Beekeeper Log

Beekeeping Winter activities and an offer!

hemr — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:21:19 +0000

Winter is blasting in Austin, Texas, with much-needed rain as well (I am thrilled that the land I have, might have captured a good amount of it), and the bees in my four beehives behind our sun room have become quiet.

They now just go out to ‘do their thing’ out side the hive (Bees are clean beings, they don’t defecate in their hives) and come back inside in this freezing cold, a few bees at a time. I am feeding them sugar-water to keep their food reserves up and for them to use only less of their honey reserves, since I would like to have it, when the weather warms up next year. My current way of feeding them is not actually very good, to feed them using glass bottles filled with sugar-water connected to the hive entrance – they have to venture out in the cold to get the sugar-water. I am going to put some sugar patties inside the warm hive so that they can avoid doing that. But I do not want to open the hive in this cold weather and freeze the poor bees. Hoping there would be a day soon, where the weather would be warm on noon time so that I can come home from lunch from work and take care of that. Right now they are curled up as a ball around their queen vibrating their wings, creating heat to keep everyone warm. The bees inside the ball would take turns to replace the peripheral bees to do the hard work of helping it the most.

How about if you could get your own honey in this summer from your own hive in your backyard? Don’t that sound enticing? If you have an interest in beekeeping and think you are willing to venture into it, and not afraid of the bees (who isn’t afraid of the bees, all the news which come out are negative, bee swarms attacking people etc, which are so isolated events, which actually can be avoided if known early, like not making a lot of noise in front of their hives and annoying them etc..), this is the time to act. You can buy complete beekeeping hive kit including gloves and veil hood and a few tools and you can wait till the weather warms up next March or so, to start putting together a hive. If there is genuine interest, and if your home is closer to where I live, I am happy to help you out, even finding you a package of bees, and helping you establish a colony.

The place I like to buy hive items is Mann Lake Ltd. http://www.mannlakeltd.com/

Swarm Catch Failure

hemr — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:42:46 +0000

Saturday evening, I carefully brought the bee box home, but was suspecting, since it was light weight, and not many bees flying around. I hoped for the best, kept the box among the rest of the hives and went home. The next day, morning, I went to see what is happening, and found that no bees are coming out of the hive. My heart sank, wondering if I am going to see an empty bee box. I opened it, and found no bees in the box. I lifted up the honey frame I left there, and found that all cells were uncapped and all the honey was gone. So the activity I saw on Friday when I left them was the swarm getting in there to gorge on more honey before they flew away somewhere. So I definitely didn’t catch the queen. I was impossible for me to go near the swarm, when it occurred, when it congregated on a tree 20 ft tall, otherwise, I could have brought the bee box near the swarm and shaken the swarm right into the box, hopefully catching the queen as well. Oh, well, live and learn.
Lesson learned from this: It is important to open up the hive once in a while, esp. when there is lots of honey flow and lots of bees in the hive to see if any queen cells are being built, if so, it need to be split to avoid them swarming.

Happy Ending

hemr — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:16:47 +0000

Today morning, I looked up above my fence to see if the blue box where I kept a honey frame and the shaken bees from the swarm is empty or if there are bees flying around where it already made it’s home. To my pleasure, the swarm box had high level of activity and the rest of the bees still clustered together yesterday, up in the tree 20 feet high, is now gone, I am hoping they all came and found their home in the bee box.
There were tremendous activity in the hive, and I waited till the sun goes down to cover up the bee box and bring it home. When the sun was down, there wasn’t any activity in the box at all. I am hoping all the foraging honey bees have come back to roost there, I sincerely hope that they did not abscond the hive, going after the scout bees. Anyway, I brought them home, in fact I brought the hive through my home through the front door to the back door to the backyard. That was a very bold move, I thought, but they were all very quiet. Anyway, I put them next to the other hives and open the gate. A few bees came out. I am hoping I would find more bees tomorrow. I am not sure if I need to move them all to a regular hive tomorrow or leave them there for a few days. before I start to feed them sugar water through the boardman feeder.
In the mean time, my son Nikhil and I assembled 20 hive bodies, they are nuc bodies and have kept in our garage to paint them tomorrow. I might move the caught swarm to a nuc soon.

I have also asked Caleb Oakley to make me nuc boxes out of old boxes. He agreed to do that for $15 a piece. I paid $30 or so for the new full nuc hive. So I would have 20 nuc boxes and 4 super boxes on the nuc. I am going to try to build a bee hive this year with just nuc boxes. Also I am going to split all my hives to make around 50 bee hives – all in the farm. I am hoping that I can manage them well. There is water in the farm, a big 2 acre pond, so that is no problem. But I am afraid if there is much flowers in the farm country, hope there are folks who grow cotton and other nectar forming flower-bearing crops. I am also afraid that everyone might use high levels of pesticides which might lead to colony collapse problem on my hive in the future. I need to publicize and work for pesticide free farming, I am not bringing any of that cancer producing, bee colony collapsing chemicals to my farm, for sure! I am planning on a permaculture based (zero budget farming) technique.

My farm website is http://www.indusfarm.com

My hive swarmed!

hemr — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:51:17 +0000

While at my office today around 5.00PM, my wife, Sreedevi called me about some roaring noise in our back yard and she said there were cloud of bees everywhere. I suspected the worst, one of my hives have swarmed. I thought it is a good thing, I know that hive is healthly and full, so they made a new family and parted to grow the hive into a new hive. After hurriedly finishing up my work, I came home to look at the hives, they all seems fine, lots of bees coming in and out. I am not sure which hive has swarmed, I suspected the one with 5 supers on them. They were bee-bearding today morning, when I looked, felt like the hive was very full. She also mentioned that she see bees in our next door neighbors cedar tree. I went down there to see if any swarm was there, lo and behold, I found them!

It was a giant ball, didn’t realize that so much of it came out of one of my hives. I wasn’t sure what to do. I have two swarm boxes and I prepped one of them with combs and some lemon grass to attract the bees. Took a white bucket taped it on to a big stick and took a ladder and when under the tree with my veil and gloves on. I shook the bees onto the bucket and poured them on to the swarm box. Some of them were stinging me very bad, I made the mistake of wearing black socks, they seem to like to sting wherever black color clothes are. I ran out and put on white clothes and white socks and went back again. My thought was, since the bees were all drunk with honey they won’t sting, but my experience was different. Bee stings these days won’t hurt me as much as they used to a year ago, it is now just a little annoyance, nothing more.

I am not sure if I got the queen, I went back to my hive and took one frame of honey and put it in the swarm box and left the box for the night. I need to go look at this tomorrow to see if the bees decided to come inside to build the hive in the swarm box. If they do, without much effort, I have one more hive.

The fencing in the farm will soon be complete. The gates will be installed in a few days and I will start moving the hives there. I am crossing my fingers to see what happens in the next few days. I will update them soon.

2nd cut out

hemr — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:33:03 +0000

It is becoming easier and easier. Feel like I am losing the excitement about these cut outs. I was also feeling terribly guilty that I am completely agonizing poor bees who are living in a colony well, with great level of orderliness and send them into shock by disturbing their home and leaving them in disarray. I surely feel terrible about that. In the process, their precious comb is cut, their larves are killed, bees are killed, honey is spilled and alls sort of mayhem. I hope bad karma wouldnt affect me as much, I am looking to provide them a new home, but I wonder if that is actually necessary. The family where they found the hive wanted it to be removed, so I hope this is a bee rescue than a pest control I have done.

It was in North Austin, yesterday, and towards evening I went there, pretty big hive, at least 3 feet long combs with full of wonderful smelling honey. The home owner said that it has swarmed before, this spring. So it is a mature hive. They are one of the easiest bees to work with, did not sting at all, I should say, until I stepped on them and such. A few of them got into my veil, and they were not keen on stinging me, can you believe that?

Here are some pictures of the deal, I need to go in there today or tomorrow to take the rest of them out.

http://goo.gl/adtR

My first cut out

hemr — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:05:10 +0000

I got a call from Terry Shaw this Monday (July 12, 2010) morning about a feral bee hive in their yard. I have received a few other calls after I advertised my free bee rescue service, but they have been turned out to be wasps. Talking to Terry, I figured this is a real – finally. It wasn’t a swarm, but it was a hive which was formed starting this spring. So I expected fully developed combs. I wanted to find out how high the bees were found, and she said it was in a garbage can which they use for composting yard clippings. That was such a relief because I didn’t have to use any ladders.

Off I went on Monday evening to take a look at the hive and find out what all to bring. I didn’t have any empty frames, so I asked for help in the WCABA (Williamson County Area Beekeepers Association, a friendly and knowledgeable group of over 100 members! www.wcaba.org) and Shelly whom I have given a hive promptly replied with her willingness to part with the frames, and I picked them up on Tuesday morning from her.

Armed with the empty frames, and the paraphernalia, I watched a few youtube videos and found that rubber bands would be essential to this process and went to HEB grocery store to get some. On Tue. evening after my work was over – it has gotten a little late, around 7:00PM, I showed up at Terry’s house. I prepared my smoker and got it going. I approached the garbage bin with my brood box and smoker and smoked the entrance of the garbage can entrance where bees were coming out. Finally I managed to lift the cover up, but by that time a few of the bee combs broke up and fell into the bin. Here are the pictures from the first day. It got darker and lots of bees were outside. So I have to come back the next day. Here are the pictures from the next day.

Complete Idiots Guide to Beekeeping

hemr — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:05:30 +0000

Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping

Today I went to Borders on Lamar(near HEB Central Market in South Austin) and picked up the book, ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping’. Became a new member of Borders and got a $5 in credit. Sat down with the book at the adjacent Seattle’s Best Coffee shop next door (who willingly obliged to take the credit of $5) and started reading the book. Obviously it is for the beginner’s and low on content, but neverthless a good guide for someone starting out, esp. one who is interested in natural beekeeping (raising bees without any chemicals). I highly recommend it. It is nicely priced at 14.95, but can be purchased from Amazon at just over $10.00 and shipping free if you buy over $25.

If you are curious about bees and beekeeping, I recommend you start off with this book, and then work your way towards buying a hive and buying packaged bees. One of the best group in Texas is near Austin, Williamson County Area Beekeepers Association (www.wcaba.org). Meetings are 4th Tuesday of every month in Georgetown. I highly recommend you attend the meeting first to learn more from the speakers and other over 100 beekeepers from neighboring towns who meet there.

Catch a swarm – AUSTIN BEE RESCUE HOTLINE

hemr — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:21:47 +0000

Bees are very important part of our ecosystem. They are NOT pests. This is the time all across the country bees are splitting their colonies and starting new ones. You will come across a cloud of bees and it might have landed on any tree in your yard. Don’t fear, they are mostly harmless. Do not use gasoline or pest spray on them, it is cruel. Call me, if you are in the Austin/Round Rock/Pflugerville/Hutto/ Cedar Park area of Austin. I can come over and take the bee swarm away from you. To save bees from exterminators and common folks who think that they are a pest, we have set up a Austin Bee Rescue Hotline.