Honey Bee Keeping and other pollinators

[blissful]

I keep a similar chart oof everything I have on my property so I know when the best time too have my solitary bees delivered.

I have to tell you, last year, we had bumblebees beneath the deck. We lived in harmony until canning season and one sting.
I know how wonderful all different bees do so much pollination. The more the better, just not taking over my preparation space!

 

[dragnlaw]

I was crying when I had to clear out a nest of Bumblebees in the floor boards of one of my barns. Didn't want to but just too dangerous.

 

[blissful]

The bees seemed to have made it through those two freezing nights. Today our friend with 2 hives out back put his bees in. The weather is getting warmer, so that's a good sign. The dandelions and pear blossoms are food for the bees right now.
Our weekly-or every 10 days, bee checks will start soon.
Mite treatment:
The feeders are close to full now but in 7-10 days they'll need to be filled again and the first dose of mite treatment will start. (I'm not sure which kind we'll use just yet.) They'll be 3 treatments this year, one before the honey flows, one immediately after, and one more. Three different formulas. (apivar, a burnable acid smoke, and I can't recall the name of the third one.)
Supers:
After the first mite treatment, then the supers get put on top so the bees have somewhere to put nectar and honey.

 

[blissful]

Mite treatment was put in all the hives. They come out May 22nd. (supers go on the same day)
Tomorrow the sugar syrup feeders get filled with sugar syrup.
First Bee Check-May 5th, to examine the frames and brood.

 

[blissful]

Bee check #1 5/5/24
This is our first full examination of the frames in the hives. All the hives are doing great.

The bees in the 3 lb packages, say, 10,000 or maybe 8,000 bees, and one queen went into each hive 2 sunday's ago.
It took the queen a day or two or maybe as long as 5 days to get out of the cage and onto a frame to lay eggs. While she was in the cage the workers were creating the wax on the frame to hold the eggs.

Based on the pictures below, the most middle frames in each of the hives have capped brood (those hexagons that are full and covered in wax towards the middle). The queen lays eggs, then the eggs evolve into larva, then at 7 days the workers cap the brood to let them develop for 14 more days and they hatch. (our first local births could be as soon 10 days, depending on when the queen started to lay eggs)

Queens become full-grown adults within 16 days; drones develop in under 24 days and female workers require 21 days during larval and pupal development.

The population explosion begins from all of this. In 2 weeks, all those capped brood cells will birth workers. The queen may lay at a rate of 1500-2000 eggs / DAY, she is a boss. During all this time she continues to lay eggs, they get capped, they are born.

In anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 weeks or less, all the original bees in a box (the 3 lb package of bees) will have died off.

Thank you for your hard work and travel!

Queen honey bees live on average 1–2 years whereas workers live on average 15–38 days in the summer and 150–200 days in the winter.

 

[dragnlaw]

Amazing, fascinating and few other words I can't think of at the moment. Thanks for the education I'm getting bliss!

 

[blissful]

Bee check #3 today 5/21.
Mite treatment strips removed (3 weeks).
Feeder frames removed, replaced with a waxed frame.
The bees seem happy!
One hive has a queen that was originally mated and she was laying brood but now she is only laying drones because she wasn't mated well enough. (outside the control of the beekeepers) She didn't go out and get mated again so she was killed to make room for a new queen.
We decided to get a queen with bees in a nuc 4-5 frames of brood and lots of bees. Mr bliss is picking them up tomorrow and he'll install them with a deep box on top of the bee barn.
We had a choice between an italian queen alone, or a carniolan queen with bees in a nuc, and we went with the second choice. All our queens are carniolan.
Our neighbor tended his two hives too, and we ended it with lemonade, mandarin oranges, and zucchini/pear/raisin bread at the picnic table. It was a nice chance to chit chat with him.

The super boxes go on the hives next week. Supers are boxes that are the same length and width. Their heights vary. A medium super is 6 5/8" deep. A shallow super is 5 11/16” deep. This is for honey storage for the bees and this is what is spun out for honey if there is surplus.
We'll also have 4 shallow supers for just the bees to be building honey comb, to cut, to sell or give away-the comb and honey. These have edible wax foundation instead of plastic foundation coated in wax.