they are dehydrated enough so the honey doesn't ferment.

We hope to be at the Phinney Farmers' Market on the first Friday in August.

Bee Log 61: July 4, 2011

2011-07-04T10:05:00.001-07:00

These seven hives are at the Urban Horticulture Center on the University of Washington campus. The hive on the far right is the swarm hive that was featured in the previous blog. It is coming right along. The hive on the far left is the hive that swarmed. We know this because it ended up without a viable queen. The old queen flies off with the swarm. The remaining hive is left with queen cells (pupa cases) about to hatch another queen. That new queen must go around and kill the other queens about to hatch. If she misses one, then there is often a secondary swarm with an unmated queen. We did have a second swarm at that site so it could be that the hive ended up without a queen. Our last inspection of the far left hive showed that there were no eggs, no larva and no brood (pupa cases). That means no active queen.

Our options were to purchase a queen for $25 to $30, let nature take its course and possibly loose a strong hive with a lot of bees or combine that hive with another hive. We chose this last option combining the hive with a swarm that we caught at one of our host homes. We know that swarm had a queen because of the behavior of the bees as we captured the swarm.

To combine hives, we use the newspaper method. A sheet of newspaper is placed on top of the hive without a queen or with a queen we want to depose. Slits are made in the paper and the hive addition is placed on top. The bees set to work chewing up the paper giving them enough time to adjust to the new queen. If there are two queen, they fight for their throne with (we hope) the strongest, healthiest queen winning.

In the last 3 days, we have answered 4 swarm calls. We love getting these swarms as thay helps make up for all the hives we lost last winter. One swarm was a puny little thing and we combined it with a larger swarm.

We are starting to add honey supers to out hives. Any hive that you see in the above picture with 4 boxes has a honey super. We are hoping to have honey to sell by July 22. That is our target date for starting with the Phinney Farmers' Market. Finally the weather is looking like summer with days in the mid 70's and blackberry blossoms galore.

Bee Log 60: June 15, 2011

2011-06-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

This is our Seattle Urban Honey logo on a sign at the farmers' market last summer. Our bees are not yet producing honey that we can take this summer. This might delay the July 1 date that we had hoped would be the debut of this season's honey.

Our bees are hungry. The blackberry bushes are just about to bloom as are the locust trees but they must be waiting for a nice day before they open. The maple and chestnut are finished blooming. The weather is still pretty cool with clouds, wind and some rain so the bees are stuck at home a good bit of the time. We looked through all of the hives last weekend and found that they all needed feeding because they were in danger of starvation. The population is booming in all hives so lack of feed is not a good thing. We did not have honey supers on any hives except the one surviving hive from last summer(in a yard in Bellevue).

We decided that since that hive is so populous and because it really needs feed that we would take this time to make a three way split. (You can't feed bees when there is a danger that the syrup might get stored as honey for human consumption. That is one of the ways that beekeepers cheat.) The bees were filling 4 western sized (medium)boxes. A fifth honey super (honey storage box) was pretty much untouched by the bees. We bought 2 new queens from Corky Luster Of Ballard Honey. We went through the hive and found the old queen in the third box from the bottom. She is big and beautiful. We set her aside along with a box full of bees and brood. She was going to go back on the old hive site. The rest of the hive was split into two roughly equal boxes of brood and bees. There was NO HONEY to divide up. Each box of bees got a second almost empty box on top and a feeder full of 2 gallons of sugar water (1:1 this time of year). The two new hives got a new queen inserted in a little screened box with a hard candy plug. By the time the bees eat the candy plug, they should be used to the new queen's scent. The queen will get fed through the screen.

The owner of the property had been asking for more bees. He had 4 hives last year, 3 of which died so he is happy to see more hives. This split will limit the honey that we could have gotten from such a vigorous hive but at the same time we were worried about the lack of honey and starvation. We should get three good hives and maybe some honey.

Bee Log 59: June 11, 2011

2011-06-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

We caught a swarm on Thursday evening. The swarm was from our own bees at the Urban Horticulture Center. I did not think of getting my camera out until we had bumped the swarm into a 5 gallon bucket and poured the bees into a waiting hive. Here the bees on the inner cover of the hive are scent fanning, rears in the air and wings going like mad, to call the rest of the bees to the hive. The queen is inside the hive and the rest of the bees in the swarm are being informed of her whereabouts.

This picture was taken about 5 to 10 minutes after the first picture. Notice that almost all the bees are aiming toward the hole in the top of the inner cover.

It takes time to hive a swarm. We spent about 45 minutes to an hour waiting for the bees to march into their new home.

Almost all the bees are in the hive now. It is time to put the cover on the hive and to place the hive where we want it. The old queen will be in the hive with the swarm. The hive where the swarm originated will be raising a new queen. She will hatch within about 5 days. The new queen will then need a 70 degree day to get out to mate.

Bees in a bird house:

This cute little bird house belongs to friends of mine, J&B. It fell out of the tree where it was hanging and B went to pick it up and was quite surprised (understatement) when bees came pouring out. In general, we do not handle bees for people other than honey bee swarms but for close friends with bees in a bird house we do make exceptions. We were in a time crunch because we needed to be at a high school graduation so my husband with his bee suit on popped the whole bird house into an empty bee hive and left the hive sitting in J&B's yard so the rest of the bees could find their home that evening. My husband described the bees as fat and fuzzy. He knew they were not honey bees but did not have time or leisure for further identification.

After the graduation, we raced back to change clothes and retrieve our hive with unidentified bees. We plugged the entrance to the hive, strapped the hive together, took it home in the back of our pickup and left it there until morning. This morning, we located a place in a tree in our yard for the little bird house, suited up and placed the bird house in the tree.

The bees are a small bumble bee. I am glad that we saved them because we need native pollinators as well as the honey bees. I will try to get a picture of one of the bumble bees.

Bee Log 58: June 4, 2011

2011-06-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

The hive on the left is a combination of two weak hives. We piled the one hive on the other with newspaper between. It must have been too late because both hives died. There was plenty of honey. The top box must have weighed 30 pounds or more. The hive on the right is a new hive placed in April. It is doing very well on this first really nice day of the year. The spring has been cold, cold, cold and wet, wet, dreary wet. We are on a swarm list (Puget Sound Beekeepers' Association) and anticipating calls and maybe some excitement!

Yes, a happy hive! (on the right)

A close-up of bees being busy on a really nice early June morning.

Elegy for a dead hive. We had such great hopes for this year but we are down to one surviving hive out of 19 that went into the winter. We did order 18 new boxes of bees which, despite the cold spring, seem to be doing very well. We cleaned most of the equipment that contained the dead hives with the idea that the causative organism for the bee deaths might still be in the hives. We also cleaned out a whole lot of stored honey which at this point is just waste and will go down the drain. I know that we are throwing away potential resources but there is some evidence that bees housed in dead-outs have a high mortality.

Our experiment this summer is placing bees in all new hives and in hives that have been pressure washed and bleached. So far there is no noticeable difference.

Bee Log 57: May 22, 2011

2011-05-22T15:20:00.001-07:00

We have a new spot to keep bees. We are so excited to have a spot at the University of Washington Urban Horticulture Center. It is in an out of the way fenced area. I hope these bees do well enough to earn their rent!

Our own bees ready to go in a hive.

One of the members of the Puget Sound Beekeepers invited club members to his place to help install over 100 boxes of bees. Pictured above are some of the boxes waiting to be put in a hive.

We toured the honey house that the beekeeper had built. Notice the bees hanging out on our bee-suits. These bees don't know where they live.

It is hard to keep writing about dead beehives. Finally, I have something to say about nice lively beehives. We got 18 new boxes of bees. This brings out total hives up to 21. Out of 19 hives of bees, 4 survived. Two of those hives were so weak that we put them together as one hive. The queens fight and one queen will remain in that situation.

The new bees are all booming despite the cool weather. It will take a bit of time for them to build up to the place where we can take honey from them. Our first date at the Phinney Farmers' Market is July 1. Last year with a cool May and June we were not able to get to the market until August 1. I sure hope that is not the case this year. Lots of local beekeepers are out of honey. People are asking for it at the farmers' markets and not getting it.

Bee Log 56: April 20, 2011

2011-04-20T20:31:00.001-07:00

This is what the bottom board on one of our dead hives looked like. It looks pretty much like the bottom boards of the hives that survive. There are a few dead bees there.

We are getting some new hives ready to receive the new packages of bees that we are expecting.

We went into the winter with 19 live hives. 15 of them have died over the winter. I am not sure that I am such a good beekeeper. What did they die of and when did they die? Only one hive died of starvation. All of the other hives had more then enough stores to see them through the winter. Two hives died in the last two weeks. They seem to be victims of CCD or colony collapse disorder. The bees just disappeared leaving behind a bunch of honey, capped brood and no recently dead bee corpses. Several hives died between February 1 and March 1. It was a nasty cold winter and the bees probably had too small a cluster to begin raising the spring bees needed to replace an elderly population of late winter bees. In those hives we found a softball sized cluster of bees all dead.

What will we do differently? We did not treat for either varroa mites or trachea mites last fall. We need to do both. There are some new non-pesticide treatments out that show some promise. One is based on hops and one on formic acid. We have started with the hops treatment. We are also feeding sugar water and pollen substitute. It remains colder than normal in Seattle and the bees are just not getting out much. They need to raise brood this time of year and they must have pollen or pollen substitute for protein.

We hived 8 new packages of bees over the last weekend. We are trying an experiment based on the hypothesis that winter dead-outs are largely caused by a disease or diseases. We placed 4 of the new boxes of bees on frames that had held honey last summer. 4 boxes were placed on new plastic frames painted with a bit of bee's wax from our own hives. We are following the work of Craig Cella of Loganton, PA who described an experiment in the April 2011 American Bee Journal. Any boxes, bases or lids that were reused were dipped in a 10% bleach solution before the bees came. Our test will be a count of the blank cells in the brood nest. A 20 X 20 cell area is marked out and then the empty cells counted. We are curious whether the reused honey super frames will affect the brood.

Beekeepers have been putting new bees on old drawn out frames for many years. Bees seem to like old comb. This gives the bees a head start because they can get right down to the business of raising a family without having to build the house first. Recently, there seems to be some evidence that diseases or something bad for the bees is harbored in the old comb. It is known that the wax is a sponge for pesticides and that the accumulation of pesticides is bad for the bees. Some disease like American foul brood bacteria spores are known to stay on the wax and infected subsequent hives (such hives must be burned). This is not American foul brood. It is not known what causes CCD but putting bees in hives that have died increases mortality. Perhaps our small experiment can help determine if the honey supers are also harboring an agent causing poor brood numbers.

We enter spring a bit chastened by our loss. We feel responsible. We do want to be able to produce honey for the farmers' market. There are 10 more packages of bees coming. That will give us a total of 22 hives placed in 10 locations around the north end of Seattle.

Bee Log 55; March 8, 2011

2011-03-08T16:39:00.000-08:00

The hive pictured above is alive after a long and cold (for Seattle) winter. The bees have not been able to get out for a long time and on the first day nice enough to fly made the mess that you see on the front of the hive. Bee poop. The ground around the hives is also littered with yellow and brown spots. I do not know if this is normal because I have never seen so much spotting on the front of the hive before. The bees could have nosema or the bees could have just needed to get out and go. I need a microscope. I need to learn how to diagnose bee diseases or find someone who can. I need to learn to dissect a bee.

Many of our hives have died between the end of January and the beginning of March. We put granulated sugar on top of the inner cover for emergency feed when we took a peek in January but evidently that measure was not enough. We have 7 surviving hives out of 19 at the start of the winter. Ouch! Half of those hive deaths occurred this last month. I understand that this is the new normal in beekeeping. Bees are just not very robust. I do think that we closed down the hives for the winter too late last fall and we did not treat for any of the bee diseases. Our beekeeping needs to end by early September not early October. I don't know what out bees died of so I do not know what diseases to treat for. I imaging that treating for varroa mites would not have hurt the bees. There are some new safe treatments on the market and I need to investigate to see if they are compatible with our low tech, no pesticide philosophy.

Bee Log 54: February 24, 2011

2011-02-24T16:45:00.000-08:00

So here we are loading up our pick-up with new bee gear. We have ordered 10 packages of bees and parts for 8 new hives. Some of the bees will be for beehives that are dead and some to increase the number of our hives from 19 to about 26. Some of the hives will go at the Urban Horticulture Center at the University of Washington and some will go on some new sites at private homes. We are still looking for at least one more bee placement site.

February has been too cold for the bees to get much flying time. Last year must have been a bit warmer because I remember them flying a bit. We put a little granulated sugar under the lid on top of the inner cover hoping to give the bees a bit of nutrition in case they are running out of food.

Bee Log 53: February 13, 2011

2011-02-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the photo above. It shows the entrance to a beehive that is in our backyard in Seattle. The place where the bees land as they come into the hive is covered in a damp dirty substance. It is probably a mixture of dirt and mildew. This hive is dead. I don't know what it died of but then lots of beehives die in the winter since the verroa mite came into the area. Compare the landing board above to the landing board of the very much alive hive pictured below. The bees somehow keep the landing area clean. I don't know if they clean it or if in and out traffic keeps it clear. (Picture a matronly bee on her bee's knees with a brush and a pail of water!) The difference in the appearance of the the landing board has for me become a pretty good indicator of which hives have died over the winter.

If the hive is alive, the bee landing board at the front of the hive is clear and clean.

Bee Log 52: January 29, 2011

2011-01-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

We found the marker commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Lorenzo L.Langstroth (b.Dec. 25, 1810). It is near the Delaware River in the old part of Philadelphia. Langstroth developed the modern beehive with movable frames. We were visiting relatives in the city of brotherly love.

The darkest part of the year is behind us and already there have been days warm enough for the bees to fly. We have visited all of our bee hives except one and removed the sugar feeders that got left on late last autumn. We poured granulated sugar around the top of the inner cover hoping to avoid starvation for any hives that are low on stores. We know that we lost at least 5 hives out of 19. We can't count survivors yet.

We are looking for one more location for our bees in Seattle. We have one new location in Bothell. Our host home in Bellevue is being sold so we will have to move those hives. Also, we did not want to pay the new toll on the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge that we would have faced if we kept the hives there. That was our first host home and a great location so we feel a little sad to leave. We have one new Seattle location near the University of Washington. We are looking for another north Seattle location.

One perspective host home was in the middle of a bunch of town homes. The home owners were so excited about the possibility of having bees but we realized that any bee events like a swarm or a bee war (robbing event) would probably freak out some neighbors. There was just too much people traffic. We felt bad turning them down as a host home.

I look forward to another beekeeping season. I love watching the bees. I love working the bees. I love selling the honey at the Phinney Farmers' Market. I love educating people about bees.

Bee Log 51; November 24, 2010

2010-11-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

Review of the movie Colony

http://directory.irishfilmboard.ie/films/762-colony

My husband and I saw the movie Colony at the tiny Northwest Film Forum on Madison and 12th on Capitol hill in Seattle. The theater we were in seated about 49 people in old style movie seats. The ambiance was old fashioned cute. Also attending the screening was a host of two of our bee hives. That was a pleasant surprise. They came with friends as did we so there was some lively bee talk among the 8 of us before the movie started.

Colony has three different themes. One was the disappearance of many hives of honey bees just before the California almond pollination in 2009 due to colony collapse disorder. Another was the disappearance of many bee keepers from the business of bee keeping. And the third was a documentary style focus on the Seppi family with two young bee keeper brothers in their early twentys. The Seppi brothers had a contract with a local almond grower to provide bee hives for $170 each. The price had dropped that almond growers were offering beekeepers and the almond grower was wanting to renegotiate his contract. The Seppi brothers' mother (queen bee of a large family) was pushing the young men to hold the farmer to his contract.

The cause of colony collapse had not come close to being solved as of the making of Colony. The cause of family collapse is all to obvious in the film. The Seppi brothers are delightful but have not moved away from the family nest or do they have plans to. Marriage is mentioned by their mother in sentences that usually started with "You will never..." and ending in some economic reality of the beginning bee keeper.

The Irish Film Board had something to do with the making of the movie but I am not sophisticated enough to know just what. The whole of the movie was about U.S.A beekeepers and mostly concerned the California almond pollination. The Irish music by the Clogs was enjoyable.

If you are an experienced beekeeper, you might enjoy the plight of the hive-bound Seppi brothers. If you aren't a beekeeper, you will learn of a situation that could affect your food prices and supply in the near future if there are not enough bees or more importantly beekeepers.

Bee Log 50: November 20, 2010

2010-11-20T14:28:00.001-08:00

This broccoli did not get harvested before going to flower. The bees are all over it on a nice day in late October.

This is one type of bee feeder that we are using. It holds a gallon of syrup and sits on top of the inner cover. An empty box surrounds the feeder with the telescoping outer cover on top of that.

The weather has turned very cold. Freezing temperatures and even snow are in the forecast for Seattle. We don't see the bees very much these days. If the temperature is above 52 degrees F. they come out to forage. There are flowers, nectar and pollen all year long in Seattle if the weather is nice enough for the bees to fly. Right now, I have noticed heather and rosemary blooming. There are also the fall blooming camellias.

On December 1, a film about the current disappearance of honey bees will be shown at Kane Hall on the UW campus at 7:15. Come early for a tasting of local honey including Seattle Urban Honey. www.essentialarts.org The title of the film is "Vanishing of the Bees". The cost is $15 at the door or $10 advance purchase. The organization putting this on is Essential Arts, Creative work for the common good.

Bee Log 49: October 14, 2010

2010-10-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

Our hives are in 8 back yards around the north end of Seattle. This is one group. We plan to expand to another 3 backyards next spring.

Another group of hives.

My husband with a beautiful frame of capped honey. We were taking off the supers (top honey storage units on a hive) from this hive and getting the last of the honey for this year. The bees will still keep gathering honey on nice days but they get to keep it for their winter stores. Also, we wanted to get all of the supers off before the ivy started to bloom as the ivy honey doesn't taste or smell good.

The season is over. The supers have come off of the hives and the bees are being fed sugar water to make sure that they have enough stores for the winter. The last of the honey has been taken and extracted. This season has been a poor one due to the rainy, wet weather. We averaged about 25 pounds of honey per hive with some hives producing much more and others having no surplus honey at all.

I am already looking forward to next year's harvest. I have learned that I love the honey that is produced when the linden trees are in bloom. We have also discovered that we have a lot of linden trees in our vicinity. I know that I don't like ivy honey AT ALL. Ivy is blooming right now and the bees can have that honey for themselves for the winter. I am glad that ivy doesn't bloom when other important, tasty flowers are blooming. If you smell ivy flowers, that is just the way that ivy honey tastes! Yuck.

We loved being at the Phinney Farmers' market. We loved meeting people from the community and educating them about bees and honey. Thank you customers and supporters. I will go make sugar water so we can keep feeding the bees so they have lots of food for the winter.

Bee Log 48: September 23, 2010

2010-09-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

The plastic construction is our dehumidification chamber. Also in the picture are our new honey extractor and boxes of jars for honey. I think we need to rethink the design(?) of our dehumidification space.

This is the first official day of autumn. This year it really feels like fall. It has been so cool and rainy in Seattle. Our bees continue to struggle to get enough nectar to store a surplus for us to take and sell. The last honey that we took seemed sort of runny so we bought a refractometer to check the water concentration. Honey might ferment if the water percentage is higher than 18.5%. Our honey had a water concentration of 19%.

What do we do with runny honey? We purchased a dehumidifier and some heavy plastic sheeting. We used the plastic sheeting and a desk to make a little room in which to put the dehumidifier and the honey in an uncovered bucket. It took less than 12 hours to dehumidify the honey to about 18%. The operation produced a bit of heat that built up in the plastic room. We did not feel comfortable running the dehumidifier when we were not home or when we were sleeping. I would guess that the temperature generated was in the high 90's so it was not overly dangerous. It was hot enough to cause us to be vigilant.

We are starting the process of preparing the hives for the fall. The supers (boxes where the bees store excess honey) come off the hives and most of the hives will get fed sugar water. We are very busy with our day jobs (teaching), the farmers' market and the bee chores.

Bee Log 47: September 13, 2010

2010-09-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Our honey in front of one of our bee hives.

Seattle has looked pretty gray all summer long.

It is a bad year for bees in Seattle. If you are a new beekeeper, I hope that you have not become discouraged. I can't imagine facing some of the problems that we have had this year as a beginner. The worst thing over the last month has been the cool weather. The bees just are not getting the flying time that they need. Also there are not many nectar sources this time of year. The bees are having a hard time getting enough to store and enough for me to take as honey.

We are hoping for another harvest to take us through the last 3 weeks of the Phinney Farmers' Market. We will see if we get it. I think the weather this week is supposed to be better than last week so at least we can get in the hives.

Bee Log 46: August 31, 2010

2010-08-31T18:17:00.001-07:00

Wild Aster by Green Lake
Good bee food

Mimosa Tree
Attractive to bees

Japanese Knotweed
Very invasive, non-native species but the bees love it. The honey is very dark.

Drone larva on a white plate that were disected out of some brood comb that was culled from a hive. The black spots are varroa mites that were on the brood.

The last time that we went into the hives to collect honey (August 23), we did not find as much honey as we expected. Evidently, there was not a whole lot for the bees to eat after the linden trees stopped blooming and before the Japanese knot weed started to bloom.

We are selling honey at the Phinney Farmers' Market and the Bothell Farmers' Market along with selling to neighbors and friends. The honey supply is ok but not abundant. We hope for some nice weather on Thursday Sept. 2 when we will start to look in the hives again for some more honey to harvest.

School starts soon and my husband and I get back to our day jobs as teachers.

Bee Log 45: August 10, 2010

2010-08-10T10:11:00.001-07:00

At last we have honey to sell at the Phinney Farmers' Market on Friday nights from 3 to 7pm. Look for us there.

My husband uncapping a frame of honey. Note the dark honey in the center of the frame. The bees were collecting from two different flowers.

The extractor with a frame of honey inside.

The garden is producing despite the cold summer that we have had in Seattle. Shown is an orange cauliflower.

Six year old Belle wants to be a beekeeper. Her parents brought her over to our house to look at the beehives. The bees were a bit scary but that did not deter her interest. I have to admit that I am a little afraid of the bees too. One should respect a stinging insect with a powerful venom inserted with a barbed needle connected to a pumping device.

All of our bee suits were all hopelessly too big for tiny Belle. It was raining so we had a really good excuse not to look inside a live hive. We did watch the bees at the entrance of the hive for awhile. We also looked at an empty hive with frames inside and at our honey extractor.

I hope that this interest in bees will grow into a lifelong hobby or business. One never knows with a 6 year old. One must be careful not to discourage good things because of youth.

Bee Log 44: July 6, 2010

2010-07-06T12:54:00.001-07:00

Solar Wax Melter

My husband built a solar wax melter. It is a box painted black inside with a window. The window is in a frame that is attached to the box with hinges. The box is setting in a wheel barrow so that it is tilted toward the sun and can be turned as the day progresses. The box is large enough to hold queen excluders which the bees are always clogging with wax.

Wax Moth Larva

One of the banes of beekeepers is the wax moth. We are processing our wax just in time because the wax has some wax moth larva in it. Up until now we have not seen this pest. You can see two wax moth larva in the above picture.

Our Garden on July 6, 2010 Two Beehives in the Background

Finally the sun has come out in Seattle. The bees are flying with intensity. The blackberry honey flow is almost over. Clover is blooming and will be a major source of honey for the next few weeks as will lavender. We were not able to be at the Phinney Farmers' Market on July 2 because there was no honey to take from the bees. We might not make this weeks market either. The bees are storing honey in the supers (top of the hive where excess honey is stored) but there is not enough capped honey to make it worth our while to extract and bottle the honey to sell. We will check again on Wednesday and make a final decision for this weeks market.

Bee Log 43; July 1, 2010

2010-07-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

In mid-June, we drove from Chicago to Los Angeles with our daughter who was moving from the mid-west. We stopped and bought honey from Mystic Maze Honey located in Needles, CA.

Honey was sold on the honor system out of this trailer.

This coyote was walking along just across the road from the honey sales trailer.

Our bees about June 10.

We do not have any honey to take from the bees yet. We will not be at the Phinney Farmers' Market on July 2. We hope to have honey to harvest for the July 9 market. Only two hives our of our 19 hives have some capped honey in the supers. When the bees are finished dehydrating the nectar that they have collected, they cap it with a thin coat of wax. This protects and preserves the honey. This is our signal that the honey is ready to harvest. The super is a box on top of the beehive meant for surplus honey storage. We only take honey from the super leaving any honey in the brood box for the bees.

This cold, wet weather we are having in Seattle is hard on the bees. We have had swarms but the new queens have not had warm enough weather to mate (70 degrees needed). We have purchased mated queens and placed them where needed.

The main nectar flows in western Washington are big leaf maple and blackberry. Maple is long gone and blackberry is blooming right now. Lavender will be next in our area of Seattle along with many garden herbs. Watch to see what the honey bees are visiting in your yard. Let me know what you see.

Bee Log 42: June 24, 2010

2010-06-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

My husband is showing a guest our bees. This young lady and her grandmother spend the afternoon with us looking at the bees and eating hamburgers. She showed a great deal of courage after she got stung through her jeans by going right back to look at some more hives.

Seattle has had a wet cold spring with lots of rainy days. The bees are not collecting much honey yet. We are hoping to be ready for the Phinney Farmers' Market on July 2 but I don't think we are going to have honey by that date. Some of the bee hives look like they are really low on food which is strange this time of year. We have had a few nice days this week so maybe the bees will be able to gather some of the currently abundant blackberry nectar flow.

Bee Log 41: June 10, 2010

2010-06-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

In early April, we moved a mature hive to a yard in Bellevue just before the cherry trees were in bloom. That hive got really mean and aggressive and had to be requeened about a month ago. Aggression in bees is a matter of genetics and the queen is the mother of all of the bees in a hive. Aggressive bees are dangerous to have around. Yesterday we got into that formerly mean hive and found a brood box (lower part of the hive), full of eggs and larva. A bee lives for about 6 weeks in the summer so there were still some aggressive guard bees in the hive but nothing like the buzzing attacks we experienced in mid May. Then, the guard bees would follow us away from the hive. We had to walk into the deep shade and wait for them to leave us alone before we could take our bee suits off. On this visit, no bees followed us as we left the hive.

We also saw honey in that hive!!!! The bees have one super (upper part of the hive where the surplus honey is stored) almost full of honey and capped. Capping is the final step in honey production for the bee. It is a thin coat of wax over the ripe honey.

I am so glad to see honey. We have worked through some problems this spring that we have never had before. I started to wonder if the bees would store a surplus that we could take. This spring, we have seen drone laying workers, drone laying queens, queens missing in action and queens with mean genetics along with swarms that left behind hives with new queens that couldn't mate because it was too cold and rainy.

We are thrilled and thankful that the requeening of the mean hive went so well. The two hives in our own yard that we requeened in April seem to be building up a good population but aren't storing surplus honey yet. We requeened 5 more hives almost a week ago and the new queens should be out of their cages now and starting to lay eggs. There is a candy plug in the queen cage that the workers eat through to let the new queen out. The bees need to be introduced to new royalty slowly or they will kill the new monarch.

I will try to get some more pictures so you can see the things that I am describing.

Bee Log 40: June 7, 2010

2010-06-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

This is the year of the queen installation. We bought 5 queens at Beez Neez on Saturday and installed them all. I think the problem is that the weather has been too cold for the queens to get out and mate. It needs to be 70 degrees at least. We have not had many days that warm this spring. In some hives, the bees are even having trouble bringing in enough feed for their young. We have had one swarm in the last month that I know about. I suspect another. We split one hive that had a brood box of 3 deeps and was only producing drones. The swarm that I collected was without a fertile queen. If the new queen developing in hive from which the swarm issued does not get out to mate within a certain time period, the hive will not have eggs or larva.

This is not a good bee year. March was so warm that the bees swarmed. We put supers on our hives in March. April and May have been cold and rainy. With supers on the hives, we have not been able to feed the bees. The bees that we started this year in yards around Seattle are doing well because we have been feeding them.

We are getting concerned that we will not have honey for the market on July 2. This is the date that we are supposed to start selling. We will see. The blackberry flow is just starting in Seattle and that could yield significant honey if the weather cooperates. The black locust trees are blooming now and the lavender is starting to bloom.

I am starting to sound like my farmer grandfather!!! He made a living on 120 rock strewn acres in northeastern Iowa. He raised hogs, corn, soy beans, oats, hay and dairy cattle. There were always worries about the weather, the prices or bacteria counts in the milk. Pay days were few and far between. He couldn't count on pay days even happening.

Bee Log 39; May 19, 2010

2010-05-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Swarm Capture Bucket

Beehive with Swarm

I captured a swarm today. No, this video is NOT me. It was my inspiration and what I wish I had looked like. Thank you Jeff McMullan for your excellent footage of a very experienced beekeeper.

I had seen this video on Youtube and had a similar situation developing at my house. The bees landed in a pear tree on the alley about 4 houses down the block. I was home alone so it was up to me or wait. Bad weather was forecast so I chose to act. I taped a 5 gallon paint bucket to the bottom of a 12 foot pruning pole with duct tape (see photo). I prepared a box to receive the bees complete with bottom and top. I practiced getting near the swarm but not hitting them. I practiced dumping the bees in the box from the ladder. I prayed and then I bumped the bucket as hard as I could up under the swarm. I did not anticipate the weight of the swarm. I must have had 5 pounds of bees. It took me a few seconds to readjust to the weight and get the bees safely out of the tree. I dumped the bees in the waiting hive and put the lid on askew and sat down to wait (see photo). There were still a significant number of bees in the tree. I was worried that I did not get the queen. I waited. The bees started fanning at all open points on the hive. Bees started filling the air. I could not tell if the bees were headed out or in the hive. I waited. The bees were going in!

About this time I talked to a neighbor, Tony, who was taking out his garbage. I explained what was happening as there were still a lot of bees in the air. It is a bit alarming to see a swarm.

I waited for about an hour until most of the bees were in the hive. Then, I put a strap around the hive and pulled it home on a dolly. I hope they like their new home!

Bee Log 38: May 13, 2010

2010-05-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

This video was taken by Theo while we are going through the hive we placed in his yard.

Bee Log 37: May 13, 2010

2010-05-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

I deposed a queen today. We had one bad tempered hive placed with Mike as host. This is the hive of bees that stung me on the nose and cheek two weeks ago. I was worried about their aggressiveness after that event. The bees had followed me well away from the hive area and got the second sting in. Well, they did the same thing to Mike two days ago. He was mowing well away from the hive area and we walked toward him after we finished our examination of the hive. We must have brought the guard bees with us intent on stinging because two of them got him. We still had our bee veils on.

Today when we left the hive area we walked away from the house and homeowner and waited until the guard bees stopped flying around us before we walked back to the house (it is a big yard). They were following us and it took a few minutes of patience to get them to forget about us.

This kind of nasty temperament is not what we want when we place bees in someones yard. Genetics determines temperament so we decided to requeen. We are thankful to have found her majesty on the fifth frame that we examined. So it was off with her head and tomorrow we will place a new queen on the throne. It will take a few weeks for the new queens genetics to take over but if the hive accepts her, this should help.

Bee Log 36: May 11, 2010

2010-05-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Busy time of year. Beautiful time of year.

Our 12 new hives are mostly doing really well. We have two problems in the group. One hive ended up without a queen. They swarmed out of the hive and then went back in alarming Russ, the homeowner. Then there was a big bee battle with the other hive on the property. I still don't know what was going on there. Maybe one group tried to rob the other group. Russ reported that both the hives at one point were just covered with bees. I wish I could have seen it. There were dead and dying bees littering the ground. I purchased a new queen and she is dangling in the hive in a little cage while the hive gets used to her pheromones. There is a candy plug in her cage that the bees will eat through releasing her in about 2 days.

The second problem hive has all drone brood. See the picture for what it looks like. I think we have an unfertile queen because the eggs are laid in the bottom of the cells and are laid one to a cell. A laying worker, which would also produce only drone brood, lays eggs that are on the side of the cells and usually puts more than one egg in each cell. We hunted and hunted for the queen but couldn't spot her even though there are not a lot of bees. We put a frame of brood from another hive in the hive in hopes that the bees will raise their own queen. If this fails, I think this hive will not make it.

I had another bee sting last Saturday. A bee crawled up my pant leg and I was stung at the top of my leg. This sting swelled up much more than the last one. In fact the redness and swelling covers most of the inside of my thigh. I spent one day on benadryl which I should have started sooner. Ice helps. I have an appointment with an allergist because I can't go through this with every sting. In the meantime, I have learned to tuck my pants into my socks.

Bee Log 35: May 5, 2010

2010-05-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

It is time to write about gardening. The last few years have been frustrating for me as a gardener. First of all, each year I have not known whether I would be around for the harvest. My husband is a frustrated farmer planted in the city. We have been shopping for a farm for about 10 years and each time we have almost purchased a farm, something has gone wrong. One farm was in probate. In Washington that means that, until the judge's gavel drops, someone can come along with a higher bid and scoop the property away. We lost out just before the judge's gavel dropped to a bid too high for us to top. Last summer, our house was on the market, we had an offer on a farm contingent on selling our house, our house sold and then it unsold. Another summer, we had the highest bid on a farm near Duvall that had multiple offers only to have the owner decide that he wanted to sell to his nephew to keep the property in the family (his prerogative). One farm did not have a well. They collected surface water for their needs. There is no way to get the loan we needed (that we could find) without an approved water system. The owner tried twice to dig a well and came up with too low a flow to count as a well. One farm suffered a record flood event just as we were about to make an offer. Every square inch of the farmland was underwater. The first floor of the house was above the flood by about 6 inches. We felt unprepared for such a disaster. There were more near misses.

The second problem with gardening has been my recent inability to get seeds to grow. I have never figured out exactly what is happening. I don't know if I have some sort of sprout killing fungus in the garden or bad cut worms or rampant slugs. We have had chickens all along that do a pretty good job on the slugs. Not even zinnias and nasturtiums have grown in the last two years. I have tried seeds each year and finally in desperation, gone out and purchased starts for the garden. Paper collars around the seeds have allowed some lettuce to grow so the chief suspect is cut worms.

The third problem I have been having is lowered futility of the soil. Last year, in an effort to remedy this problem, I brought home two pick-up truck loads of horse manure-uncomposted. I understand now that this was not a good thing. Something about the bacteria that break down the manure taking the available nitrogen for themselves and leaving none for the garden. I am currently reading a soils textbook as a result of my errors. I am learning about things that I should have known like limiting reagents or in this case limited futility due to not enough of some key soil ingredients.

Our first gardening task this year was to purchase 6 cubic yards of booster blend compost from Cedar Grove Compost. This is the cities chopped up yard waste composted with dairy manure. The dump truck that delivered the manure deposited it right where I wanted it in the driveway between my house and the neighbors. I did not anticipate the smell. Sorry neighbors. (I gave them some of the offensive substance as a compensation!) Well, you can't have good anaerobic bacteria without smell. I should have known! We have put the compost all over the yard and are seeing amazing results in greener grass and bigger weeds. Most of the compost went on the garden. We are busy mixing it in with the soil. We wanted to build raised beds out of concrete blocks but that was too expensive for this year so we shaped raised beds as best we could without side supports.

I have not planted seeds yet. That is next. I will buy tomato and pepper plants as I did not start any early myself.

For the present, we have decided to be urban farmers. We have a large lot and deep, almost rock free top soil. The bees and chickens are legal in Seattle in limited numbers. (Small goats are legal too but I have had experience with billy goats and have no desire to get a goat.) We have nice raspberries and grapes that are well established. We have a great walkable neighborhood and great neighbors. Our church, family connections and friends are all centered in Seattle.

Bee Log 34: April 26, 2010

2010-04-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

The two queens that I installed in the hives resulting from a queen-less situation are now either free and functioning or dead. The hive shown in the picture above is the one that was swarming every day out and then back in for more than a week. The swarm finally went out and stayed out. A few days later, I was able to purchase two queens and put them in the resulting two hives on April 17. Today, I went into those two hives and removed the empty queen cages. I looked briefly for eggs on one frame but did not see any. I did not want to upset the bees any more as it was a bit cool and overcast so I left them be. I really think that they are ok because of the behavior of the hives. It is calmer, more purposeful and seemingly less frantic. I should check for eggs in about a week if we get a nice warm day.

Bee Log 33: April 23, 2010

2010-04-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

I had my first sting yesterday in three years of beekeeping. Two stings actually. One was on the end of my nose (like I needed to highlight my nose) and the other was on my cheek. (The first sting was through my bee veil and the second was later when I went near the hive without my bee suit on.) My husband and I were going through the hive without using the smoker. I have peaked in a hive before without using a smoker but not gotten into the brood box. The bees were really ticked.

The question: Is this hive aggressive and in need of re-queening or was I stupid to do as much as I did without a smoker? I will need to observe that hive closely.

Bee Log 32: April 22, 2010

2010-04-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is a video taken by Theo of my husband and me hiving bees in the pouring rain.

Bee Log 31: April 21, 2010

2010-04-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

The above pictures taken by Sharon show my husband and me installing a package of bees in Sharon's back yard. Sharon is one of seven home owners who have graciously volunteered their back yards to host our bees. We will supply the host homes with honey in exchange for a spot in their back yards and they and their neighbors will benefit from the pollination provided by the bees. We will be selling honey from these hives at the Phinney Farmers' Market starting in July.

We ordered 12 packages of bees that came on April 17. We had the hives all assembled, painted and set up ahead of that date so that we could concentrate on installing the bees when they arrived. The weather was iffy all day long when we were installing the packages but it did not actually rain until we got to the second to the last home which was Theo's house. It just poured buckets while we were installing that package. That was the fastest installation of the day! Theo has promised me a video of the event. It will definitely be featured in this blog when received! We finished up the installations at Joe's house putting on wet bee suits and having Joe put on the wet bee suit that Theo had worn.

To install a package of bees, first the can of sugar water is removed from the opening in the bee box. Then the queen cage is removed from the midst of the bees. This is a small matchbox sized, screened box with the queen inside and lots of bees hanging on the outside. The three pounds of worker bees are unceremoniously dumped on top of the frames of the hive. The queen cage is opened and the entrance blocked with a marshmallow. The cage is suspended in the hive between two frames. The marshmallow keeps the queen from flying away during installation and gives the bees a few hours to settle down before her majesty walks among them. The bees eat the marshmallow and the queen comes out of the cage.

I returned to each house two days later to remove the queen cage and check on the bees. Each hive looked normal including the hives that were exposed to the rain. Some and likely all of the hives had already started building comb. I did not inspect the frames but some of the queen cages had beeswax on them. I will return in a week and check sugar water supplies, add a brood box and check the frames.

In our own back yard, the saga of the new queens continues. Yesterday was not an ideal day to work the bees as it was chilly and overcast but I did get in the two hives with the new $25 queens and take the cork barrier out of the queen's cage. The introduction period for a new queen is supposed to take 72 hours. A candy plug at entrance of the queen cage is supposed to take about 3 days for the bees to eat through. There is an additional cork barrier at the entrance. I left the cork in for 3 days so the queens could not get out before the workers were used to her scent. (With the bee packages, the queens have been traveling with the workers so the introduction period is over by the time the bees arrive in Washington state.) The separate purchased queens need this 3 day phase in or the bees will kill her. The health of these two hives is still pretty precarious. One of the hives was showing a lot more interest in the new queen than the other hive.

Bee Log 30: April 20, 2010

2010-04-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

The queen-less hive that has been swarming out and then in each day for the last week or so finally swarmed out and stayed out. I was grateful that the swarm landed in our yard on nice low raspberry bushes. I clipped a few canes so that I could get the majority of the swarm on top of a new hive body. The bees started to melt down in between the frames. As bees moved into the hive from the top, a troop set up a fanning action on the front of the hive. They are the bees on the front of the hive with their back ends in the air waving their wings like crazy. The function of this is to disperse a pheromone telling the other bees that they want to set up house-keeping here. Notice all the bees on the ground aiming in the direction of the hive. They are being called into the hive and have started marching in that direction. Eventually most of the bees made it into the hive and we put a lid on the box.

After night-fall, we wanted to put the hive in a more convenient location. There was still a beard of bees hanging off the front deck of the hive. My husband got a bit impatient and was grabbing handfuls of those bees and trying to stuff them through their front door. Needless to say, this was not popular in beeville. Good thing we had on our bee suits. We left them for the night and moved the hive the next morning while it was still too cool for the bees to fly.

The big question is the queen. I had put the queen cell pictured in the last post in the queen-less, swarming hive to try to get the bees to hang on until we were able to requeen that hive. I don't know if that cell opened on its own or was torn apart and destroyed. The left over queen cup had the appearance of the latter. So, the possibilities for both hives are no queen or an unmated queen.

I purchased two mated queens from Beez Neez (Snohomish, WA) last Friday, April 16. The queens and attendants were in boxes about the size of a box that comes with a nice pen set. The end of the box was blocked with a bit of hard candy. The candy blocked the entrance and would provide about 3 days of food and then freedom. I did not have time to answer the queen question so I suspended the two new queens in the two hives existing after the swarm. Today (Tuesday, April 20), I need to get in those hives and see what I can see.

Bee Log 29: April 14, 2010

2010-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Two of the above pictures are of a beautiful capped queen cell taken from one of our hives. One picture includes a pair of pliers for scale. The third picture is 12 hives assembled and ready for the bees that arrive on Saturday. The hives will be placed in 7 backyards around north Seattle.

We finally got a nice enough day that we could go through our hives and see what was going on. The hive that has been swarming out and then back in (!) each day has no queen. There are a few capped drone brood but other than that there are no eggs or brood. A drone emerges from his cell in 24 days after the egg is laid so this hive has likely been queenless for about 3 weeks. A queen is coming on Friday so hang on bees!

Another hive is normal, crowded and storing honey in the two supers on top of the hive. The third hive has lots of brood but no eggs. That is the hive that we got the queen cell from. We cut it out because it is still too cold for a new queen to get out to mate. We think that the lack of eggs means that the hive is preparing to swarm. If they can wait until Friday, we will split the hive and put a new queen in the hive without the queen. This is the hive with three deep boxes and lots of bees so we are hoping the the queen won't be hiding! Splitting means that we put half the frames with attached bees in one hive and half in another box. The trick is knowing which box has the current queen.

Bee Log 28: April 12, 2010

2010-04-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

The above picture shows bees glued to rhododendron buds (taken 4/9/2010)

I knew that bees did not like the rhododendrons in our area but I did not know that bees can become trapped by the sticky stuff that covers rhododendron buds. These bees are dead after becoming glued to a flower. This large rhododendron is right near my hives. My husband is threatening to remove it after he saw the dead bees. I am inclined to agree with him.

Two new queens have been ordered from Beez Neez in Snohomish, Washington. The two her majesties will arrive on Friday, April 16. I will attempt queen introduction on that date.

Bee Log 27: April 9, 2010

2010-04-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Me and the Bees taken April 8, 2010
I just looked in the box with the new swarm. They are gone. I know that they did not get far because it has been colder than 50 degrees since we put them in that box. I think some of them must have gone back to the original hive. I will look for a queen in the midst of the 50 to 60 bees that are left in the new box. I am not sure that you ever really get good at bees. They keep doing new stuff that is hard to figure out. It is too cold to go through the hive to check for queen cells or eggs.

Meanwhile, today we got up at 4:30 am and headed to Gladstone, Oregon to Ruhl Beekeeping Supplies to get the rest of the absolutely necessary equipment to set up our 12 hives that are going in backyards around north Seattle. They had everything that we needed. I feel so much better now that I know that our new bees will have complete homes.

Bee Log 26: April 8 2010

2010-04-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

So the same hive decided to swarm AGAIN (third time this spring). The weather was about 50 degrees and again there were hailstorms moving through the area. We will have to do some serious thinking about what to do with this group of bees. This swarm ended up in the same box as the last swarm which, as I had thought, left or died. We got a larger number of bees this time so there is more hope that we actually ended up with the queen in the box.

Bee Log 25: April 7, 2010

2010-04-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

The picture is our pathetic new hive captured from the swarm of two days ago. We got so few bees into the new hive that it will be a wonder if they survive this rainy cold spell we are having. The entrance of the hive is blocked by a board and by a front entrance feeder with 1:1 sugar water. I left about a 1/2 inch opening for the bees to get in and out. That way they don't have much entry space to defend. I may combine it back with the hive of origin if we get some decent weather in the next few days. This swarm leaves the hive of origin without a fertile queen in weather too cold for mating. Back to the queen bee problems!

We are busy installing cement blocks as foundation for beehives for our anticipated bees. We plan hives in 7 locations in addition to our own back yard. We still lack some of the hive parts that we need before the bees arrive on April 17. Trees n Bees, the bee supply that we use most of the time, has our order and is still promising delivery ahead of the bees. Trees n Bees is also supplying the bees so they know our time frame!

We want to set up the empty hives before the bees arrive so that we are sure that everything is ready. We are at least able to get the cement blocks in peoples yards. It gives us one more time to discuss the location of the hives with the owners before the bees get here.

The people that have volunteered for hives in their yards have been really great to work with. All of them are avid gardeners who are excited to have bees in their yards.

Bee Log 24: April 5: 2010

2010-04-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

The weather is about 55 degrees F and the wind is blowing. There are thundershowers moving through the area. The bees decided to swarm. You can see in the pictures above that the bees came out of the hive and clustered on the front of the hive. I think the queen ended up under the bottom board with a lot of the swarm. We took the hive apart and banged the bottom board on top of an empty hive knocking the cluster of bees onto the frames. It was a really small swarm by the time we got the bees into the new hive. I blocked most of the entrance of the new hive with a board leaving only about 1/2 inch open for an exit. I also put a feeder with sugar water on the hive. What were those bees thinking?

Bee Log 23: March 31, 2010

2010-03-31T15:21:00.001-07:00

I decided to combine one set of split hives and leave the other set alone. The pictures above show the new very large hive with the unoccupied pieces lying around. I will wait for the bees to go in tonight before I put those pieces away. The piece of newspaper between the combined hive bodies is for peace. It gives the bees a little time before they are combined as one unit again. The queen is in the topmost large box (deep box). The workers will chew up the newspaper into little tiny pieces and drop it onto the bottom of the hive. We combined hives one other time and the bees sounded like they were snipping with a thousand tiny scissors. This hive may have three deep boxes all summer or we may try to do a split again when we can get a queen.

Today turned out sunnier and warmer than expected. The other set of split hives were from the day of the swarm one week ago. That was the swarm that went back into the hive. I understand that the swarms tend to happen about 5 days before the new queen hatches. We left plenty of queens developing in their peanut shaped cells when we did the split so I imagine that the new queen has now hatched. If the queen can mate at temperatures in the mid to high 50's then we might have a viable hive. What we need to do in about a week is go through those hives and check for eggs. In that way we will know which hives have a queen. We never did see that old queen when we were doing the split. Both hives seem normal from the outside. With the two hives that I combined, I knew which hive had the queen (saw her) and the other hive was acting frantic flying all over the place in front of the hive.

Bee Log 22: March 31, 2010

2010-03-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

I think I have called all of the queen breeders in California that advertise in the American Bee Journal. None of them have queens that they will ship me. One firm would ship 20 queens. Not much help when you need 2 queens. I may combine the hives so that the bees have their old queen back and 4 deep hive bodies each. I may just wait and hope that the queen cells hatch in nice enough weather that the new queens can mate. I may call queen breeders in Texas, Georgia and Florida.

Meanwhile, an extremely sad event at the firm that supplies most of our bee-ware. The husband of the couple that owns the business died suddenly of a heart attack early last week. It is a tremendous tragedy and will be deeply felt by his wife who is also his business partner. The family is still planning on delivering the bee packages that have been ordered. I am hoping that I can get the parts of the bee hives that I need before those bees come.

Bee Log 21: March 30, 2010

2010-03-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Well the weather in Seattle has turned lousy. I really must order two queens. We have done two splits anticipating a maple honey flow so there are two hives without queens(they do have queen cells developing). The bees might not get out for the maple this year. The queen cell developing in the split hives will not get out to mate. Oh, the life of an urban farmer! I think that to farm you have to manage the stress caused by things beyond your control. You also have to guess a lot. I guess I will call an apiary in northern California and mail order queens.

Bee Log #20: March 29, 2010

2010-03-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

We are now veterans of a bee hive move. One of the people wanting hives in their yard was very concerned about pollination of some lovely old fruit trees that have suffered from lack of pollination in the last few years. We decided to move one of the hives from our back yard into his yard. We waited until dark, taped a piece of wood over the opening, put a truckers strap around the hive and started moving the hive with a hand truck. Since we had just gone through the hive that day, the hive bodies kept shifting relative to each other (bees glue everything together and we had broken the seal). I was really worried about bees pouring out of the cracks! The bees didn't come out and we quickly re-shifted the boxes and tightened the strap.

We got the bees into the bed of our pick-up and fastened the hive into the corner. On arriving at the host home we unloaded the hive, set it in the driveway and then put in a base of cement blocks for the hive. Next time we will put in the base before the bees are delivered as were digging in the dark. It looked like we were burying things by the light of the moon.

The bees were hand trucked up a wet slope and placed on the base. When we took the wood block from the entrance, a lot of bees came crawling out. It scared the homeowners and I have to say got me a little concerned too. We left the area quickly. Anyway, the hive is in place and if we get some decent weather, the bees should be very happy and, hopefully, make lots of honey.

This beekeeping is one adventure after another. And, we keep meeting the greatest people!

Bee Log #19: March 26, 2010

2010-03-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

Swarm. Swarm. In March!!!

A swarm is a bee hive's way of making new bee hives. The old queen leaves the hive with about half of the bees. The group forms into a ball of bees on a tree or bush or something and scouts look for a place to move into. If a beekeeper can catch this bunch of bees, they can be moved into a bee hive and will probably set up housekeeping.

I looked into the back yard at about noon on the 24th of March which was a beautiful sunny day with a temperature of about 70 degrees F and saw a cloud of bees. I went out into the bee-storm to try to see where they were headed. They circled around. Some landed here and some there. I was praying for a nice low branch so we could catch this swarm. The bees unaccountably decided to go back in the hive. We had that experience last year when a swarm of bees went back into their hive. It is like a practice swarm. A rehearsal for the real thing that will take place shortly.

We got into the hive and found it bursting with bees (see photos). Burgeoning with bees. We decided to split the hive putting frames with queen cells in each hive. We looked and looked for the queen but could not find her. One of the two hives created has a queen and one does not. Both have frames of brood and lots of worker bees and stores of food. Both have room to expand.

A split like this is a messy operation. It really messes up the bees and now one hive has no queen. There are the queen cells that are developing and a new queen will hatch. But,when a newly hatched queen is ready to mate, there needs to be a day when the weather is about 70 degrees and not too windy so she can get to the place where the drones hang out (drone congregation area). I think we need to consider buying a queen and requeening the queenless hive. Otherwise, we may be stuck with a hive that is not queenright.

The weather has gone back to rainy and chilly. I had better order that queen. Imagine ordering a queen!

Wallingfor Urban Honey becomes Seattle Urban Honey

2010-03-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Please continue to read this blog at seattleurbanhoney.blogspot.com There is a link under my profile. Also, to my three followers, I would like to invite you to follow Seattle Urban Honey. We are changing the name as our hives will be kept in a total of 7 yards in north Seattle (including ours).

Bee Log #18: March 22, 2010

2010-03-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

Honey Bees Need Water Taken 3/22/2010

Bees really need water. The bees like this water source because it has sloping sides with a textured surface that is easy to grip. A few bees are floating around in the middle. Some of these will make it to the side and crawl out. Others will drown. I save bees when I see them in this situation by lifting them out on a stick and leaving them to dry in the sun.

We have 3 honey supers on one hive and 2 on another and one on the weakest hive. Last year we did not put on supers until May 2. This has been such a warm February and March that the bees are already reproducing in large numbers for the maple honey nectar flow that is soon to start. The bees are building out wax and cleaning up the damage that we did to their honey storage cells when we extracted honey last summer. The cells get cleaned by the bees and reused saving the energy needed to produce wax. The bees will not reuse wax from a lump but they will repair and refill cells that are already built. This season has come on so fast that we have not even had a chance to really go through the living hives and clean up from last winter. Our inspections have been cursory either because it was a bit chilly and we were worried about chilling the brood or because we lacked time.

Our equipment is still incomplete but I have a promised delivery date of March 31 for the lacking hive parts.

Wallingfor Urban Honey becomes Seattle Urban Honey

2010-03-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

We are changing the name of Wallingford Urban Honey to Seattle Urban Honey to reflect the fact that our hives are now going to be located throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. Thanks for your interest in this project. Look for us at the Phinney Farmers' Market.

Bee Log #17: March 17, 2010

2010-03-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

Honey bee in heather taken March 16, 2010

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The vote so far on changing the business name from Wallingford Urban Honey to Seattle Urban Honey is overwhelmingly in favor of a name change. 3 to 0. There is still time to vote if you have not weighed in.

I am off to Auburn, WA to get the bee-ware that we so desperately need before the bees arrive. Yea! It is just a partial order but it will keep us for now.

Starting a new business is a series of puzzles and worries and unknowns. The puzzles seem to be getting solved one at a time. The worries are just part of what I do and wish I didn't. The unknowns seem to be linked to the worries and the puzzles. So, one little bit at a time. Life is an adventure. Every day is a new installment of the story. Pray God for his providential care for today.

Bee Log #16: March 15, 2010

2010-03-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

Honey bee on ornamental pear. Taken 3/15/2010

I have a question for my readers. Should we change our name to Seattle Urban Honey? We will have bees in Queen Anne, Fremont, Green Lake-Wallingford, Northgate and Bothell. If you are reading this please take a minute to let me know what you think.

The bees are flying. Some maple are putting out buds. The season for honey collection may be really early this year if the maple blooms this early.

We are trying to get the rest of our hive parts so we can get them painted, set up and ready before the bees arrive April 17. The sellers of bee-ware must be very, very busy if they can't stop to fill a rather large order. Perhaps there is a shortage of merchandise due to the great interest in backyard beekeeping. I don't know why we can't get the goods pronto and I shouldn't speculate ahead of the facts.

We are set to put hives in 6 yards in north Seattle. 12 packages of bees are arriving shortly. We need hive parts! NOW, PLEASE!

I have located a firm that sells product liability insurance. I had no idea where to look for that product and did not want to call just anybody. I guess I needed a referral from a trusted or at least known person. The broker that handles our home owners insurance had a knowledgeable agent. He did not even seem to be thrown by a backyard beekeeping business in the city that sells at Farmers' markets. I got a City of Seattle license. I registered the name "Seattle Urban Honey" with the state. I got a resale certificate so I don't have to pay sales tax on jars . Anything else?

Bee Log #15: March 2, 2010

2010-03-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

There are 72 medium hive bodies assembled, primed and packed into our little shed. Our venture of placing hives in homes around north Seattle is off and running. I ordered 12 packages of bees. Ready or not here they come so we had better be ready! These are living creatures and require our attention. We are getting all the associated hive parts and will be setting up the hives sometime this month so the empty hives are in place and ready for the bees arrival sometime around April 17. Then the fun starts.

So many things are running through my head like insurance, bee feeders, sugar supplies. (The bees need to be fed for awhile until they get established and feed on their own. We do not have honey collection supers on the hives when we are feeding sugar.) We want our host families to be not just satisfied with the placement but excited and happy. We want a honey crop and a market for the honey and wax.

Bee Log #14: March 1, 2010

2010-03-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

One hive (hive 2) consumed the sugar water with thymol and two hives did not touch the stuff. The two hives (hives 1 and 4) that are not consuming any sugar water were formerly given frames of honey from the deceased hives. I am continuing to feed hive 2 sugar water without thymol.

We have taken all sugar water away from the front of hive 1 and put on supers since it is so active. We peeked inside after seeing a lot of bees out front and saw that all ten frames were full of bees. This hive has been active at cooler temperatures then the other two hives since early in January. Earlier inspections showed empty frames that were not all the way drawn out in the top deep box. (A drawn out frame is one on which the bees have made wax cells.) It would be nice to prevent swarming in this box but on the other hand, it would be nice to perpetuate this queen bee's genetics since the hive is so vigorous at lower temperatures. We need to watch for queen cells and make a hive split if we spot them.

Bee Log #13: February 22, 2010

2010-02-22T09:05:00.000-08:00

We lost 40% of our beehives to CCD (colony collapse disorder). We are trying to think what that would mean if we were chicken farmers. Nearly half of our chickens would die. If we were ranchers, 40 of 100 cows would die. When you start the winter with 5 live bee hives (had a swarm in July) and loose two that does not seem like too many but if you think in terms of scale, it is a lot.

One of our conclusions is that we need to treat bee maladies more aggressively. I don't mean going after every chemical on the market. We are trying to use herbal remedies that have scientific backing. Thymol is an extract from the thyme herb. We had a dose for solid crystals but were not able to find them so we purchased thymol as an essential oil steam distilled from the herb. The literature described dissolving thymol in rubbing alcohol but that is either isopropol alcohol which is a poison to humans or ethanol which has been denatured with something nasty to humans. We purchased a small amount of vodka to use as a solvent. It did not work as well as hoped. There was still an oily film on top of the vodka and then on top of the sugar syrup. We will try to remove the feeders before the bees take all of the sugar syrup so that the bees don't get a concentrated last sip of essential oil. (I used 1 ml ((scant 1/4 teaspoon)) in 1 oz vodka to put in 3 quarts 1:1 sugar syrup)

I think it might work better to put the thymol in grease patties either with or without the wintergreen oil. The essential oils should easily dissolve in the Crisco. I will repeat the recipe that I used last fall with wintergreen oil only.

Grease patties: wintergreen oil (1 tbsp) Crisco (2 cups), white sugar (3 cups), honey (1 cup) and mineral salts ground fine (3 tbsp). I mixed this together and put an ice cream scoop full on top of the top frames in the brood box.

Bee Log #12: February 19, 2010

2010-02-19T10:06:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-10T08:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T15:03:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Bee Log #2: November 8, 2009

2009-11-08T20:27:00.000-08:00

My husband and I sold honey for a few weeks at the Phinney Ridge Farmers' Market during August and September of 2009. Our display is shown below. It was a great way to meet people and talk bees and honey. Our few urban hives barely kept up with the demand and we completely sold out of the honey that we extracted this summer. (Except for the smelly ivy honey that we collected at the very end of the season! We won't sell that!)

Notice the different colors of honey. The really light honey was from the beginning of the summer and the darker stuff was from later in the season. We hope to be back at the Phinney Ridge Farmers' Market next summer. Last summer, our first honey extraction was July 4 so we expect to have a marketable product sometime around early July of 2010.

Bee Log #1: November 7, 2009

2009-11-07T09:35:00.000-08:00

Bee Log #1: This is a blog about bees. I keep bees. And, after 2 years of beekeeping, I still feel like a beginner. Frequently, I don't know what to do about bee issues but I am getting better at figuring things out. I think actually what I am figuring out is that my bees do pretty well knowing what they need.

My bees are hunkering down for the winter. I lifted one side of each hive a few inches to make sure that each hive is good and heavy. Two of the hives seemed a bit lighter than the others so they are being fed sugar water (2:1) with a bit of honey mixed in. I put this syrup in mason jars on a front feeder at the hive entrance.

The bees stop reproducing this time of year meaning that the varroa mites also stop reproducing since their reproduction happens inside the sealed brood cells of devoloping bees. This is an opportunity to knock down the mites since all of the mites are now passengers on adult bees. I am using grease patties of wintergreen oil (1 tbsp) mixed with Crisco (2 cups), white sugar (3 cups), honey (1 cup) and mineral salts ground fine (3 tbsp). I mixed this together and put an ice cream scoop full on top of the top frames in the brood box. The wintergreen oil is supposed to take care of the tracheal mites and the grease from the Crisco is supposed to make more of the varroa mites fall off. The mineral salts are supposed to be something that bees need as much as other animals. (I got the mineral salts at De Young's Feed in Woodinville where it is sold by the pound as a cattle supplement). I am looking for scientific research on the effectiveness of this treatment but so far, I haven't found any.

The last honey that I took from the bees this fall was ivy honey. This was gathered when the supers were taken off the hives on October 10. As the frames were extracted, there was an odd odor to the honey that I could not place. Later, while out walking, I went by a patch of ivy full of bees and smelling like the honey I had just extracted. aha! Ivy! The honey crystallized very quickly and is like glue or paste in the jars. I am feeding the honey back to the bees with 2:1 sugar water. Also, I am using the honey in bread (honey whole wheat).