I did my summer honey extraction recently… so much honey. In Virginia we hit the dearth in mid-summer, so early July is a good time to pull your supers and extract the honey. This year I pulled some supers in the spring so I was interested in comparing the early honey with the summer honey as well.
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Growing colonies
I moved a couple colonies into more accommodating lodging recently. One a Langstroth hive and the other a top bar hive. This involved moving the existing hive, putting the new hive in its place, and moving the combs into the new box. The bees know where their entrance should be, so they quickly accommodate to the new box as long as their brood and queen is there.
Continue readingAnts do it, Bees do it, … (swarming)
It is pretty late for bee swarms. Below I have a photo of some active ants from our yard, and I thought it was an interesting photo. Most social insect groups reproduce their colony by swarming, include bees, ants, and termites.
Continue readingUnwanted Comb
Middle-aged worker bees like to build comb. After their young life of cleaning their room, cleaning the hive, and otherwise keeping the colony neat and tidy, they produce fresh wax underneath their abdomen when they are around 10 to 20 days old. After this period wax production wanes and the worker moves on to food storage, guard duty, air control (fanning), and eventually on to foraging.
Continue readingEuropean Wool Carder Bee
One of my favorite wild bees is Anthidium manicatum, or the European wool carder bee. As indicated by its name, this is not a bee native to North America. This bee was first seen near Ithaca, NY in 1963, and is considered invasive. The “carder” name comes from their habit of pulling fibers from fuzzy plants like Lamb’s Ear to use in their nest, as carding is a term used for separating fibers.
Continue readingSpring Nucs
Spring nucs are a good way to split your colonies, suppress swarming, and otherwise manage your spring bees. I like to make nucs from pre-swarm hives on or after the frost date, which for Virginia is mid-April. This creates new hives from locally overwintered queens that are hopefully well adapted to living in our area.
Continue readingHolly Blooms
We are still in the thick of our nectar season. This week we’ve had holly blooming. Holly is a great pollinator plant, with small white flowers that are very attractive to all kinds of bees. There are varieties that bloom in early spring and late summer, so they provide a long season of nectar. In the winter, the pollinated flowers become berries that birds and other animals enjoy.
Some varieties have a male and female version. Both produce flowers, but the male plants produce pollen and relies on pollinators (like bees!) to pollinate the female flowers. We have a bit of both kinds on our property.
Continue readingThe ground under your hives
Do you need wood chips? I have some extra…. There is a service getchipdrop.com that provides free wood chips to home owners. Local arborists drop their fresh wood chips off at no charge, which is often quicker and cheaper than taking them to a dump or other location. So it is good for home owners, good for the arborist company, and good for the environment. One challenge, of course, is that you never know exactly how much you will get. Let’s just say I have more than I was hoping for.
Continue readingGood Nuc, Bad Nuc
Beekeepers (or least, this beekeeper) think grand thoughts towards the end of winter. Spring is coming and we think about the wonderful things we will finally do this year. As for myself, I am thinking about raising nucs, producing honey, beekeeping on more of a schedule, and catching swarms. Of course, most of this depends on actually having some bees.
So I was a little concerned on a warm day last week when one of my hives was fairly quiet. The other hives were flying all over the place, but this one only had a bee or two active in the front. I’ve been tricked in the past by an apparently quiet hive doing just fine over the winter, so I wanted to check the hive and see how it was doing.
Continue readingBack to the Future of Varroa
This week was January 19, 2023, the day Marty McFly arrived in the movie Back to the Future. The movie was released in 1985, and did so well that it became a trilogy that included trips to the future and the past. In Marty’s 2023 they had real hover boards and self-fitting clothes and other things that seemed futuristic back in the 1980’s.
It occurred to me that that’s about when the varroa mite invaded the United States as well, long before I took up beekeeping. The mite first appeared in Florida and then quickly spread to the rest of the country. With a scientific name of Varroa destructor, Varroa is an ectoparasitic mite that lives and feeds on the adult and pupal stages of honey bees. They have proven surprising resilient and very adaptive to the various treatment methods tried over the years.
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Bees with eeb 