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Honey Bees: Top Ten Checklist for Spring Beekeeping

In this posting I cover the steps you need to prepare your hives for Spring.  

This weekend the temperature was in the 60's Fahrenheit again and the bees were actively bringing pollen and nectar back to the hive.  I decided it would be a good time to check on the colony and make a decision as to whether or not to add the first honey super.  

I opened both of my hives and the news was very good; both colonies have capped brood in them.  That means that the queens have survived the Winter and are still producing.  One colony was actually still pretty full with honey so I removed a few of the frames and replaced them with new ones which will provide the bees with some additional space for additional. I also replaced one frame in the other hive that had a damaged top bar.  

Last Fall, I noticed that small hive beetle had found their way into both hives. During this first inspection, I found a few surviving beetles, but the numbers are still sufficient low that they can't cause much damage. I prefer to use non-chemical mean to control pests, so I'm using a device called a "Beetle Blaster" to deal with these little devils.

If you are unfamiliar with these devices, Beetle Blasters are small traps that get filled with a little vegetable oil and then are placed between two frames.  There are a series of holes in the top of the trap that are large enough for the beetles to crawl into, but too small for bees. Once beetles enter the trap, they fall into the vegetable oil and perish.  The traps are disposable, so once they get filled you just throw them away and replace them with new traps.  I replaced a few of the old Beetle Blasters in my new ones during this first inspection and made a note to order a few more. (Beetle Blasters can be purchased from suppliers like Dadant for $1.50 each.)

Given that the bees looked like they were in good shape and that daytime temperatures are likely to be in the 60's for the foreseeable future, I decided to put supers on both hive. 

Timing Spring Maintenance:

The rule of thumb for bee keepers is to do your spring maintenance once you've past the first frost date for your area.  Technically, that date is March 30th here in Northern California. However, in our part of the country, tree and flower species begin blooming in January, so I generally do my first inspection of my hives at the end of January or beginning of February if the temperature has been warm enough.

If you are unsure about when to do a first inspection and maintenance in your area, reach out to other bee keepers or post a message to an online message board to find out when other experienced bee keepers in your area are working on their hives.

Check List For Spring:

1. If you are in a colder part of the country, remove any additional insulation you placed on the hive in the Fall.
2. Widen the entrance reducer to allow more traffic in and out of the hive.
3. Do a preliminary inspection to see if there is brood in the brood chamber and to determine if pests or diseases are present.  If so, you'll need to plan the appropriate strategy for dealing with them. 
   
4. If the hive is weak, and there are no brood or eggs present, plan on ordering a replacement package for the hive.
   
5. If your bees are OK but are running low on honey, provide additional food. (In my area this has never been an issue but in colder climates it is more common for this to occur)
   
6. Replace any old combs or broken hardware.
7. Clean the bottom board or any debris or dead bees.
8. Add a super and a queen excluder.
9. Place an order for any new woodenware or hardware you might need.
10. If any of your hives are weak or have died out over the winter, place an order for either a new queen or a new package.
    

For Those Considering Becoming Bee Keepers:

If you are thinking about becoming a bee keeper this year, you need to place an order for your first package of bees in the next few weeks.  The bees will be delivered in April.  In addition, check out my prior posting on the equipment you need to keep bees as you will also need to order your bee boxes and other equipment soon in order to have them arrive in time for the beginning of the season.

Medieval bee apiary illustration

Honey Bees In Winter

A few fun facts about how bees survive the Winter.

No doubt, you've noticed that there aren't many bees flying around in the Winter.  Most people assume that the bees hibernate over the Winter months and this accounts for their disappearance.  Actually, this is not what's happening. 

Technically, hibernation is a state of inactivity characterized by lower metabolic rate -- slower breathing, lower body temperature etc.  Bees do not undergo hibernation in Winter.  They remain active inside the hive and keep warm by clustering together in a tight ball and vibrating their wing muscles to produce heat.  This keeps the temperature of the bee cluster above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, with the center of the cluster remaining warmest (85 degrees). 

During the cold months, bees feed off of the honey and pollen they've stored during the warm season and this food provides them with the energy needed to keep the hive warm during the cold days of Winter.  During this period, the queen stops laying eggs and the population of the hive drops, leaving a skeleton crew of bees to take care of the queen and form the core of the bee colony in the Spring.

Where Bees Go In Winter:

During these colder months, bees are not visible to us because they are trapped inside the hive. In order to fly, bees need to maintain a relatively high body temperature.  When the air temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, they are not able to maintain a sufficient body temperature to fly and are, therefore, confined to the hive and not visible to people.

The below photos taken yesterday (December 2, 2011) illustrates that when the temperature is right, bees will emerge from the hive, even during the dead of Winter.  The temperature in Northern California rose into the mid-60's and this allowed the bees to leave the hive and forage for food.  I'm not sure what's in bloom at this time of the year, but the bees were able to bring back pollen which I could see on their back legs.

Here are some fun facts about Winter bees:

• Temperature when the Winter cluster forms: 57 degrees
• Temperature when worker bess can't fly: 50 degrees
• Temperature when a bee cluster dies: minus 40 degrees
• Amount of stored honey required to keep a hive alive in Winter -40 to 60 pounds depending on the length of the Winter in your area.
• Lifespan of a worker bee in Winter: 140 to 320 days (versus just 15-38 days during the summer when they are active)
• Population of bee colony during the Winter: 20,000-30,000 bees versus a Summer population of 50,000-80,000.

How to Make Mead - Wine from Honey

Honey wine, known more properly as "mead," is probably the first alcoholic beverage created by humans, predating the now much more popular wine and beer.  While not commonly available as a commercially produced product, mead is very easy to make at home.  In this posting, I'll tell you a little bit about this ancient beverage and give you basic instructions on how to make it.

If you are a bee keeper and have plenty of "free" honey on hand, mead has one other advantage compared to other beverages you can make like beer or grape wine -- mead is incredibly inexpensive to make.  Honey is the only real ingredient, so outside of the initial equipment costs, the only expense to produce a batch of mead for a bee keeper is a few corks, some yeast and yeast nutrients -- These amount to less than $1 per bottle.

Different Types of Mead

Mead in it's simplest form is fermented honey and water.  This is the type of mead I make.  However, there are many different styles of mead produced around the world.  These add other ingredients including various fruits, berries and spices: 

• Acerglyn - Mead made with the addition of maple syrup.
• Braggot - A Welsh mead made with the addition of hops.
• Capsicumel - mead made with hot chili peppers.
• Cyser - mead made with apple juice.
• Metheglyn - mead with the addition of spices including orange peel, ginger and nutmeg.
  
• Myod - a Russian mead made with the addition of berry juice.
• Sima - a Finish mead made with lemons.
  

 Like wine made from grapes, mead can vary dramatically in it's sweetness depending on the amount of sugars that remains in the beverage after fermentation.  Mead can be dry like as Sauvignon Blanc, sweet like a Riesling, or super sweet like a Sauternes, Moscato or other sweet wine.

Mead Ingredients

The least complicated mead is made from just honey and water.    Sweetness in mead is driven primarily by the amount of honey that is initially added to the fermenter.  A good guideline for the amount of honey required to make a five gallon batch of mead is as follows:

• Dry Mead - between 9 to 12 pounds honey
• Off Dry Mead - 13 to 14 pounds of honey
• Semi-Sweet Mead - 15-16 pounds of honey
• Desert Mead - 12 to 22 pounds of honey (Not added all at once)

I'm not a fan of sweet wines, so my batch of mead is being made with just 9 pounds of honey.  This should produce a dry "white" wine with nice floral notes. 

The other ingredients required include:

• Mead yeast
• Yeast nutrients (Fermaid-K, Go-Ferm, Diammonium Phosphate)
• Preservative for sweet meads (Potassium Metabisulphite, Potassium Sorbate)
  

Equipment

The easiest way to get started is to buy a basic wine making kit from a local or on-line wine making store.  These kits normally cost $90-$150 and include everything you need to get started including the primary and secondary fermentation vessels, a corker to insert corks into bottles, siphon tubes, a fermentation lock (more about this below), cleaning equipment etc. If the kit does not include it, I highly recommend adding a hygrometer and test jar to your equipment list ($10).  This device will help you determine when fermentation has ended and also the percentage of alcohol contained in your mead.

Here are some sources you might want to look at for these beginner kits:

Midwest Supplies

Austin Home Brew

MoreWine

Basic Mead Making

The primary ingredient in mead is honey, but the magic is all created by yeast, single celled micro-organisms.  Yeast literally eat the sugar as food but in the process of doing so create alcohol (the stuff we want) as one of the bi-products of this fermentation.

Fermentation is a completely natural process.  If you leave honey water in a bowl on your kitchen counter, wild yeast cells in the environment would be carried to the bowl through the air, land in the bowl, and begin fermenting the honey.

What makes "mead making" different from the above mentioned "natural process" is that mead makers choose a specific yeast strain to do the fermentation based on the desirable characteristics of that strain and exclude wild yeast strains and other bacteria that can alter the flavor, or even ruin, the mead. 

Ten Steps to Making Mead

1. Since you don't want wild yeast or bad bacteria to spoil your mead, clean and sanitize your fermentation equipment.  A good cleaner used in brewing is called PBW. Once clean, sanitize the equipment using Iodophor, an iodine based liquid that kills bacteria and wild yeast.  PBW and Iodophor can be purchased along with your equipment.
2. Decide on the sweetness level you want (see above for the amount of honey required to produce dry to sweet mead) and add water to your honey to create a total of 5 gallons of honey-water.  Start by placing the honey in your primary fermentation vessel and adding 1 gallon of water.  Stir and then add additional water till you reach 5 gallons.  The water in my area is tastes good so I just use tap water.  If you live in an area that doesn't have good tasting water, use bottled water.
   
3. Add the yeast nutrients per your mead recipe.  This is normally a few teaspoons of various nutrients the yeast need to thrive but are not provided by the honey.  It's like giving your yeast a vitamin to supplement their diet.
   
4. Use your hygrometer to measure the amount of sugar in the honey water.  To do this, take a sample of the liquid and place it in the testing jar.  Now place the hygrometer in the jar so that it floats in liquid.  The higher the hygrometer floats, the more sugar there is in the water.  The hygrometer has markings on its side that allow you to measure sugar content precisely.  "Specific Gravity" and "Brix" are two competing standards for measuring sugar content.  I use specific gravity, but either standard works.  (If you are making a dry mead, the Specific Gravity will be around 1.090 while a sweet mead will have a specific gravity of 1.135 or greater.)
   
5. Add yeast to the mixture and then cap your fermenter using a rubber stopper and fermentation lock.  The fermentation lock is a one-way valve that lets carbon dioxide gas out of your fermenter, but doesn't allow wild yeast or bacteria in.   One uses a fermentation lock because, in addition to alcohol, one of the bi-products of fermentation is carbon dioxide.  The fermentation lock allows this gas to escape, but prevents the aforementioned airborne yeast and bacteria from getting inside your fermenter.  There are several styles of fermentation locks, but all work by filling the lock with some water. (see below photo and video showing fermented carbon dioxide escaping through the lock).
6. Within 24 hours you should notice carbon dioxide from fermentation escaping through the fermentation lock.  The first days of fermentation are the most vigorous and is called "primary fermentation."  During the primary fermentation, the yeast population explodes as they consume the sugar in the honey and reproduce. Primary fermentation is over when the specific gravity of the mead falls to about 1.018.  Primary fermentation takes 7-21 days to complete depending on the amount of honey you use, the strain of yeast and the ambient temperature which effects yeast activity.  
   
   
7. Once this vigorous process is complete, the liquid is siphoned out of the first fermentation vessel and into a second vessel where fermentation is completed.  This process separates the mead from dead yeast cells that will have collected in the bottom of the primary fermenter during the vigorous period and begins the process of clarifying the mead (At this point, the mead will appear very cloudy from all the yeast swimming in the liquid)
   
8. The mead is allowed to further ferment for 3-4 weeks during which point it will reach its finished specific gravity: Dry Mead has a final specific gravity of 0.990 to 1.006, Medium 1.006 to 1.015, Sweet 1.012 to 1.020, and desert +1.020. You'll know your mead has finished fermenting when the specific gravity readings you get don't change for three or four days. If you're interested in knowing the alcohol content of your mead, you can use one of many online tools to calculate this value as long as you know the starting and ending specific gravity.  The difference between these numbers represents the amount of sugar that has been converted to alcohol. 
   
9. At this point, certain additives are mixed into the mead depending on the specific recipe and type of mead you are making.  For example, more honey is added to dessert meads, an acid might be used to add better balance the flavor of the mead, and finally, inhibitors (potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulphite) are added to stop the fermentation process and prevent any wild micro-organisms in the mead from taking over while in the bottle.  The inhibitors are important because you don't want fermentation to occur once the mead is bottled.  Further fermentation would cause carbon dioxide to build up within the bottle and could cause them to explode.
10. The final step is to bottle the mead by syphoning it into clean, sanitized wine bottles and corking these with the corking device included in your starter kit.

Like grape wine, mead improves with age but can be consumed immediately.

For more detailed instructions, recipes and information about mead making, check out the following web sites:

• GotMead.com - There's a wealth of information at this site, but it's not always easy to find.  The amount of information can be overwhelming for newcomers.
• TraditionalMead.com - a web site for purists.  No adding berries or spices here, just honey.
  

Beware of Store Bought Honey: Another Reason To Keep Bees

My daughter is a big consumer of honey, using it to sweeten drinks and even to put on hamburgers instead of ketchup, if you can believe it.  Two years ago, I put bee hives in our backyard so I could keep her supplied with her favorite sweetener and as a family hobby. However, a recent article by Food Safety News provides compelling reasons for producing your own honey or buying it at the farmers market.

More Than 75% of Store Bought Brands Flunked the Test

According to tests done by Food Safety News, more than three-fourths of honey brands purchased at grocery and club stores had been ultra-filtered and contained no pollen.  Without pollen, these products do not meet the standard for what is considered honey in the United States.  Filtering out pollen from honey adversely effects both its taste and its nutritional content, but ultra-filtered honey is a tale-tell sign of more concerning problems; specifically, adulterated and contaminated honey.

Adulterated and Contaminated Honey

Most of the honey sold in the United States in now sourced from other countries including China and India.  In order to have a price advantage, some suppliers from these countries have been cutting real honey with cheaper sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, cane sugar, or one of  13 other illegal sweeteners.  Furthermore, the actual honey from these countries is often contaminated with antibiotics, pesticides and heavy-metals, making them a health hazard. 

The Pollen Connection

Natural honey contains pollen from plants that are local to the place where the bees produced it.  Samples of honey taken from different countries, or even regions within a country, will have different pollen profiles that can be used to identify the place or origin, much in the same way fingerprints can be used to identify individuals.

Suppliers of adulterated or contaminated honey know this.  To prevent adulterated or contaminated honey from being traced back to them, these suppliers ultra-filter it to remove the pollen grains. Since ultra-filtration serves no beneficial purpose, (doesn't improve flavor, perceivable clarity or nutrition of the honey) ultra-filtered honey should be viewed as highly suspicious and a "smoking gun" for potentially adulterated or contaminated honey.

Where to Buy Your Honey

The Food Safety News analysis showed that most supermarkets, drug and club stores carry brands that have been ultra-filtered.  If you buy honey from these retailers you have a 75% chance of getting ultra-filtered honey.

In stark contrast to this, samples taken from farmers markets and "natural" stores such as Trader Joe's, PCC and WholeFoods are likely to be safe - none of the samples tested by Food Safety News from these retailers were ultra-filtered.  My advice to those buying honey is as follows:

1. Your safest option is to buy locally produced honey at a farmers market or from a local bee keeper.
   
2. If you don't have access to a farmers market, buy honey from a natural food grocery store.

Produce Your Own

One final option is to produce your own honey. If you would like to learn more about bee keeping, see some of my other postings on the topic including:

• What Equipment You Need To Keep Bees
• Ten Steps for Installing Bees In A Beehive
• What You Get When You Buy A "Package" of Bees
  

You can be 100% certain that your homemade honey has not been adulterated with other sweeteners or doped with antibiotics.  Assuming you don't live near a toxic waste site, you can be pretty darn sure your own honey will also be free of heavy metals as well. 

In candor, you can't be 100% certain that your honey will not contain some pesticides because bees forage over a range of 6 miles and may collect pollen and nectar from neighboring yards that have been treated.  However, your home-made honey doesn't differ in this respect from honey sold at the farmers market because their bees may also be located in areas that are adjacent to land that has been treated with pesticides.  Unless pesticides are completely banned, this will be a risk for honey regardless of who produces it. 

That said, I feel our suburban neighborhood is still a safer place to keep bees than a foreign country where there are few to no controls on the type and amount of pesticides used.  

Getting Your Bee Hive Ready For Winter - A Checklist

In this posting, I provide a check list of things you need to do to prepare your hives for the cold months of Winter. 

Two weeks ago, I harvested the last of my honey supers and added another 22 pounds of honey to the pantry.  That brings my total haul for the year to 60 pounds.  At that time, I checked the hives and all looked in good order and the hive beetles that invaded one of my hives seems to be under control - I use a trap filled with apple cider vinegar to lure the invaders to their doom.

Now that we are into October, its time for me, and most other bee keepers, to get things in order so that our bees survive the Winter.

Here's the Winter check list:

1. If you haven't done so already, remove any remaining supers.  During the Winter months, the population of the colony will drop and they will cluster in the center of the hive to keep warm.  Removing the supers keeps the size of the hive small so that bees have an easier time keeping the temperature warm enough to ensure their survival.  If you harvest honey from these supers and plan to keep the comb for next year, the best way to clean it out of any excess honey prior to storage is to let the bees do the work.  Just set the hive boxes in your yard and let the bees "rob" any remaining honey; the bees will leave the comb completely clean and ready for storage. (See below)
2. Inspect the hive to make sure that the bees have enough stores for Winter.  In cold climates, a bee hive will need about 60 pounds of honey to make it through the Winter.  In warmer climates like Northern California where I live, 30-40 pounds will do the trick. You can estimate the amount of honey the colony has by visual inspection -- A deep hive box filled with capped honey will contain about 60 pounds of honey. A medium hive box holds 35 pounds and a shallow hive box holds 25 pounds.).
3. If the bees are short on honey for the Winter, feed them sugar syrup.  (To make this syrup, boil 2.5 quarts of water and then add 10 pounds of sugar.  Remove from the heat, and stir till all the sugar is dissolved.)  I don't medicate my bees, but if you do, wait till the syrup has cooled before adding any treatments.  Now place the syrup into a feeder and leave this on till the bees stop taking the syrup, or until the temperature drops and the bees form their Winter cluster.
4. During the Winter, water can condense on the hive cover and drip down onto the bees, lowering the temperature of the cluster and potentially killing the bees.  To prevent this, provide ventilation that will remove any excess moisture.  Some bee keepers place a few pop-sickle sticks under the four corners of the inner cover to provide a gap to let air into the hive.  I've modified my inner-cover with a notch that allows moisture to escape.  I've covered this with wire mesh to allows air in, but keeps mice and other critters out. (see below)
   
5. Add a mouse guard to the front entrance to prevent invasion.
6. If you are in a very cold climate, you can provide additional warmth to your hive by wrapping it in black tar paper.  The black paper absorbs sunlight and warms the hive.  (Because I live in a temperate climate, I've never done this and can't provide any guidance on how to best apply the paper)

If all goes well, your bees will begin emerging from the hive on a warm day in Spring.  Here in Northern California we do get a bloom of flowers in January.  If the temperature is warm enough, it's possible to see bees forage for this early supply of nectar, even in the dead of Winter.

 

Photo: During my most recent inspection, I found that both hives have more than enough honey to get through our temperate Northern California Winters.

Ultra-Breeze: A Better Bee Suit

In this posting, I review the Ultra-Breeze Bee suit.

I've been using a standard jacket and veil to protect myself during hive inspections.  In general, it has worked well for me, but the jacket can gap in the back, particularly if I bend down to place a hive box on the ground.  A few weeks ago, just such a gap occurred and a bee got under the suit and gave me nice sting.  At that point, I decided to move from a jacket to a full suit.

In candor, I probably could have gotten a standard bee suit from Brushy Mountain, Mann Lake or other supplier, but I decided to buy a better grade suit from Ultra-Breeze.  I had learned about the Ultra-Breeze some time ago from a posting on the Beemaster.com Forum, but was not able to purchase one because they were back ordered.  This time I was more fortunate and my new bee suit arrived last week.

Ultra-Breeze Construction

The Ultra Breeze suit is quite different than other suits on the market.  It offers greater protection from stings and also much better ventilation.  These advantages derive from the Ultra-Breeze's unique construction.  The suit is made from three layers of fabric.  The outer and inner layers are made of a fine fishnet material.  Sandwiched between these two layers is a single layer of spongy plastic mesh.  This inner layer serves to increases the overall thickness of the bee suit to about 1/4 inch.  The thickness of the suit keeps bees well above your skin so there's less chance of a successful sting. However, the suits is made of porous materials so it provides a high degree of ventilation (see detail photo below)

If you are particularly concerned about stings -- perhaps you have lots of hives or have to deal with Africanized bees -- or, if you live in a climate that gets very hot in the summer, the Ultra-Breeze is really worth considering.  However, buyers should consider placing their orders well in advance of the season.  The Ultra-Breeze appears to be hand-manufactured in Oklahoma by a small family business.  They make a limited number of suits and can get back-ordered. 

Photo: My son assisting me dressed in a full bee suit.  Sadly, the Ultra-Breeze does not come in kid sizes.

Purchasing

Full Ultra-Breeze suits cost $259 and jackets are $163.  You can purchase them directly from the Ultra-Breeze web site.

Phot0: Ultra-Breeze Bee Suit

Ten Steps To Installing Bees In Your Beehive

In my last posting, I described what you get when you purchase a "package" of bees.  In this posting, I'll tell you had to get your new hive up and running.

Prior to receiving your bees, you should have your hive equipment prepared and ready to go.  For more information on this subject, check out my posting on Equipment You Need To Keep Bees.  When your package arrives, the queen will be in a queen cage located within the larger cage or package.  The exit hole from which you will extract the worker bees  from this larger package will be on the top.  It will be blocked by the can of sugar syrup which is used to feed the bees during transit and also a barrier so that the bees can't escape.  The queen will be located within the package in a separate queen cage.  Generally, the queen cage will be hanging from the top of the package with a wire or plastic tab. Now the fun begins.

Installing Bees In Your Hive

1. The bees will be clinging to the top of the package near the can of sugar water.  If you remove the can, the bees will immediately begin to fly out.  To slow them down, bump the package firmly on the ground.  The bees will fall to the bottom of the package.
2. Remove the sugar syrup can which is blocking the exit door to the package.
3. Remove the queen cage from the inside of the package and cover the package exit hole with whatever is handy to keep the rest of the bees inside.  I use a ceramic tile.
4. Now remove the cork that covers the candy plug on the queen cage.  In some cases, your queen cage may arrive with a cork plug but no candy.  If this is the case, remove the cork and plug the hole with a marshmallow.  Be careful not to let the queen escape.
5. Suspend the cage between two frames in the center of the hive with the candy end facing upward.  If you have a screen and wood cage, the screen should be oriented so that it is not facing the comb surface.  This allows worker bees to attend to the queen through the screen until she is released.
6. Bump the package down again to knock the bees to the bottom of the cage.  Now remove the cover and spill the bees into the hive.  You should also spill some onto the queen cage.  (To make this process easier, remove a few frames from the hive and then replace these once the bees are in the hive.)
   
7. Cover the hive.  In my case, I use a top hive feeder.  This is a device that feeds the bees sugar syrup for the first few weeks while they build up their own food supply.  I then put the outer cover to the hive on top of the feeder.
8. Since some bees will still be clinging to the inside of the package, leave it near the entrance to the hive.  Overnight, the remaining bees should find their way into the hive.
   
9. After a week, check the hive to make sure the queen has been released.
   
10. Leave the bees undisturbed for the next 2 weeks, with the exception of adding additional sugar syrup.

Below is a video on how to install a bee package created by Penn State University.  They use a different style of feeder than I do, but the basic procedure for installing the bees is the same.

 

How To Install Bees In A Beehive Part I

Once the almond crop is pollinated in Northern California, commercial bee suppliers break up the hives and sell bees in "packages" to anyone interested in starting a new colony.  This generally happens in early to mid-April.  Last week, I picked up two bee packages and created two new hives.  In this first in a series of two postings, I'll explain what you get when you order a package of bees.

Components of the Bee Package

When you buy bees from a commercial supplier, they arrive in a small crate made of wood and wire mesh.  The package contains 3 pounds of bees (10,000-12,000 bees), a queen held in a separate queen cage, and a can of sugar syrup that has been punctured with a finishing nail and hung upside down inside the crate.  The sugar syrup supplies the bees with food and water during their journey to your home.  It escapes through the holes and clings to the lid of the can due to surface tension; the bees then lap up the sugar syrup as needed. 

  Photo Below Shows Can & Queen Cage In Place

As mentioned earlier, bee packages are created by breaking up a large colony of bees into many small packages which are then sold to bee keepers.  Large bee colonies can contain 60,000 bees, so hives can be broken up into many such packages.  However, bee keepers need both worker bees and a queen to establish a new hive and hives only have 1 queen.  So to get the additional queens necessary to create packages, commercial bee suppliers breed queens separately and then add one queen to each package. 

When your package of bees arrive, the queen is isolated in a smaller cage that is within the larger cage containing the rest of the bees.  Queens are kept in this separate cage because it takes time for the worker bees to get accustomed to the new queen.  During the transition period, which generally is about 1 week, the workers get used to the smell of the new queen (her pheremones) and learn to accept her. If the queen were introduced into the colony without this transition period, the workers would view her as an invader of the colony and kill her. 

There are several different styles of queen cages but all about 3 inches x 1 inch in size.  Some are made of wood and wire, others are made of plastic mesh.  Whatever the material, these queen cages have a whole in the top that will eventually allow the queen to escape.  The entrance is plugged with either a piece of hard candy or a marshmallow.  The bees eat through the candy over the course of several days.  By then, they have gotten accustomed to the queen and she joins the rest of the colony and begins to lay eggs.

In my next posting, I'll describe how to install a bee package into a hive.

How To Combine Two Bee Hives

In this posting, I cover how and why to combine two bee hives.

This week end, I opened my bee hives to check on them.  One hive was doing fine.  I could find plenty of capped brood cells, indicating that the queen was alive and laying eggs.  Sadly, there was no evidence of this in my second hive and it was clear that the colony was limping to its death.

To replace this second hive, I've ordered a new "package of bees" from a local supplier.  The package contains a new queen and 3,000 bees to attend to her.  When installed in the hive, the bees will forage for nectar and pollen to feed themselves and the queen.  With any luck, the colony will grow rapidly in the Spring. 

If left on it's own, the current queenless hive would just fade away as the bees age and die with no younger bees to replace them.  In every sense, this would be a waste, so I decided to combine the bees from my weak hive with those in my strong hive.  The idea is to boost the population of the strong hive with an influx of several thousand new bees.

In the wild, colonies don't mix and a sudden influx of bees from one colony to another would create a war between the two.  In order to combine two colonies successfully, one needs to accustom the bees to each other and to the scent of the queen in the strong hive. 

Amazingly, this is fairly easy to do and can be accomplished in just a few days.  Essentially, you place the weak colony on top of the strong colony and separate them with a barrier that they will chew through in a few days.  Those few days are sufficient to allow the bees to become accustomed to each other. 

To accomplish this, open the strong hive and place a sheet of newspaper over the top hive box.  Then make a few slits in the newspaper to allow air to flow through it and provide a site for the bees to easily chew through. Now place the brood box from the weak colony on top of this newspaper and cover with an inner and outer cover. 

A few days later, I opened the hive and removed the remaining newspaper. Voila! The hives were combined.

Best Bee Hive Smoker

 In this posting, I review the Bee-Z-Smoker, a smoker that makes working in your bee hives easier.

A smoker is an essential part of any bee keepers kit.  A traditional smoker is really nothing more than a metal can with a bellows attached.  You place some kind of combustible inside the can, light it, and use the bellows to keep the fire going and drive smoke through a spout in the top of the can.

Smoking bees keeps them calm and makes it easier for the bee keeper to work inside the hive.  Actually, the presence of smoke causes the bees to go into defensive mode.  The presence of smoke leads the bees to believe that that a forest fire is occurring; they enter the hive and begin gorging themselves on honey in advance of an evacuation.  The bee keeper has an opportunity to work in the hive because the bees are preoccupied.  Additionally, once the bees have stuffed themselves on honey, they have a more difficult time bending their abdomens to inflict a sting.  So the bee keeper is also less likely to take a hit.

Lighting a smoker is fairly easy in concept.  Just load the can with pine needles, twine, leaves, wood chips, cardboard or any other combustible and then light it with a match.  In practice, it's actually a lot more difficult to do, so many bee keepers use a propane torch to light their smokers. 

One might think it's easy to light a smoker with a propane torch, but I've found this to also be fairly challenging. Whenever, I place the tip of the torch into the can it either causes a huge flair-up or the torch extinguishes itself.  So I decided to investigate alternatives on the Internet and found the Bee-Z-Smoker from Stinger Innovations, Inc.

The Bee-Z smoker uses an electronic system to ignite wood shavings that you insert into the can.  It works on the same principle that used in your toaster.  Electricity is run through a set of bare wires inside the smoker and these heat to cause the wood shavings to catch on fire.  An electric fan inside the Bee-Z handle replaces the traditional bellows and is used to drives smoke through the snout of the can.  The unit is powered by a series of batteries stored in the handle.  The batteries are charged with an adapter that plugs into any electric outlet.

I found using the Bee-Z-Smoker to be quite easy.  It made lighting the smoker much easier than using a match or propane torch.  The only drawback to the Bee-Z is that it's fairly pricey;  a normal smoker costs about $35.  A Bee-Z will lighten your wallet by $149.  Still, I think it's worth it. 

 

One small quibble I have is that the smoker uses a switch to light the wood chips and another to blow the fan.  Two switches is not a problem, but the placement of these controls is counter intuitive in my opinion.  Ignition is accomplished via a trigger switch that you operate with your forefinger.  The blower switch is located on the top of the unit and is driven with your thumb.  In my opinion, it would have made more sense to reverse the functions of these two switches because you will be driving smoke through the unit more frequently than lighting the unit and the trigger switch is easier and more accessible to use.

Updated 1/26/2012:

After reading this posting, the manufacturer contacted me about the aforementioned position of the fan and ignition switches.  Upon reflection, I agree that this is much safer approach.  Below is the explanation....

"We have the switches positioned in their configuration for safety concerns.  When the BEE-Z-SMOKER is dropped, only the fan button will ever engage by accident.  If the heating element switch were on the outside of the handle it could be ‘wedged’ against something when/if it is dropped thereby creating a LARGE fire hazard.  This potential hazard is simply too large to ignore."

Below is a photo of a traditional smoker and the Bee-Z.

 

Hive Boxes: One Size Doesn't Fit All

In this posting, I describe your options for configuring a hive, focusing on the configuration and weight of Langstroth hive boxes.

There are a variety of bee hive options on the market today including the National (popular in the UK), Top Bar (popular in Africa), and Langstroth (the worldwide standard).   Prior to becoming a bee keeper, I researched each of these options and came to the conclusion that the Langstroth is the best option for hobby beekeepers.  (It is a time-tested design, the equipment is widely available and the drawn-out comb can be reused after honey has been extracted, making life a little easier on your bees.) After using, the Langstroth hive for over two seasons, I can say that I remain enthusiastic about this design, but I've changed my opinion on the best way to configure it.

Basic Hive Configuration

A Langstroth hive is created by stacking hive boxes of the same length and width upon each other.  The bottom hive box is used by the bees for rearing brood.  The second hive box sits on top of the first and is given over to the bees for honey storage.  The third and subsequent tiers of hive boxes are used by the bees for additional honey storage.  These boxes function like attic of the house - the bees have enough honey to last the winter stored in the second box, but will store any additional reserves of honey in these upper boxes.   When bee keepers harvest honey, they are taking the additional reserves of honey that are stored away in the attic.

All of the above mentioned boxes have the same length and width so they can be stacked one upon the other.  But the height of these boxes vary.  Traditionally, the Lanstroth hive is configured with two "Deep" hive boxes on the bottom.  These deep boxes are 9 5/8 inches high.  Then there are two options for the boxes that form the "attic."  "Medium" boxes measure 6 5/8 inches deep and "Shallow" boxes measure 5 11/16 inches deep. 

Hive Box Weights

Medium and Shallow hive boxes were created to make bee keeping easier.  These boxes are smaller, and therefore, weigh less than "Deep" boxes when filled with honey.  This makes them easier to pick up and move when doing routine hive inspections or when harvesting honey.  Here is the typical weight of these various hive bodies when filled with honey:

• Deep - 101 pounds (11 pounds wooden box & frames + 90 pounds of honey)
• Medium - 48 pounds ( 8 pounds wooden box & frames + 40 pounds of honey)
• Shallow - 36 pounds (6 pounds wooden box & frames + 30 pounds of honey)

Recommendations

When I purchased my first set of hives, I purchased two Deep boxes to form the core of the hive and two Medium boxes to form the "attic."  At the time, I reasoned that I would not be moving the Deep boxes that frequently, so the weight would not be a problem, particularly since I'm in good health and reasonably strong.  After working with this configuration for two seasons, I've formed a different opinion.  Specifically, a 100 pound box is just too heavy for one adult to manage comfortably.  And if you want to involve kids in bee keeping, the weight is out of the question.

If you are considering adding a hive to your garden for the first time this year, I would recommend using only Medium and Shallow hive boxes.  To provide adequate space for brood and honey storage for your bees, you'll need to use three Medium boxes in place of the two Deep boxes that are normally used in a traditional Langstroth configuration.  You then have the option to use either Medium or Shallow boxes to form the "attic." 

The advantage of using all Medium boxes is that you'll have only one size of frame and foundation throughout the hive, making all the parts interchangeable.  The advantage of using Shallows for the attic is simply that of lower weight.

Since I already own some Deep hive boxes, I plan to keep using these as brood boxes (bottom most tier) since these aren't moved during inspections or harvesting.  I'll then replace the second Deep with two Mediums and use mediums for all subsequent layers.

  

Honey: A Golden Treasure

The BBC produces some excellent science programming.  In a recent Podcast from BBC Discovery, biologist Adam Hart explores the history of bee keeping from ancient times to the present.  The Podcast presented here covers topcis ranging from single source honey to the use of honey in treating wounds.  If you love honey or have an interest in bees, this is well worth a 30 minute listen.

 

PlanterTomato_2_27_2011 Honey

If you liked this Podcast, you might want to subscribe to the BBC Discovery series. 

 

Feed Your Bees Naturally: Best Flowers For Honey Bees

In the lean months of the year, many bee keepers supplement their bees natural diet by supplying them with sugar water and pollen patties.  In this post, I cover some natural alternatives that I plan to try in 2011.

Over the Winter months, bees live on stored supplies of honey and pollen.  In very cold climates, or in cases where the bee keeper has harvested honey aggressively in the Fall, bees may not have enough food to survive the Winter or provide for new brood in the early Spring.  It is fairly common for bee keepers to supplement natural stores with a 2 to 1 mixture of sugar to water and protein supplements.

I was fairly conservative with harvesting this Fall and it looks like the bees have survived the Winter.  In a week or two, I'll open my hives for the first time this season and check to see if any supplements might be required for Spring.  My hope is that I can avoid supplements altogether.  This got me thinking about ways that I could provide bees with the Fall and Spring nectar and pollen sources that would reduce my need for any un-natural intervention.  

I've done some research and here are some plants you can add to your garden that will help your bees.  I've concentrated on those that produce in the Spring and Fall.  Where possible, I've also tried to select dual purpose crops that are useful for both your bees and your garden.

Borage - this is an annual plant that is used medicinally.  This plant can over-winter and provide nectar for bees in the Spring.  It requires full sun.

Echium - a very showy shrub that produces large "spikes" of blue, red, lavender or pink flowers.  There are about 60 species of this plant and they can be annual, biennials or perennials. Echium are mostly for temperate climates (zone 9-11) but you can find some varieties that can survive in zone 6 if you search the Internet.  Echium Candicans (Pride of Madeira) is a perennial that blooms from spring through summer.  Echium Wildpretii (Tower of Jewels) is a huge biennial that blooms in the late spring.  Ecium Vulgare is the most common of the species, but is very prickly and most would consider it a highly invasive weed. Echiums should be planted in full sun and provide bees with both nectar and pollen.

Goldenrod - I'm going to add this perennial plant but grow it in a large pot.  It's considered by many to be a weed and is very invasive.  I have less than fond memories of Goldenrod since I suffered from allergies as a child.  Growing it in a pot will leave me the option to remove this plant if I find my allergies kicking up again.  Goldenrod blooms form mid-Summer through the Fall so it will help bees stock pile nectar for the winter. 

Tansy - This annual plant has an extended blooming season of up to two months beginning in the early Spring.  It provides bees with both nectar and pollen.

White Clover (Melilotus alba) - If your a gardener, white clover packs a double punch; it's a green manure crop and it provides both nectar and pollen for your bees.  Clover is an annual that blooms in the early Spring.

Coltsfoot - A perennial plant that provides nectar and pollen in the early Spring.  Coltsfoot is a medicinal herb that has been traditionally used to make cough suppressants.  Apparently, it is also smoked in Amsterdam since the Dutch government placed additonal restrictions on tobacco in 2008. (Is it me, or are the Dutch crazy?)

Elderberry - A dual purpose perennial bush for your garden, Elderberries can be used to make jellies, desserts and wine.  They flower in Spring, producing nectar and pollen for your bees.

Hazelnut/Filbert - This perennial bush provides prolific quantities of protein rich nuts for you... and for the squirrels if you don't take precautions.  In California, hazelnuts flower in mid-Winter and early Spring and are a good source of pollen for bees.  Hazelnuts are not self-fertile, so you need to plant more than two varieties in your garden.

Bee Keeping: Top Five Things You Need to Do to Prepare for Spring

In this post, I cover the steps you need to take to get ready for bee keeping season.

Here in Northern California, we are seeing daytime temperatures in the upper 50 to mid 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Some flowers are beginning to bloom and the bees are beginning to emerge from the hive to gather nectar and pollen.  In short, it's the start of bee keeping season. 

Here are some things local bee keepers should do to get ready for the season.  Timing for those living in the South (except Florida and southern Texas) and in the coastal area in California,  Oregon and Washington have roughly similar weather to me and, therefore, should be on a fairly similar schedule.

1. Order Woodenware & Foundation - If you are planning on adding an additional hive, now is the time to place an order for woodenware and foundation.  This year, I plan to add one additional hive.  To keep things easier to manage, I've decided to use medium hive bodies for the lower two boxes and for any supers I place on them.
2. Order Bee Packages - Bee packages for our area are normally delivered in early April and suppliers can sell out.  Place your order now.
3. Clean Entrance - Clean off the entrance area of the hive of any dead bees and debris.
4. Repairs - Replace any damaged frames and reinstall foundation if required in supers you stored over the winter. 
5. First Inspection - Get ready for your first inspection of the season.  I'll probably do mine the first or second week of February.  If everything is looking good, I'll add a queen excluder and  honey super.

Active Beehive Video

This year we harvested over 50 pounds of honey from our two beehives.  Not too shabby considering we established these hives this year.

Here's a quick video of the hive when it was most active in July.

 

How To Make A Honey Extractor For About Eighty-Five Dollars Or Less

Earlier this year, I posted about how to make an inexpensive honey extractor.  Here's the improved version and it is still  inexpensive to make -- under $85.

This summer, I created a honey extractor using bicycle rims as the primary component.  For a variety of reasons, it just didn't work and I found myself with uncapped honey frames and no way to extract the honey. 

Well desperation is the mother of invention; with just some wire mesh and a metal paint stirrer I was able to create a two-frame extractor that did a pretty good job (see below).  The original posting on the project can be found at this link:  How to build a Honey Extractor for Twenty-Eight Dollars.

The only drawbacks to this design were that it held only two frames, and I needed to hold the drill and honey extractor while in operation; since filled frames are rather heavy, this solution only worked when harvesting small quantities.  

An Improved Honey Extractor

In this posting I'll tell you how to build an improved honey extractor that will hold four to six frames of honey and is still very easy to use.  In this version, the extractor is made using an 18 inch plywood round, a threaded rod, some bolts and washers to fit on the threaded rod, wire mesh, a wooden crossbeam, a piece of plastic cutting board, Camcote epoxy and some zip ties.  All these are readily available at the hardware store. 

I didn't add up the costs for all these materials, but it's probably under $25 to build the interior component of the extractor.  You can use any container larger than 18 inches to collect the honey during extraction.  If you have some sort of container already, then the whole project will cost you just $25.   

In my case, I decided to buy a used 55-gallon food grade barrel, a 24" plywood round that serves as a cover, 2 screen door handles, and honey gate.  These add an additional $60.  If you decide to add all this, you have a complete honey extractor for under $85.  Not too bad really.

Here's how to Build the Extractor

• Drill a hole in the center of the plywood round.  The diameter of the hole should be the same as the diameter of your threaded rod.  The length of the threaded rod will vary depending on what type of barrel or container you will be using to collect the honey and the amount of rod you have underneath the plywood round. Adjust based on what materials you are using.  In my case, I have about 5 inches of rod under the plywood round and 28 inches above it.
• Place the threaded rod through this hole and secure it to the plywood using a washer and a nut on either side of the plywood.  You want the rod to pass through the plywood and extend beyond it by about 5 inches or more.  The actual amount will depend on your barrel size, so adjust accordingly.  The greater the height of the rod beneath the plywood, the more honey you will be able to collect before draining it from the barrel or other container. (note: screwing the washer and nut on from the bottom is fairly quick, but from the top down will take a while.  You'll need patience.) 
• Screw a nut cap like the one shown below on the bottom of the threaded rod.

• Now cut wire mesh so that it is 21 inches high.
• Bend one piece of 21" high wire mesh into a cylinder that is 12 inches in diameter.  Connect the ends using zip ties.
• Place the 12-inch diameter cylinder on top and in the center of the plywood round.  Mark the circumference of the circle with a pencil.
• You will now create holes that will allow you to connect this cage to the plywood round.  You do this by drilling holes into the plywood that allow you to hold down the bottom wire of the mesh cage using zip ties.  To do this, drill 4 sets of two holes.  Each set of holes should be on opposite sides of the circle you drew that corresponds to the circumference of the center cage.  You should place the 4 sets of holes at roughly even intervals around the circumference. (See below)
• Place the cage into the center of the plywood round.
• Thread zip ties through one hole, over the bottom wire of the cage and through the second hole.
• Now connect the zip tie so that it holds the wire to the plywood round.  Do this for all four sets of holes.  The center cage should now be held securely to the plywood round.
• Now make another mesh cylinder that 18 inches in diameter using the plywood round as a guide.
• Connect this mesh cage to the plywood round using a staple gun to secure it to the outside of edge of the plywood.
• Cut a wooden crossbar so that it's 18 inches. 
• Drill a hole of the same diameter as your threaded rod in the center of the crossbar and two holes of smaller diameter at either end.
  
• Attach the crossbar to the top of the mesh cages by passing it over the rod and attaching it using zip ties as shown below. (You'll want to pass the crossbar under the top wire of the 12 inch diameter cage, or alternatively, push down the wire a little so that the crossbar passes over it.) 

• Now coat the metal and wood components of the extractor with Camcote.  This is food grade epoxy that deters rust and seals wood.  You can get it at BrushyMountain or other bee supply store.
• When planning this project, I felt that I would need additional stability for the honey frames and cut slots into the plywood round which would allow me to insert the top tab of the frame into the plywood (see below).  After completing this project, I don't believe this is necessary.  But if you decide to also create these, you should add them after drilling the hole for the threaded rod.  You cut a total of 8 slots (2 for each of four frames.  You need two slots per frame because during harvesting you will invert the frames to draw out honey from each side).  To make these slots, mark their location on the plywood round and use a drill to do the preliminary cutting.  Then use a chisel to clean up the slot.

• The container for your extractor is also easy to make.  You just need to cut a hole in the side of the barrel that is the appropriate diameter to accommodate whatever honey gate you purchase.
• Since I used a barrel and the plastic is fairly thin, I reinforced the area where the threaded rod would sit on the bottom of the barrel.  I did this by cutting a piece of plastic cutting board and bolting this piece to the inside bottom of the barrel using four nuts and bolts.  You can get cutting boards from anyplace that sells kitchenware.
  
• Use Camcote to cover and seal the nuts.
• I used a 24 inch plywood round for a cover.  I drilled a hole in the center to accommodate the threaded rod.

Using the Extractor

• Place uncapped frames between the inner and outer mesh cages. 
• Use a drill to spin the threaded rod, being careful not to run the drill so fast as to rip the wax foundation from your frames.  Centrifugal force will cause the honey to spin out of the comb and onto the sides of the barrel.  The honey will then run down the sides and collect at the bottom.
  
• When the first side of the frame is empty, turn the frame around so that the second side of the frame faces outward.
• Use the drill to extract the second side.
• Drain honey from the extractor into your straining bucket when the level of the honey rises to the point where it is touching the bottom of the plywood round.

Now just bottle and enjoy your honey!

If you like this project, let me know by leaving a comment.

Free Template To Create A Customized Label For Your Honey

In this post I provide Adobe Illustrator files that you can modify to make your own customized honey labels.

After harvesting my honey this year, I decided to add a decorative label to make the jars look a bit nicer.  Searching the internet, I found a number of pre-printed labels that beekeepers could customize with a little text, but no service that would allow you to upload a fully customized label and have them printed in small quantities appropriate for hobbyists.

So I decided to design my own labels and print them on my home printer.  Using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop design programs, I created a label that will work on 1 pound squeeze jars or any container large enough to hold a 3.25 inch x 2 inch oval label.

How To Modify The Templates To Create Your Own Design

To create the label design, I used Illustrator to construct the ovals and text elements of the label and Photoshop to edit and adjust the illustrations.  To create your own customized labels, just modify the attached Illustrator files and print them on your own inkjet of laserjet printer. 

I've done most of the heavy lifting, so it should be fairly easy for you to modify the basic design to create your own honey labels if you have and are familiar with Illustrator and Photoshop.  For example, you can change the name of your honey from "Palo Verde Honey Bee Farm" to one of your choosing.  Likewise, if your honey is from clover flowers,  just make a simple text change.  Or use a different illustrations in place of the bee or palo verde tree on my label.  These types of edits should be very easy and save you a lot of time versus creating your own label from scratch.  When you complete your design, flatten the image and save it as a JPG in Photoshop. 

Then copy and past your design into the label stock template that I have also provided.  This template shows you where to place 10 copies of the label onto a 8.5 inch x 11 inch sheet so that they print in the correct spots over the die-cuts in the label stock.(see below). 

Actually, you should adjust the label size to be just slightly larger than the ovals in the black template.  This creates a "bleed area" that compensates for any slight variations in the way your printer prints from sheet-to-sheet.  I did this by creating a new layer in Photoshop for each of the 10 labels on the page:

• I placed the label over the first black template oval in the upper right hand corner of the sheet, then lowered the opacity so I could see the position of the label relative to the black template in the layer beneath it.
• I then increase the label size to be just slightly larger than the black template and positioned it so that it extended over all sides of the black template.  (In Photoshop you can use the Edit/Transform/Scale function to increase the label size)
  
• Once in place, I increased the opacity back to 100%.
• I then duplicated this layer and positioned the second layer over the second black oval in the template.  I did this again for each label on the template.
• I then flattened the entire sheet and saved it as a JPG file for printing.
  

I purchased label stock with 3.25 inch x 2 inch oval die cuts from an online vendor called PlanetLabel.com.  1000 blank labels cost $20-$40 depending on your choice of either un-coated or glossy label stock.

Two Final Notes

• Perhaps it's my printer or my lack of familiarity with adjusting the settings, but I find that I'm not able to print edge-to-edge over the the entire sheet.  This means that the last 2 ovals on the page get cut off.  If the same occurs on your printer, you'll get 8 labels per page versus 10.  For me, this was not a big deal.
• Color management is very tricky business.  If you are adept in Photoshop and Illustrator, you probably already know that the colors you see on your monitor may not be the exact colors you see when your printed are printed labels.  This is due to a variety of factors including differences in the color space between your monitor and printer, the type of stock you select, whether the printer is inkjet or laser etc. etc.  If you have the skill to do so, you can create printing profiles for your monitor and the label stock that will adjust your printer settings so the colors you see on your monitor are very close to what is printed.  If you are not skilled in this area and can't create these profiles, your label colors may differ quite dramatically from what you view on your monitor. 
  

Download Design Template: [Note: The below document is 1.7 MB.   You need to have Adobe Illustrator software to open this file.   At least one person has commented that they are having trouble downloading it.  If you are either successful or unsuccessful, please let me know by posting a comment here.  If there are download issues, I can send the files to you by e-mail.  Click on the link in the upper left hand column of this web site to email me, and let me know your e-mail address, and I'll send you the files. Thanks.]

Download PlanterTomato_HoneyLabelDesign

Download Label Stock Template:

  Label Stock Template

 

 

Scientists Uncover Cause of the Honey Bees Precipitous Decline

The New York Times is reporting that a team of Army and academic researchers have found the culprits causing honey bee colonies to collapse.  Here's a link to the full article.

Beekeeping: How to Make A Honey Extractor For $28

In this posting, I'll tell you how you can make a small scale honey extractor for about $28.

Note: I created an improved version of this extractor and have posted photos and construction details at: Improved How To Build A Honey Extractor

Earlier this year, I began began doing research on Honey Extractors.  These are devices that use centrifugal force to remove honey from the comb. Small scale extractors suitable for hobbyists generally cost over $350 and more productive models can cost over $1000.

Design #1

I searched the net and found a Do-it-Yourself project where a hobbyist made an extractor for about $100 using a barrel, bicycle rims, and a few other supplies. The plans are from a blog called Voice of the Hive.  A photo of the extractor I built using these plans is shown below.

Unfortunately, I found executing the plans to be a challenge.  Not all 55 gallon barrels have the same dimensions, nor are all bicycle rims the same.  These differences and the complexity of the design meant that I had to make design adjustments on the fly. 

Needless to say, on the day I went to extract honey, I experienced problems and had to abandon using this extractor.  Left with uncapped honey waiting to be extracted and no working extractor, I was forced to come up with a quick alternative.  Design number #2 is what I cobbled together after a quick trip to the hardware store.

Design #2

There's an old saying... necessity is the mother of invention.  Well here's a simple device you can build in about 15 minutes that costs about $8.  If you add in the cost of a used food grade barrel (which I had from Design #1) then the cost of this extractor is more like $28.

It is made from a metal paint stirring device that you can buy at any hardware store, some wire mesh, a piece of wood molding and zip strips.

Here's how to build the extractor:

• Start by bending the wire mesh into a cylindrical cage large enough to hold two frames.  Leave the top of the cage is open so  you can easily insert and remove frames from the cage.  
• Now attach the cage bottom to the circular metal section of the paint stirrer using four zip ties. 
• Cut a piece of wood molding to the diameter of the cage and cut a hole in the center so that you can put the shaft of the paint stirrer though it.  You want the hole to be just slightly larger than the shaft so the fit is tight.
• Also cut a whole on each end of the molding large enough to put a zip tie through.
• Now attach the molding to the cage with a zip tie on each end.
• That's it.

To  use the extractor:

• Insert the shaft of the paint stirrer into an electric drill.
• Place two uncapped honey frames into the cage.
• Insert the extractor into the food grade barrel.  You will need to hold the cage in the center during operation. 
• Turn on the drill and the cage will start spinning.  As it does so, honey will get whipped out of the frames and collect at the bottom of the barrel.  Pulse the drill on and off so that you maintain a reasonable speed.  (Too slow and honey won't be extracted.  Too fast and the centrifugal force will pull apart and destroy the wax foundation.)
• Now remove the frames and re-insert them into the cage so that the opposite side of the frame faces outward.  Turn on the drill again and extract honey from the second side of the frame.
• Remove the empty frames.  Voila!

This honey extractor is far from perfect.  You need some strength to hold the drill and the honey frames in the barrel.  But it certainly worked in a pinch and I found this simple, inexpensive extractor to be remarkably effective.  It was cheap, easy to create, and took just 15 minutes to build.  If you only have one or two supers to harvest, you may not need anything more than design #2.

In fact, the success of this simple extractor convinced me that design #1 is overly complex.  For someone with just a few hives, simpler is better.  I am working on a more robust extractor that will hold 4 frames and not require you to hold the frames and drill during extraction.  I'll post that design in the future when it's completed.

Below is a photo of some of the honey I extracted.  I created a label for it using photo editing adnd design software, an inkjet printer and adhesive backed label stock.

Easy Bee-sy: Bee Escape Boards

A Bee escape board is a nifty device to make harvesting honey easier.

This week, I harvested my first batch of honey.  The first step in this process is to clear the comb  of any bees. 

Traditionally, this has been done using a device called a bee board.  This device looks like the screen for a window.  It gets painted with a nasty smelling substance and then placed on top of the open hive just before harvesting.  The smell drives many of the bees deeper into the hive and the bee keeper removes rest with a brush.

A bee board is effective and commercial bee keepers use them because they drive bees off the comb relatively quickly, which is important if you have many hives to harvest in a given day.  However, for home beekeepers with just a few hives, there's an alternative method called a bee escape board. 

The bee escape board works over a period of 24-36 hours.  There are a number of different models, but they all work on the same principle.  You place the board under the section of the hive that you want to harvest.  The board has one or more gates that channel bees to the lower section of the hive and make it difficult for them to return -- kind of like a one way valve.  Over a period of hours the bees get channeled out and the bee keeper can remove honey comb that is relatively free of bees.

One advantage of the bee escape board is that it does not require the use of smelly chemicals.  More importantly from my perspective, it helps you avoid angry bees;  let's face it, bees don't want you to steal their honey and get aggressive when you remove the comb from the hive.  Using a bee escape minimizes your bee encounters and lowers the risk of a sting.  Got to like that!

A photo of the model of bee escape I use is shown below.  The bees enter from the top and get channeled through the little red cones on the underside of the board.  The ends of the cones are relatively narrow, so its more difficult for the bees to pass back through the cones once they have emerged on the other side.

I found that this bee escape board to be very effective; after 36 hours on the hive, I removed the top cover and discovered only about 10 bees remaining.

If you are new to bee keeping and don't plan on having many hives, a bee escape board is probably worth considering.


 

Odds of Being Pooped On By Bees: 1 To 352 Million

What are the odds of being pooped repeatedly by a swarm of bees?  Another great piece of party trivia from PlanterTomato.com.

Last week I parked myself in our hammock for the first time this year with the intention of getting some deserved rest from gardening and other chores on the to-do list.

While I sat looking at a magazine, I felt small raindrops hitting me.  This was strange because there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  I went back to reading, but the rain persisted and soon I noticed little yellow droplets appearing on the open page of the magazine.

I looked up and observed a huge tornado of bees circling in the air about 10-15 feet above above my head.  There were thousands and thousands of bees racing about.

The bees were swarming -- the method by which these little critters create new colonies; the old queen leaves with half of the worker bees; they circle in the air for a period of time before settling down on a tree, bush or other convenient location where they will build a new nest.  The bees in this story appear to have been from a wild colony located in a neighbors tree.  They did their flight over my backyard before taking off for parts unknown.

It was an amazing but scary sight. (see below photo of a swarm in flight care of the city of Chesapeake, Virginia). And as I watched them it dawned on me that the yellow rain falling from above sky above was bee poop.  They nailed me pretty good and left lots of little yellow drops on the barbecue grill, my car etc.

I'm no stranger to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this was really ridiculous.  I'm sure as individuals we've all gotten hit by an individual bee without knowing it (probably a bird or two as well) but I have never heard anyone complain that they got rained upon by thousands of bees.

I checked the internet and could not find a similar incident reported... plenty of cases of bees swarming, lots of information about colony collapse, even reports of car dealerships complaining about having to wash off the little yellow dots caused by individual bees from nearby hives, but no reports by individuals suffering a Pearl Harbor style bombing.

What are the odds of this happening?  My inner geek was so intrigued that I just had to estimate the odds of being pooped on by a swarm of honey bees.  I'm sure if you are a hobbyist or professional bee keeper, your odds will be much higher; this calculation is the odds of the average Joe taking the hit.

How I did the Calculation:

Broadly speaking, I calculated the probability of a hive swarming in a given location of 100 square yards during a particular 10 minute interval.  I then calculated the probability of a person being outside in a given location of 100 square yards during a 10 minute interval.  The probability of the bees and a person being in the same spot, at the same time, is calculated by multiplying the two simple probabilities.

Here are some of the particulars and assumptions for those interested...

• Locations - I used a space of 100 square yards as the basic unit of measure for figuring out where people and swarms might collide.  I choose 100 square yards because this is the  approximate space that the swarm in my backyard occupied during their flight.  Rather than divide the entire US land mass into 100 square yard blocks, I used only those areas where people tend to be in reasonably dense communities.  This space includes cities, suburbs and rural areas where people live and excludes forests, mountains, desserts and stretches of really unpopulated land.  I used a US Census density map to determine these areas.  As it turns out, this is about 30% of the total landmass of the US.  Breaking this areas into 100 square yard "Locations" results in 36.1 million places where bees and people might intersect. [By the way, I got this estimate by using Photoshop to determine the populated areas (white pixels) and non-populated areas (black pixels)].

• Bee Data - The number of beehives in the US, swarming rates, etc come from various websites which are listed in the attached spreadsheet.
• Time Intervals Used In the Calculation - I did all calculations based on a day-length of 5 hours .  I did this because bees tend to swarm during the hours of 10 am to 3 pm.  Swarms occur during 3 months of the year in spring and early summer, so a 90 day time frame was used.  Finally, bees swarm in the air for only a brief time before settling down.  Based on my observation this is about 10 minutes.  So that apples are compared to apples, I estimated how many people would be out of doors during the same time period of 10 am to 5 pm each day.  I could find no hard data on this, so I assumed 5% of all people have jobs that have them outside all day long (all time intervals), 20% would venture out of work or the home for two 10-minute intervals during the 5 hour period, and 50% would go out one time (I reasoned this was OK since many people venture out of the office to buy lunch or run errands etc.)  While people go outside more during the weekend, they will probably be out less during the winter so I did not make any particular adjustments, assuming that weekends and winters would balance out.
  

The Results:

There are 36 million potential 100 square foot locations where a man-swarm encounter might happen.  But this can happen in any of 2,700 ten minute time intervals during the 3-month swarm season.  So the total number of Location-Time Intervals under consideration is huge -- over 97 trillion (36 million x 2,700).

Bees will swarm in only 1.2 million of these location time-intervals because there are relatively few bee hives in the US (2.3 million) and they only swarm for 10 minutes. The probability of a swarm happening in any given location time-interval is just .0000012%.

Likewise, people are indoors most of the time, venturing outdoors for just an estimated 225 million of the potential 97 trillion location time intervals.  The probability that a person will be outside in any given location time-interval is .0002%.

As you can imagine, the occasions when bees swarm and a non-bee keeper is in the same spot is very, very rare.  I estimate it at .0000000000028%.

Converting this probability to odds, shows that the odds are 1 to 352 million that you will be pooped on by a swarm.

For perspective, here are the odds for a variety of other events, care of Funny2.com:

Audited by the IRS                         1 to 175 (ouch!)

Dating a supermodel                      1 to 88,000

Struck by lighting                            1 to 576,000

Killed by lightning                            1 to 2.3 million

Killed by mountain lion in CA         1 to 32 million

Meteor hitting your house              1 to 182 quadrillion (quadrillion = 1,000 trillion)

So this means that your more likely to be pooped on by bees than hit by a meteorite, but your more likely to be eaten by a mountain lion than being pooped on by bees.  Amazing.  

For those interested, the calculations are attached in an Excel spreadsheet:

Download BeeCalculation

Watch Honey Bees On This Live Web Cam

Update November 2010: Bees are not active when the temperature falls below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  You will not see much, or any, bee activity right now.  Please check back in the spring!

A few days ago, I attempted to place a live web cam of my honey bee hive on the internet for readers of this gardening blog to view.  Due to some technical issues, the camera was not broadcasting on the internet, and it took a few days to find the solution to that problem.

The Bee Cam is now live and can be viewed by clicking on the below link and entering the user ID and password below (case sensitive).

Web Cam Link:          PlanterTomato BeeCam

User ID:                     Guest

Password:                 Beecam

Best Times To View Beecam

The bees start their day when the air warms to over 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  Right now, that means at about 9:00 am U.S. Pacific Time (4:00 pm Greenwich Mean Time).  However, the bees are most active, and therefore best viewed, between the hours of 11:00 am and 5:00 pm Pacific U.S. Time (6:00pm to 12:00 Midnight Greenwich Mean Time)

It goes without saying, the hours between 8:00 pm and 9:00 am Pacific U.S time are not good times to view Beecam because there is not sufficient light and/or the bees are not active.  My plan is to run Beecam throughout the summer months, barring any technical or other issues.

The week on May 24th, 2010 promises to be rainy and cold which will dampen bee activity, so I've also posted a video to YouTube which you can watch anytime, day or night. The link is below.

PlanterTomato YouTube Video (May 24, 2010)

Special thanks to the folks at Parsons Farmstead who were kind enough to assist me in testing the camera.

Announcing Beecam: Live Web Cam of A Honeybee Hive

Update November 2010: Bees are not active when the temperature falls below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  You will not see much, or any, bee activity right now.  Please check back in the spring!

Watch bees at work on this live web cam or see a recorded view on YouTube.

In a prior post, I told you about all the equipment you need to keep bees.  In this post, I'm announcing the PlanterTomato.com Beecam, streaming video of the bees in one of my hives. 

Beecam is currently positioned at the front of the hive and lets you watch the bees entering and existing the hive in real time.  In future posts, I will move the Beecam to another position so you can see the bees building honeycomb.

Why Do A Beecam

My seven year old daughter is fascinated by the bees, but also a little scared of the large swarm that forms in front of the hive when hive activity is at its peak.  I decided to build a web cam so she could view the bees from the safety of the computer in our study.

Beecam Views

 Most of the action occurs at the front of the hive and that is the view that is presented currently.  You'll see bees leaving the hive to gather what they need to survive -- water, nectar, and pollen.   If you observe carefully, you'll see that some of the bees have yellow bumps on the backs of their legs.  This is the pollen stored in pollen baskets on the backs of the bees legs. The pollen is a source of protein for bees.

In the future, I'll change the position of the Beecam to show a different view of the hive's activity.  Specifically, some of the activity within the hive.  To do this,  I cut a number of windows into one of the deep hive boxes and covered the holes with Plexiglass.  We can now look into the hive to see the bees building comb for honey storage and for raising additional bees (see second photo attached below)

How To View:

To view the Beecam click on the below link and then enter the ID and password.

Link:              PlanterTomato Beecam

ID:                 Guest

Password:     Beecam

Best Times To View Beecam

The bees start their day when the air warms to over 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  Right now, that means at about 9:00 am U.S. Pacific Time (4:00 pm Greenwich Mean Time).  However, the bees are most active, and therefore best viewed, between the hours of 11:00 am and 5:00 pm Pacific U.S. Time (6:00pm to 12:00 Midnight Greenwich Mean Time)

It goes without saying, the hours between 8:00 pm and 9:00 am Pacific U.S time are not good times to view Beecam because there is not sufficient light and/or the bees are not active.  My plan is to run Beecam throughout the summer months, barring any technical or other issues.

Viewing & Technical Issues

My previous posting on "What Equipment You Need to Keep Bees" has been extremely popular.  I suspect that Beecam will attract a large audience and traffic to the web cam is likely to be very high.  However, Beecam is not hosted using a professional service, so I do not know what level of internet traffic will cause the system to slow to a crawl or crash.  If you experience difficulty viewing, please visit on another day or see the recorded view of the hive on YouTube.

YouTube Recorded Video of Hive

You can see views of the outside entrance, and inside views of the hive front and side that was recorded on May 24, 2010.  The link to the YouTube video is:

PlanterTomato.Com Honey Bee Video

To Bee or Not To Bee: What Equipment You Need To Keep Bees

A checklist of what you'll need to buy if you want to keep bees.

In my post "It was meant to Bee" I described why I decided to take the plunge and become a bee keeper.  In this post, I will describe the equipment you need to buy if you are considering doing the same. 

Caveat Emptor

Some beekeeping catalogs and online retailers offer "beginner kits" to get you started.  When I shopped around, I found that to keep costs low, they sometimes left items out that you technically don't need to begin beekeeping, but are so fundamental that you really have to buy them in addition to the kit. 

For example, you don't need a second deep hive box or a medium honey super to get started, but if you want you're bees to live more than a few months, and you want to collect honey for yourself, you are going to need to buy these and other items.  For that reason, I think they should be included in any "beginner kit" and I've listed them as essential items.

To make things easy for anyone considering bee keeping, I'm going to list individual components so that you have a checklist to compare against when you look at these beginner kits, or if you want to just buy the components separately.

The punchline is that the costs will come in around $400-$500.  This does not include any of the items you will  need to harvest the honey at the end of the season (honey comb knife, extraction pans, etc).  I'll cover that in a future post.

Here's your checklist:

• One Hive Stand - your hive will sits on top of this.
• One Bottom Board - This forms the floor of your hive.  In my case, I purchased a screened bottom board.  The screening allows for additional air circulation and plays an important part in ridding the hive of varroa mites should they infect your hive.  I recommend getting the screened board.
• One entrance reducer (Not shown) - this is a small piece of wood that reduces the hive opening to allow just one or two bees to enter or leave at a time.  You need one of these when the hive population is low (when your first starting our and also in the winter) It helps reduce the likelihood that yellow jackets or wild bees can enter your hive.
• 2 Deep Hive Bodies (1 Shown) - The deep hive bodies are where the queen rears her brood and where your bees store the honey they need to survive.  When you first start your hive, you use one deep hive body.  This is adequate for the 3,000 bees that you get when you place your bee package order.  But the hive will eventually grow to 40,000 bees or more.  You'll need a second deep hive body which you'll stack on top of the first later in the season as the hive population increases.
• 20 Deep Hive Frames - these are wooden frames that can be inserted into the hive body.  It's where the bees will build comb for rearing new bees, storing honey etc.
• 20 Deep Hive Foundations - The bees will need a starting point to build the comb. The foundation is made of either real bee's wax or plastic.  The foundation acts like a template for the bees who build up wax on the foundation to make the honey comb.  I choose wax foundation because I read that the bees take to this more readily than plastic.  However, you'll find plenty of folks who swear by plastic.  The choice is yours.
  
• 1 Medium Hive Body/Honey Super (not shown) - This looks like the deep hive body but it is not as tall.  You stack this on top of the second hive body.  This is like the attic for the hive.  When the bees have filled the bottom two hive bodies with brood and honey, they move to the medium hive body to store excess honey.  This is the honey that you will harvest for yourself.  A medium honey super will hold about 25 pounds of honey. In moderate climates, beekeeper can use two medium hive bodies on their hives and harvest 40-50 pounds of honey.
• 9 Medium Hive Body Frames - looks just like the deep hive frame but is shorter to fit into the medium hive body.  Medium hive bodies take 9 frames, not 10. 
• 9 medium hive foundations.
• 116 foundation pins - used to pin the foundation into the frames.  You need 4 pins for each frame.
• 1 Inner Cover - Under normal conditions, this gets placed on top of the highest hive body in the stack to cover the bees.
• 1 Metal Covered Outer Cover (not shown) - this fits over the inner cover and shields the hive from rain.
• 1 Queen Excluder - This looks like the wire frame that sit on your barbecue grill.  You place this in between the second deep hive body and the medium hive body/honey super.  The metal bars are spaced so that worker bees can get through them, but the queen, which is thicker than a worker bee, can not.  By placing the excluder between the deep hive and the honey super, you prevent the queen from entering the honey super and laying eggs there. You want to exclude the queen from the honey super because you don't want brood in the comb from which you intend to harvest your share of the honey.
  
• 1 Hive Tool (not shown) - an all purpose tool that is like a crowbar.  You'll need this to open the top of the hive and pry out the frames (Bees fill small gaps in the hive with propolis, a substance made from resinous trees like pine trees.  Propolis is very stick and tends to glue hive covers and frames together.  You'll need a tool to open them up when you inspect your hive, collect honey etc.)
• 1 Feeder - When you first get your bees, they will immediately begin to build comb and to seek out nectar.  However, there will not be sufficient food for them in the beginning, so you need to help tide them over until the hive is more established.  You do this by feeding them sugar water which is stored in a feeder unit.  There are a number of feeder options to choose from.  I choose a hive top feeder because it holds 3 gallons of sugar water -- alot so I don't have to re-fill the feeder very often.
  
• 1 Smoker (not shown)- This looks like a bellows unit attached to a can.  You put wood, twine or other substances in the container, light with a hand torch and use the bellows unit to create smoke.  You use the smoke to calm the bees prior to opening up the hive.  Actually, calm is not really what they feel.  The bees smell the smoke and think a forest fire is occurring. They respond to this by drinking up honey in case they need to flee the hive.  Stuffed with honey, they are less likely to sting the beekeeper.
• Bee Hat & Veil (not shown) -  I bought this along with a jacket.  This is a white outfit that makes you look like the Good Humor Man but protects your face and body from any angry bees.  It lowers the possibility that you will be stung.  
• Gloves (not shown) - white leather gloves that protect your hands.
• Bee Brush (not shown) - a brush that helps shoo bees from comb, yourself, frames etc.
• One Frame Grip - like a set of pliers that helps you lift the frames out of the hive box.
• One Frame Rest - This is a metal device that hangs on the edge of the hive box with two metal arms that protrude outward.  When you remove frames for inspection, you can conveniently place them on this hanger, versus putting them on the ground.  Technically, you don't "need" one of these, but they are so convenient I think they are worth putting on your list.

I purchased all my bee keeping supplies from Bee Commerce.  However, other suppliers I know of include: GloryBee, Dadant, Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, Mann Lake, and Walter Kelley.

If you are an experienced bee keeper, please feel free to post a comment with any advice you have for those purchasing for the first time.

If you decide to take the plunge and become a bee keeper, also let me know by posting a comment.

 
 

It Was Meant To Bee

It's unsettling to know that you're going to be stung.

But if you decide to keep bees, you have to be prepared to meet this inevitability with a stiff upper lip.

It's not that bees are particularly hostile, but when there are 40,000 of them in a hive, you have to expect to find at least one bee a season that's going to be hacked off about something.

As most sources on beekeeping point out, bees are really gentle and don't want to sting you.  It's just that accidents happen and you need to be prepared for them. 

So with that in mind, I placed an order a few days ago for two colonies.  They will be delivered in April, so there's no going back now.

If you are thinking about taking the plunge as well, here are some things to consider in favor of becoming a beekeeper:

1) For us gardeners, bees do the heavy lifting when it comes to pollinating apples, apricots, plums, raspberries and other fruits, berries and nuts.  Melons, squash, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers also need a pollinator to bear fruit.

And if you want to collect seeds for next year's garden, you'll need a pollinator as well for veggies like carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and many others.

2) Having your own bees also means a plentiful supply of wild-flower honey.  I have a seven-year-old daughter and she puts honey on everything -- including hot dogs.  We go through a ton of honey each week, so having our own supply is like having money in the bank.

3) Finally, bees need a shoulder to lean on right now.  Honeybee populations in the U.S. have declined about 30% each year since 2006.  Scientist haven't determined the exact cause for the collapse, but hobbyist beekeepers may help keep honeybee populations going while the problem is diagnosed, and hopefully, a solution is found.

So if you're considering beekeeping, you may want to check back periodically.  I'll let you know any tips and tricks I learn along the way.

And, I'll also let you know when I meet a bee that didn't get her morning coffee and decided to take it out on me.