It was a good bonfire. Lots of folks came. Great times!

Photos after the break.

Bonfire Spring 2010

Photos after the break…

Honeybee Split

We only got one long weekend to make maple syrup this year. The weather didn’t really cooperate. I’ll take the spring weather though!

All said and done we got 3 1/2 gallons of syrup this year. We did 40 gallons of sap a day. The new rig made of cinder blocks really sped things up. It was a great time.

Sugarin 2010

I love my bees. They are very polite as long as I am too.

busy bees

Bee-lining has been much discussed on a couple of my bee groups lately. I think it is amazing.

Back before the days of mail order bees (which I’d argue against buying by the way) people had to know a beekeeper to get into the hobby. Or they could go bee-lining, and try to get a feral hive.

Basically, you try to find a place where it would be likely to see honeybees. Some methods involve using a box to catch the bees. They all seem to have one thing in common though, you are trying to supply a high sugar food source for the bees that excites them enough to go back to the hive and tell every other bee about it.

After a honeybee finds our bowl of honey (or sugar water, et al), there will eventually be a conveyor belt of bees stopping by for the free sugar.

Some techniques call for covering one of the bees in flour. That way you can time their flights by seeing how often they return (it will only be long enough for them to deposit their load at the hive and return). Others call for you to take multiple readings on the same hive so that you can triangulate its position.

My favorite has always been the native American version. It involves tying a fibrous string (horse tail hair after Anglos) to the captured bee. The string slows the bee so that you can follow it at a jog.

Here’s the bee box version:

The process by which hives were found is very intriguing and sometimes requires one piece of equipment that was difficult to obtain; the bee box. Years ago, I found a book that described the process of lining bees in great detail and gave a great description of the bee box. So I built one. What follows is a description of the bee box and its use.

via 2wicky: Bee Lining.

I’ll report back after I have had the time to try it.

Bee-Line

Ok, maybe this wasn’t the most traditional way to catch a buzz on your birthday. And, maybe I got a little tipsy later that night. I guess that would be two buzzes by a truthful count.

The first buzz was from a honeybee hive.

I received a call this week from a great guy named Sean. He had an old shed near a house on a lake that had a hive in it. The house had burned down, so he was having the lot cleared to build a new house. The shed was going to the dumpster too.

He didn’t want to kill the bees, and he ended up finding me on the Internet (all hail good SEO!).

When I got to the house Sean had yet to arrive. There were two 13-year-old boys hanging around outside of a minivan. One of their mother’s was sitting in the drivers seat.

“Hello. Is Sean around?” I asked.

“Nope. We’re just here to work,” said the mom.

A car pulled up and Sean got out.

He showed me where the entrance to the hive was. The foragers were happily zooming in and out, legs heavily laden with pollen on those going in. I stood in front of them to gauge how aggressive they were. They ignored me and flew around. Two guard bees flew out and gave me the eye before heading back to the entrance.

The hive's entran ce

Hurrah! The hive wasn’t hot. I didn’t relish putting on my coveralls. They aren’t involved with the most comfortable way of doing anything. I decided to go with just a veil. I could always put the coveralls on later if need be (and they were never needed). I did get three stings. One was my own fault, the other two I consider an inconvenience that didn’t outweigh the discomfort of the suit.

As I unloaded all of my cutout kit (see the items below in the photo gallery) a small crowd formed. A neighbor came by. He was very nice. He said his dad used to keep bees. He told me that the colony in the shed spit out swarms at least once a year. It had been in the shed for at leave four years.

That was good news for me. That meant that the hive was thoroughly feral. They were survivors. Just the type of genetics that I’m looking for.

The two young guys were still hanging around. It was their job to tear down the shed when I was done. They were pretty interested in the bees and showed the least amount of fear. A couple of men who were doing demolition on the foundation stopped by to watch for a while too. I stopped paying attention at that point and started working on figuring out where the hive was.

And inch and a half of dead bees.

Inside the shed was about an inch and a half of dead bees. They had been using the interior as their graveyard for years. It was kinda spooky.

I started taking down the drywall with a prybar and hammer (the only tools from my huge cache that I ended up needing for the demolition portion). Someone had knocked a couple holes through the wall in the past so you could see some spots where there was comb. It was ancient looking, very dark.

There used to be at least two colonies in the wall. The one to the right was abandoned. The wax was all old and brittle, even though it looked relatively new.

The old hive filled the entire area between the two wallboards and about a quarter of the adjacent space between the next wallboards. Most had been abandoned, or was at least unused. There were areas that had been attacked by a fungus in the past. It took me a while to locate the newer honey reserves and the brood area. I expected to find more brood than I did, although there was both capped and uncapped brood.

I took a few wedges of the freshest honey (there was old honey that had long ago crystallized) and strapped them to top bars with two and a half inch strips of cloth. The brood comb I cut into four different wedges. I tried to minimize the number of brood that I cut when I was doing the slicing and dicing.

I attached the brood to the top bars using a little trick that was suggested on a forum. I used hair clips. It worked great. The honey filled comb was way too heavy for this technique though.

I never saw the queen. I was able to shake or brush in over 90 percent of the bees in the hive, so I’m pretty sure I got her. But you never know. A day later they are all clumped up in the new top bar hive in my back yard. Today is a bit rainy and cold, so I haven’t seen any action. Yesterday after I brought them home I noticed them doing orientation flights though. We’ll have to wait and see.

Bee Cutout April 2009

We got our chickens today! Seven Silver Laced Wyandottes and nine Buff Orpingtons. Woot!

Really, they are quite disgustingly cute. Pics after the click.

Hot Young Chicks

I was finally able to get together with a homesteading buddy to work on our top bar hives last night. It was a hoot.

We are both now the proud owners of two hives each. Now if I can only get a call for a swarm…

We used the Kenya Top Bar Hive design from Michael Bush’s Web site. They are really a cinch to make and are quite affordable. The grand total for my two hives was $35! Not bad if you ask me.

Click on the first image below to see a slideshow with captions describing how they were made.

Building Top Bar Bee Hives

Just some random shots from the last couple weeks.

Around With The Kids