You guys have no idea how much fun I have coming up with these ridiculous titles! I understand that makes me a huge nerd, but I really don’t care. I know it has been a few weeks since we have talked. It’s not you, it’s me. No, we’re not breaking up; Michelle and I have just been very ill and haven’t had time to blog about our latest beekeeping adventures. Fear not, though. We have survived the plague that struck our home and I am ready to fill you in!
Congratulations to the winner of our first give away, Steve Landis. We shipped out his honey last week. I hope you enjoy a little taste of the Northwest, Steve!
Last weekend, we attended the GloryBee annual Bee Weekend event in Eugene, Oregon. As usual, it was informative, interesting, fun to reconnect with former coworkers, and best of all we got to pick up our five packages of bees. The day started off with attending the seminar for new beekeepers. While we aren’t new to this, it is always interesting to hear the answers to questions the audience asks and as with most things, we pick up more information every time we revisit the topic. For example, when I treated for mites last year, I followed the directions on the package of Thymol based gel and placed it open on top of the frames. What the package didn’t specify is which box of frames to put it on. Last year, I just put it on top of the top most box (we run two deep brood boxes per hive). When I asked Alan Turanski, the President of GloryBee, about it he said that it should be placed on top of the bottom frames. We didn’t develop a mite issue last year, but it is always good to apply the treatment correctly to maximize the effectiveness and get the best possible results. Last year, we just got a demonstration hive. It was the most expensive way to go, but it allowed us to learn quite a bit about keeping bees before we attempted to install a package ourselves. With only one hive, you do run into a problem of not having another hive to compare it to in terms of queen performance and whatnot, but it isn’t an insurmountable issue. If you research enough information and look at a lot of pictures, you can get a pretty good idea of what things should look like in the hive at any given time. At any rate, this year we got packages, but before we picked them up we went out and watched the demonstration of package installation just to make sure we got everything right. Afterward, we bought a few top feeders and some inner covers, and then picked up our bees. We decided to have a little diversity in our apiary this year, so we bought three packages of Italian’s and two packages of Carniolan’s.
The night before we went down to Eugene to get our bees, we set out our five hives and scorched the insides of them to get rid of unwanted insects, fungus, or whatever may have been present. I have this old propane field torch that was perfect for the job and it only took about fifteen minutes to prep all of them. When we got home with the bees, we loaded the Tahoe up with all of the equipment out of the shop and drove down to where we were going to put all the hives on the south end of the property. We chose a location that would get the first peek of sun in the morning and be in full sun until about 1 PM, then get shade in the afternoon. Last year we had our hive in full sun all day and the bees ended up spending a lot of time bearding when the temperatures got high in August. I figure that they will get full sun until the ambient temperature is pretty warm, and then get shade when the sun is at its hottest which will help them conserve energy for other activities (like making comb and honey) and spend more time inside the hive working. This may be completely untrue, but it’s worth a try…and I need to keep the field behind the hives clear for wedding parking in July and August. Anyway, we set up all the hives and they are on an incline so I will need to shim them to get them level, but at this point I just wanted to get them into their new homes and started building everything out. Nothing says a hive has to be completely level; it’s just my ridiculous OCD that is forcing me to fix it ASAP. When we were installing the bees, everyone has said that they have no defensive instincts because they have no queen yet, which you hear me mention in the video…this is a dirty dirty lie. The first three installations went fine and we didn’t have our gloves on (or my hood when I was making the video). When we got to the fourth and fifth package, the Carniolan’s, I was stung once on each wrist and Michelle got stung on the inner thigh through her jeans (you can actually hear her go “woo” in the video when she got stung). Granted, they aren’t the heavy duty canvas or denim, but still those little buggers were getting nasty. The first sting was on the side of my wrist and it hurt a little, but not too bad. The second, however, was right in the bottom center where a large nerve bundle goes into your hand and my whole hand was on fire. I had to walk away or I was going to lose my cool. Michelle’s sting was much worse than mine. For several days after the sting, the small red dot got larger until it reached about four inches across, was itchy, and was visibly inflamed. After four days it basically looked like a healing bruise and started getting better. I cannot stress this enough…DO NOT install your bees without the proper gear or you will probably get stung. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a big deal and it was totally our fault, but we wanted to be bad asses and put those suckers in like old pros. At the end of the day, we ended up licking our wounds and running away with our tails between our legs.
Michelle has been preparing for our bees by taking some of the Sweet B Fondant that was a little too sticky to sell (which we have been storing in the freezer) and dissolving it in water to make syrup we can feed our bees. They really seem to love it and, after a week, we have gone through about five or so gallons of it. We went in and checked the bees yesterday to make sure the new queens are out of their cages and laying some brood. All five queens are laying like gang busters. There are lots of larvae in different stages of development, so I expect the populations of our hives to start busting at the seams in the next few weeks. I imagine we will have to add the second brood box in two or three weeks. A word of caution for those who are checking their hives: when you have the queen cage in between two frames, it is best to remove a frame that isn’t one of the two frames bordering the queen cage, then slide the frames (that the queen cage is between) apart before pulling out the queen cage or either of the frames that border it. While it looks like you should be able to get the cage or frames out without doing that, you will just end up ruining some of the bee’s hard work if you don’t. Don’t ask me how I know that…Anyway. We are really excited to see the progress they make in the next few weeks. Remember that those bees are drawing out lots of comb, making honey (for them), and the queen is laying a ton of brood so you need to keep a close eye on their food supplies until the nectar starts to flow. As always, we have our Sweet B Syrup for sale on the products page if you really don’t feel like slaving over a hot stove or just don’t feel like making it yourself.
I hope everyone enjoys the pictures and video. We are trying to more digital media a regular occurrence here, so let us know what you like (or don’t like) via the comments. Thanks for reading and have an awesome day!
Priddy Acres 
Very impressive! !!
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