Crazy New Beekeepers
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know we’re new beekeepers. We got our first hive back in April. We’ve been checking on the bees regularly and they’re doing quite well.
The week before last Mr Chiots checked on the bees one day while I was gone and he got stung. He looked inside the hive and didn’t see any eggs so he got worried that our queen was MIA. He called Dave, the guy we got our bees off of, for some advice and Dave suggested requeening the hive. So we ordered up a new queen. We were hoping to get an Ohio Queen Project Queen, but the guy we wanted to buy from was out of queens for the year. So we ordered up another lovely Italian lady.
We got the queen. We decided to do one more hive check to see what was going on inside. Low and behold the hive was bustling with activity and the queen was in there doing her job laying eggs and everything looked just like it should. We called Dave and he suggested requeening anyways, which would involve catching and killing our old queen. We didn’t really want to do that because she’s been such a great queen so far, so we decided to do what any crazy beekeepers would do, we decided to split our hive.
We ran out and bought the few things we needed and went about splitting our hive. Basically when you split a hive you take some of the bees from the orginal hive and put them in a new hive with the new queen. You leave her in her cage for a few days so the bees accept her as theirs and then you release her and you’ve got yourself another hive of bees.
Now of course, nothing is as simple or as easy and it sounds on paper or in our heads. There are a lot of steps involved in splitting the hive, the most tedious task being finding the old queen to make sure she’s not in the frames you move over to the new hive.
After searching and searching we finally found her (she is unmarked). She was of course not in the same spot she’s been every other time we’ve checked our hive, which made us a little nervous at first. But we finally found her and put her safe and sound back into her old hive.
The smoker comes in quite handy during these times since it keeps the bees occupied while you’re trying to work. Since we were in the hive for so long looking for the queen we were glad we had it around.
We then moved some frames over to the new hive and put the new queen cage in. Dave suggested we wait 4 days to release her, so today’s the day we plan on doing that. If they accept her, which they should, we’ll how have hive #2 at Chiot’s Run. The one thing we have to worry about is that both of our hives can build up enough reserves of honey and pollen for the winter. We plan on feeding them some sugar syrup through the dry nectar flow in July-Aug so give them the best chance of survival.
So we now have 2 hives at Chiot’s Run. We hope they both are strong going in to winter, if not we may combine them again for better winter survival chances. We haven’t even named the first one and now we have another.
Have you ever done anything crazy where you had no idea what you were doing but went ahead and jumped in with both feet?
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Checking on the Ladies
This past Saturday we did a hive check on the ladies. I figured you’d all be wanting an update on them so I took some photos for you. We removed all of the frames from the brood box (that’s what they call the bottom boxes on the hives where the bees live). We checked each frame to see how much of it the bees had covered with comb and how much contained capped larvae.
What you see on the left hand side of this frame is capped brood, those are baby bees that are forming. On the right hand side you can see the empty hive cells, those are bees that have hatched out already.
We were super excited to see that we had our first batch of hatched bees! That is a good sign for sure. We even got to see one bee chewing her way out of her cell. We also spotting the queen, which is much easier now that we’ve gotten the hang of it since she’s not marked.
We’re quite excited at how well the ladies are doing. We added a new brood box because they had just about filled up the bottom one entirely, so now our hive is taller. It’s very exciting to see them doing so well. I’ve been spotting the ladies at work about the yard when I’m out working. It’s kind of nice to see them every now and then.
Anyone else noticing the pollinators this spring now that things are starting to bloom?
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Setting up our Bee Hive
Yesterday afternoon we moved the ladies outside (for those of you that didn’t visit yesterday, read about the ladies here). We carried the hive outside when it was warm and set up in the spot we picked at the back of our property.
We chose this location because we are surrounded by woods and this is the least likely spot for our bees to bother any neighbors.
I tell you what, this bee suit cracks me up every time I see it. It kind of looks like a space man landed in the back yard.
The ladies were much more active today since it was warmer. You can see them all clustering around the opening where we had the feeding jar (we removed the jar for this photo).
We set the hive up just like it was in the garage. Tomorrow morning when it’s still chilly we’ll take off the bottom box and remove the original cage that they came in. We removed the covering from the door and replaced it with a smaller one, allowing them access to the outside, but not opening it up too much so predators don’t get in.
The ladies sure were happy to get out and stretch their wings.
They were all taking their orientation flights. Bees take short trips that get progressively longer to orient themselves to the position of their new hive. I was out working later and some of the ladies were getting quite brave in their trips out, they were buzzing by me in the front yard.
So does our experience convince anyone else to try keeping bees?
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Installing a Package of Bees
Yesterday afternoon we headed over to Wooster, OH to pick up the new addition to the Chiot’s Run Family. We now have an extra 10,000 ladies in the household. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, we got our bees! We picked them up from Dave at Ohio Honey Farms, he has a few hives in his front yard (and this is only a small portion of them).
On our way home Mr Chiot’s looked at me and said, “This has the makings of a horrible nightmare. The story would go something like this, ‘I picked up my package of bees and all was going well. I heard something in the back of the car and then a swarm of bees attacked my face. I ran off the road into a ditch ….'” We had a good laugh about that on our way home.
When we arrived home we proceeded to follow Dave’s instructions for, “the easy way to install a new package of bees”. It’s much different than the way the books tell you to do it. We decided his way sounded great, and since he’s a veteran beekeeper we figured he knew what he was talking about.
First we pried to lid off of the box of bees, then we removed the can of sugar syrup and the queen cage (the queens come in their own little cage inside the bigger cage of bees). Then you put the small wooden lid back on to keep the bees inside until you want to release them.
Then the box of bees is placed in an empty super on top of the bottom board of the hive (lid on it’s removed after we get the queen cage suspended above). This process takes the place of banging the box of bees and then dumping them into the hive, this seemed like a much “nicer” option both for us and the bees.
We taped a piece of wood over the opening of the hive to keep the bees inside until we move them outside (this afternoon when it’s warm).
We then proceeded to hang the queen cage in a super with frames (the part the bees build comb on) above the empty box that has the bee cage in it. We wired her in so that the bees could still reach her. She will be released into the hive in 3 days (thanks for the question Christy).
Her cage gets placed over to the side so that the jar of sugar syrup that you put on top to feed them doesn’t drip on her and get her wet.
After placing the super with the queen on top of the box that has the bee cage in it, remove the lid from the box of bees below, then place a the inner hive cover with a jar of sugar syrup on top so that the bees have something to eat.
Then you put an empty box or two (we used 2 because they were small ones) and then the hive cover to keep them warm and to keep them inside.
It was a much easier process than we were expecting, thanks to Dave’s great installation instructions and the cold weather which makes the bees pretty lethargic.
Mr Chiot’s says, “Bee suit is optional”. We only have one bee suit, so I wasn’t wearing one (I decided I didn’t want one, I’m going to be brave and do without). We only had 10 bees that “escaped” when we opened the box, and they were all caught and put into the hive. So our bees are quietly tucked in the garage, waiting for us to put them outside later today when it warms up. We checked on them at midnight last night and all of the bees were out of the original box and clustering around the queen cage just like they’re supposed to.
We’re trying to come up with a name for our hive, any great suggestions?
