Bee Disappointed

I have been checking on the bees all winter.  Every warm day there were always lots flying around.  When I would feed them, I could see lots in the hive.  

Then today when I walked by the hive I just saw flies.  That's not good. 

I took the hive apart and found all the bees dead. 

The frames were all empty, no brood, no honey, just empty comb.  I wasn't surprised about no honey because we had gotten them so late in the fall.  But no brood seems to mean that there was a queen failure.  I also never got around to doing the mite treatment and we had that windy 13 degrees last weekend.  Maybe it was a combination of everything.  It is a big disappointment. 
 

Bee House Keeping

The temperature got up to 50 today.  The warmest in a long time.

I noticed the bees were out and about. 

But on closer inspection, there were lots of dead bees too. 

And dead bees all on the ground in front of the hive.  Apparently, it is a house keeping chore.  Bees die every day but when it is cold the bees spend their time keeping the hive warm.  On a warm day they can move around more and do some housekeeping chores, like getting rid of the dead ones. 
 

Solving One Problem And Creating Another

We have newish gates at our working pens at BJ's.  The problem with older gates is if water gets in them it can freeze and they bust open. 

To remedy that, the gate makers put in holes at every cross bar and vertical support.  

Well, that just makes a perfect home for bees and wasps to move in. 

J has been stung twice this year and I have gotten stung once.  

Today we remembered the bee spray. 

After a  couple of laps around the field we were successful in getting the cows up.

J sorted out the replacement heifers, first calf heifers and a couple of possible problem cows to put in a field near the barn in case they have any trouble calving.  Then we loaded up 2 open heifers, a cow that lost a calf and a cow with a vaginal prolapse that I stitched last week, and brought all of those to the house.  Fall calving is suppose to start September 1st. 
 

Bees Again

A client recently dropped off some honey at the clinic with instruction that when the honey bear was empty, let them know and they would bring more.  I asked if they ever sold the bees.  I got a phone call a couple of weeks later that they had a nuke ready and I could come have it.  Wow!  Of course I went the next day.  He gave me and hour and a half of instructions which probably wasn't enough.  But he also gave me his card and said call with any questions.  

First, we were suppose to set the nuke on top of the hive where we wanted it so the bees would imprint on the new location.  After a few days we were ready to trasfer them to the new hive body. 

The bee man changes his mind a couple of times on how to arrange the frames.  He ended up with 2 new 1 old, 1 new, 4 old, 2 new. J was to look for the queen but he said he didn't know what to look for so didn't really try too hard. 

Even with smoking, I had to back up a bit. 

I think everything went well. 

They are now getting use to their new home.  Now I have to order a bee feeder because it is pretty late in the season and they need to get on with making enough honey for the winter.  I also need a vaporizer and some oxalic acid to treat for mites.  This is to be done in September and December.  Maybe we will be able to keep this hive going. 

I asked how much for the nuke and he said it was free.  I found out his wife use to ride and show horses and now she has a shop where she sells Breyer horses, so I thought I would put a Wrangler painting in the nuke when I return it.  
 

Tempting Bees

 As you probably remember, all our bees died out this winter.  But they left us with hives full of honey and comb.  So I decided to try to see if I could tempt a swarm into showing up and taking up house keeping.   I have been waiting for the weather to warm up, which it finally has, YAY!

 I took one of the hive bodies and did a sort of checker boarding.

 I put in some new frames, wax coated black plastic,

 some drawn comb,

 and some honey.

I also moved the potential bee yard to the other side of the house, hoping it would be less out of the wind in winter.  And I made a stand, you can see there is room for expansion.  Now what bee wouldn't be  happy here?

Bee Hive Autopsy

It was a sad, sad day.  The weather was warm and I was cleaning around the bee hives.  But I wasn't seeing any bees.  They should have been flying around with temperatures in the high 60's, but nothing.   So I took a lid off.  

 And found nothing but dead bees.

 And more dead bees.

 All three hives, dead.

 I looked up some information and it said when the bees are head first in the cells, they may have starved.  But the thing is, there was at least 30 to 40 pounds of honey in each hive.  Another theory is since it stayed so cold for so long, the bees weren't able to move to where there was more honey without freezing. 

They also may have been weakened by the Varroa mite.  We have never treated for it before, maybe we should start if we get some new bees.  I am hoping that someone will let us know about a swarm.  The honey in the frames is still good and the bees would have a head start.  Very depressing after such a wonderful harvest in the fall. 

Official Count

I have finished straining and bottling the honey.

 It looks a nice light color this year.  Still plenty of sticky clean up to do.

But the total volume was just a little over 3 3/4 gallons. Yay!

Making Up For Last Year

The bees did it!  We have honey this year.  I don't know what is going on in that first hive, no honey there. 

 They didn't make us any last year either.  They are very calm bees but I am disappointed in their work ethic.

 Now the second hive was one J was able to capture last year when a friend found a swarm in their cow pasture.   These are very aggressive bees.  J got 2 stings through the leather gloves and I had to retreat to inside the house.   The horses that were very curious up to this point even left when J was working on this hive.

 But they made some beautiful honey.  The third hive was a swarm from this spring and they had honey too.  They must have swarmed from the first hive because they were on the mean side too.

J had to retreat to the trees for a bit to get them off of him.  We did learn that you should not leave the super out for very long after transferring the frames.  The bees got right back on it even with it being out in the yard.  We ended up having to put them in the back of the truck and I drove up and down the driveway until the majority of the bees gave up.  We then carried the supers to the garage where over the next hour or so the bees started collecting at the windows so we could let them out.  Then this morning they were still flying around just outside the garage.  I haven't finished straining the honey yet but this is our biggest haul yet.

No Honey Yet

Our bees seem to be really good at making more bees (3 swarms this year) but are slacking in the making honey department. 

 Our newest hive looked very busy so I thought J should go ahead and add a honey super to it.

 That went fine.

 So while he was all suited up, he checked on the other two hives.  And what a disappointment to see no drawn comb or honey started in either one.   I am hoping that it is still just early and since it has been so wet maybe that has stalled production some.

Anyway, J was glad to have the suit on.  Since we were just peeking in the hives and not really doing anything he didn't bother to use a smoker.  You can see they got a little angry.  Maybe I'll have him suit up again in July and check their progress again.

Second Swarm

Coming home from Church Sunday I noticed something funny in the little maple tree in Draper's lot.

 On closer inspection we saw that it was another swarm of bees.

 They are  amazing little creatures, hanging on all day through a terrible wind and rain storm.  We were just not prepared to deal with another swarm and our regular bee man didn't want them but gave us the name of someone else.

 So a new bee man came out to get this swarm.

 He said it was just the height he liked to deal with.

At this point J decided he was a little to close to the action.  After a few minutes most of the bees were crawling up into his nuke.  He offered to get it back to us but we didn't have a new hive.   Guess I will have to order another one if we want to keep expanding.  Maybe we could even learn how to do splits to avoid swarming.

Two Delays

So Friday was suppose to be a day of light cleaning and getting ready for the wedding rehearsal.and rehearsal dinner.  But we live on a farm.  Nothing ever goes as planned.  The problems started off in the morning after J had checked the cattle at our farm up the road.  There was a cow that was just starting to think about calving the evening before.  When J checked on her Friday morning she was in the same location, no calf and no apparent signs of labor.  In our experience this is usually trouble in the form of a backwards calf.   We got her up and I check and sure enough, backward but the legs were extended back which made things much better than if they had been forward.  I got the chains on while J went to get the truck.  We had left it where the cow started out because we had to drive her to the working pens on foot.  By the time he got back I had the calf 1/2 way out.  He jumped in and we got it pulled.  There was still a heart beat but we never got it to take a breath.  I even tried mouth to mouth to no avail.  We did have a twin we were bottle feeding so we drove back to the house to get it, skinned the dead calf and tied the hide to the graft.  Usually the cow will accept a graft better if it smells more like her own.  She ended up taking it but it was several hours later.   Anyway, after all of that it looked like I was the one that had been pulled out of the back of the cow. 

 Next up was J mowing the yard.  We were still trying to spiff up the house and yard since 40 family members would be coming over after the reception the next day.   The cypress trees are right next to the bee hives and so far that is where they have always swarmed to.   J, unfortunately, didn't see the swarm until he ran into it with he face while mowing with the riding mower.  At first he had no idea what happened.  Then the bees started stinging and he started swatting, finally jumping off the mower and running to the house.

 Since I had a hive body ready, we went ahead and tried to catch the swarm.  I thought the box was too far from the branch for a good shake so we raised it up with some buckets and a board.

 That worked much better and J got a good shake on the branch and most went in the box.

 And while he had his suit on he went ahead and added a honey super to one of the other hives.

After a few hours and some more flying around the bees finally ended up in the hive.  So if everything works out there, we will have 3 hives.
Not quite what we had planned the day before V's wedding.

Bee Prepared

With bees it is better to have and not need than the other way around.  

 If the temperature is over 65 then the bees can be active.  Last week we had a few of those days and we saw a lot of bees from both hives coming and going.  There can still be plenty of bad weather before spring but it looks like both hives have made it through the winter.

So to bee on the safe side, I went ahead and ordered more bee stuff.  This way we are  ready in case there is a swarm or if the nectar flow is good and we need more supers.  I ordered a full complete hive and 3 more supers.   Since we didn't get any honey last year we are really hoping for a good bee season this year.

Beautiful Day For A Ride

J and I took off Sunday for a 3 1/2 hour trail ride.  The weather was perfect and the trails were in great shape.  

Otoelene worked on being brave and went in the front for most of the ride.

We had 3 gates to open and shut.  They are hung and latched so they can be done from horse back.  Otoelene was great with them all.

J said this was the best Brother has done all year.  I attributed to the fact that I had ridden him to tune him up for the horse show last weekend.  

He just went right along with his head down and relaxed the whole time.  

He did take the lead through the range lands.

J spotted this hornet's nest along the way.  It was far enough off the trail to not be a bother. 

Another wonderful day out with the horses.