More Bees

Here's another blog from Abe about "his girls"...

This week we bought 3 Langs (the traditional type of beehive) from a beekeeper about 50 miles from us. So, we had our first experience moving bees in hives, which went pretty smooth, except that I got stung twice, from a purely newbie mistake. I didn't have closed shoes, I wore my sandals, and once the hives were in the truck, a few bees managed to climb up into my sandal, and well.... you know the rest. So, I've been walking around with one big leg and one normal leg for the past 2 days! These stings did not hurt as much as my last prick on my nose, so maybe I am slowly building up a resistance. My foot still got very swollen, and I am going to try and test out a few remedies with bee stings (meat tenderizer, ice, toothpaste) to see if I can keep the swelling down in the future (I could hardly walk the next day).

Anyway, we got the girls settled in pretty easy, and they seem to really like it here. In their old setup, there was not much blooming right now, it was pretty desolate, actually. But here at our place, we have tons of wildflowers, apples, pears, plums, oaks, acacias and tons of other things that are in bloom right now. In fact, it is a bee paradise.

I opened up each hive today just to make sure nothing was out of place, and everyone looked fine to me. I will probably start adding supers soon, as the brood chamber is pretty close to being full. I didn't go through each frame or look for the queens. I want them to settle in a bit more before really getting invasive. I have been feeding them syrup, just while they adjust to the change, and man, they can eat! They've been going through about 600mL a day!

On another front, I also opened up my barrel hive to check on the situation there with the new queen and everything. The ants are still making their way in there, I noticed, but I don't think they are actually doing much harm. They seem to be focused on one of the older combs at the back of the hive that had quite a bit of dead larva in it. The bees were not even maintaining that comb, so I guess it is ok for the ants to have it. I went ahead and took it out of the hive in hopes to draw the ants away.

I didn't see the new queen, but it was pretty difficult, as there are a lot more bees than before. I guess some of the brood comb has hatched since we move them. I thought I saw a small section that looked like it had eggs in it, but I am not quite sure. I also noticed that they haven't built much new comb, yet. They have repaired a lot of the older comb, attaching it to the top bars and such, but not much expansion, yet. I assume they are focused on the new queen.

The queen cells were all opened and on the floor of the hive. I also saw 2 very large, almost developed larva, that I can only assume were queen larva, due to their size. So, I guess the queens did their thing, and I am hoping one killed the others, as is their way.

I did see a few drones in there as well, but not a whole lot. I think they were more apparent because I was looking for the queen, and anything bigger than normal caught my eye.

One thing I did notice in the barrel hive was that they have been storing a lot of pollen. There is a lot more in there than before. The oak tree that they sit under is current blooming, and they are not having to go very far (4 feet vertically) for forage. I am sure the oak is producing a bunch of pollen, and they are taking advantage of the surplus. That might also be a good sign that they are prepping for a lot of babies, soon.

Anyway, it was very nice opening everything up and getting some time with the girls. The new Langs are a bit more aggressive than my barrel hive, but they also have more honey and bigger hives to defend. The barrel hive is growing in numbers of bees, and I hope has a new queen as well, so all in all, things seem to be doing very good with the ladies.

I will probably be able to harvest from the new hives this year, as they were not splits, but working hives from last year.

I have also decided to do an experiment with at least one of the Langs and test out a hive design from a man in South America. Basically, he gives them HUGE amounts of space (the brood chamber is 3 Langs deep, honey stores are 5 full supers). A lot of folks have had huge success with his system, which is very hands off (he only opens the hive once a year). Now that I have a few hives, I can compare different types of hives. I do like the idea of not disturbing them much (though I do like looking at them). In some of the tests that I have seen, folks have been able to harvest over 120 kg of honey from one of his hives (after a 2 year start-up time) compared to a 15-25 kg harvest from normal Lang setups. The large increase in production is attributed by the much larger brood chamber, which allows the hives to become quite big (150K bees or more) and thus, can harvest more honey. Larger hives seem to be more stable and less prone to some of the more common issues (Varroa specifically). This hive is called the Perone Hive (after Oscar Perone, the inventor), and we have been calling it the SuPerone, due to its size (5 feet or taller).