Winter in Reno

December 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Two Beehive in WinterMerry Christmas, everyone!

Winter is officially here!!  My apologies for the 6-month gap between postings; my other life now involves a startup manufacturing facility making thermal solar panels, and that has kept me busy and out of mischief.  But  I have met a few new friends recently who are interested in starting up a new colony, so I thought now would be a good time to try to catch up.

The weather service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for today here in the Reno, NV area, and my two colonies are hunkered down with plenty stores, ready for the onslaught.  My brick ventilation system allows me to regulate the airflow up through the hive, by placing bricks in the space between the cinder blocks supporting the hives.

Both hives always have a small upper opening by virtue of a notch cut in the frame of the inner cover, together with a (deliberately) slightly oversize outer cover, oversized by a bee-space.  By sliding the outer cover tight against the inner cover, the space is closed off, but by sliding the outer cover forward, it creates an opening to allow the air to flow through the hive and out.

This is especially important in the wet winter season, to prevent the accumulation of condensation, mildew, fungus, and all kinds of yucky stuff.

The bottom board is a screened IPM board with the screen open all winter.  To keep the wind out when it’s cold, I use the brick system to keep the area under the hive open but more like a dead air space.  The front and rear of the hives are supported by two (grey) cinder blocks.  (See photo above, right.)  The red bricks between them block the flow of cold air in the winter.  In warmer weather, I remove the red bricks, providing more ventilation up through the screen bottom board.

I still have top feeders in place, but I suspect the syrup is frozen.  Anyway, my guess is that the bees are so closely huddled together in the brood chamber right now, none of them are moving away from the family hearth to gather anything.  Whatever stores they have nearby is what they have until it gets warmer – hopefully in a few weeks.

Preparing for Spring

Springtime is the peak time for honeybee activity.  Early spring is when most of the neighborhood trees burst into bloom.  And since a tree fills out in 3 dimensions, it only takes 3 or 4 neighborhood trees to equal an acre of bee forage.  In the Reno, NV area, it all starts about mid-February, around Valentine’s Day.  Our job right now is to get ready.  When it starts, it comes on FAST.

This assumes you want to manage your bees for optimum honey production.  If you, many beekeepers help stimulate brood-rearing early (starting in the late winter) so the population of the colony is high and lots of field workers are available when the spring bloom hits.  That’s why I have a box of “pollen” patties ready to feed them, probably starting later next month.  This step is not necessary for the health of the colony, its only goal is to stimulate brood production to take advantage of the early bloom, to maximize my honey crop.  I mention this because different beekeepers have different styles, and a beekeeper with a more “natural” bent would skip this step.

Both of my colonies had a huge mite load when I checked last month, so I’ll be treating them with thymol (a thyme derivative) at the same time, being sure to terminate the treatment and feeding before the honey supers go on.

Filed Under: Bees in the City, Nutrition, Spring Management

Using a Spur Embedder

June 24, 2012 By 1 Comment
Photo of spur embedder in use

Using the Spur Embedder — Click to enlarge

Pure beeswax honeycomb needs extra support when extracting honey. When you spin a fully-loaded frame in an extractor, you are using “centrifugal force” to impel the honey out of the cells and against the inside walls of the extractor.  My friend Ron Phaneuf, a physics professor, might argue that there is no such thing as “centrifugal force”; what we see happening is really the result of the angular velocity of the honey causing it to travel tangentially to the arc of the motion.  Ok, ok, whatever you call it, those same forces that cause the honey to vacate the honeycomb and splat against the inside of your extractor are also pushing against the delicate wax comb, and with nothing holding it, the comb will break apart and wind up in the bottom of your extractor. The pure beeswax foundation I buy comes with several vertical wires already embedded, but for extracting, horizontal wires need to be added.

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Filed Under: Bees in the City, Equipment, Spring Management Tagged With: , ,

Installing Pure Beeswax Foundation

May 29, 2012 By 3 Comments

Deep Frame With Supporting Pins

This is one of the more enjoyable aspects of beekeeping as a hobby: assembling new frames with pure beeswax foundation!  I’m not sure how many beekeepers are in this camp with me, not likely very many commercial beekeepers.  In my lifetime, I have probably put together maybe a couple hundred Langstroth-style frames in various configurations.  Probably there are commercial beekeepers that do that many in a day.  Sadly, for them, the joy is lost in the sheer volume of frames and hives they have to process to stay in business.

To this beekeeper, nothing compares to the olfactory rush of opening a hive at the peak of a nectar flow.  Ah, the heady aroma of beeswax, honey, and propolis, not to mention subliminal layers of all those pheromones; it’s almost euphoric.  Running second, however, is the aroma of fresh beeswax when opening a package of pure beeswax foundation.  If nobody is looking, I won’t hesitate to stick my nose right down against the wax, close my eyes, inhaling deeply, and imagine myself in my bee yard with happy bees buzzing about.
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Filed Under: Equipment, Spring Management Tagged With: ,

Systemic Pesticide Causes CCD (not!)

May 3, 2012 By 2 Comments

Logo for ABJ ExtraWhen I saw the headlines from the ABJ Extra (a newsletter published by the American Bee Journal), “Use of Common Pesticide Linked to Bee Colony Collapse“, it got my attention.  It was almost thrilling to read the first sentance of that article that a scientific study, published by the Harvard School of Public Health no less, proves that imidacloprid is “the” culprit behind Colony Collapse Disorder.  Finally, we have the smoking gun; and it’s the Evil Empire that we suspected all along.  Well, some of us, anyway.  You may already know that imidacloprid is a systemic pesticide; one of the neonicotinoids that were put into massive use in agriculture around the same time that CCD appeared , about 5 or 6 years ago.

What you may not know is that imidacloprid is an active ingredient in consumer products that people buy from Home Depot such as Bayer All In One Rose and Flower Care, and Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus and Vegetable Insect Control.  So even if you don’t live in a soybean field, even if the nearest farm is miles away, some of your neighbors are likely using these pesticides on their fruits, vegetables and ornamentals. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Bees and Science, Bees in the City, Books and Videos

Honey Bee Movie Night

April 28, 2012 By 1 Comment

Cover photo for "Queen of the Sun"Artemisia Movie House presents “Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?“, showing this Tuesday, May 1.  If you haven’t seen this wonderful movie, go.  Even if you’ve seen it, go anyway, because it’s such a delightful movie, and there will be a panel discussion after, with local professional beekeepers who will provide us with up-to-date information about the current state of the honey bee in the Northern Nevada area.  It sounds like a fun event, I’m going for sure.

Filed Under: Books and Videos

Spring is Here!

March 27, 2012 By 1 Comment
Photo of Forsythia

Forsythia

Even the calendar says so.  While many Californians are already adding supers and gearing up for swarm season, we Reno-ites are just now thawing out from winter.

I paid a visit to the Wilbur S. May Arboretum here in Reno on Saturday to see what trees, if any, are in bloom, and which, if any, are being visited by honeybees.  I want to plant one or two trees in my yard, trees that are especially attractive to honeybees.  Most especially trees that bloom early and provide honeybees with an early boost of nectar and pollen.

In an urban setting, the neighborhood trees provide a big part of a bee’s foraging area because they are three-dimensional.  They say a beehive needs an acre of forage to thrive, but most urban beekeepers don’t have an acre.  But because of the 3-dimensional nature of trees, a couple trees can provide the equivalent of an acre of bee forage.

The May Arboretum is ideal for my situation, because it’s only a 10 minute drive from my house, at my same elevation (4,600 ft. above sea level) and lots of different tree species are represented in a relatively small area.  So I figured by hiking around the Arboretum, I can easily see which trees are attractive to honeybees, that also do well in my location.

Photo of Arroyo Willow

Arroyo Willow

I checked out the Arboretum a week ago, and there were no trees or shrubs with any discernible blooms, and no honeybees around that I could see.  Sigh.  I was almost disappointed again yesterday, the first blooming tree I found, a Forsythia, had no bees!  The temperature was almost 70F, where were the bees?  Moving on, I reached a stand of Arroyo Willow trees.  They looked a lot like the nearby Pussy Willows, but these had a lot more bees on them.

NowI knew where all the bees were.  They were all over these willow trees, and also some early blooming Red Maple trees.  With the Red Maple, I heard the bees before I saw them, the maple was so big I had to look up, thinking I heard a swarm.

These were the only three species of trees that were in bloom, only two of which were covered with honeybees.  Guess what trees I want to start with in my yard?  Certainly one or more of these early-blooming varieties is bound to find a home in my yard.

Photo of Red Maple

Red Maple

Doing just a bit of research online, however, tells me that the red maple gets BIG.  Like 90 ft.  Might be a good candidate to replace the scrub pine tree in the front yard, where it would have room to dominate the whole front yard.  Hmm, I dunno, 90 ft! That’s a LOT of maple leaves to rake, too. The Arroyo Willow seems like a better choice for my small yard, but it needs water. Here in the arid Reno climate, that means I’ll have to water it, but I have to provide water for my bees, anyway. I also found some debate as to whether Forsythia is attractive to bees.  It seems that in some areas it is, and other areas it is not. I’ll keep my eye on that one.

 

Filed Under: Bees in the City, Nutrition Tagged With:

Swarm Traps and Bait Hives – Free Bees!

March 7, 2012 By 1 Comment

Photo of front cover of Swarm Traps and Bait HivesMy dad always said, “There’s no such thing as a free kitten”. But given that there are costs with keeping the critters, hiving a swarm is about as close to “Free Bees” as you can get. In “Swarm Traps and Bait Hives: The Easy Way to Get Bees for Free”, author McCartney Taylor shows us how to build ”bait hives” that are cheap, easy and fun; and practically guaranteed to catch local swarms of honeybees.

Before plunging into the actual design of a successful bait hive, Taylor first presents an overview of honeybee biology as related to swarming behavior and nest location selection.

Pretty cool stuff about field bees transforming into scout bees; the democratic process of new site selection; and what we now know about the selection criteria that these scout bees look for when choosing a new home. It seems that scientists now know that Apis Mellifera are most attracted to a hollow place measuring 10 gallons in volume. Africanized bees are attracted to a smaller volume. Other preferences are shown for the size of defendable entrance, location with respect to bee-visible landmarks, and the presence of chemical lures (such as lemon grass oil).

The authors show us how to leverage this scientifically derived information to design the most attractive new home for the honeybees we want. As a DIY guy himself, Taylor first shows how to build cozy starter home bait hive from scrap lumber for next to nothing. Then, with a nod to the urbanites and hobbyists who may have less time than money, how to use off-the-shelf equipment for a few dollars more.

How to build it, where to place it, when to check it, all these questions are answered in this 53 page, very well illustrated booklet. I’m definately going to put out one or two bait hives, why not? It will be fun to see what kind of bees I have in my neighborhood.

I was first tipped off about this booklet in this month’s issue of Bee Culture. Editor Kim Flottum gives a 1/4 page review on p 15 of that magazine. I got my copy as a pdf download from the publisher, LearningBeekeeping.com for $9.75. Kim tells us we can also get a hard bound copy from Amazon for $15 and change, or from CreateSpace for about $14 with discount code of H4X84PZS.

Filed Under: Bee Biology, Bees in the City, Swarms Tagged With: , ,

That Almond Cash

February 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

California Almond Orchard

I admit to being a hypocrite sometimes.  We all know that monocultures are NOT a healthy or natural environment for bees.  And the CA almond crop is a monoculture of the highest order.  Vast acreages, as far as the eye can see, of neat, laser-straight rows of almond trees, and nothing else.  That’s what the girls get to eat for three weeks, almond nectar, almond pollen, more almond nectar, more almond pollen, more almond nectar, more almond nectar, more almond pollen, you get the idea.  Gag.

And there sure isn’t anything healthy or natural about moving a beehive hundreds of miles on the back of a flatbed truck in the dead of night. And back again two months later.

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Filed Under: Pollination

Clan Apis: A Graphic Novel

February 16, 2012 By

Clan Apis logoAfter seeing M.E.A. McNeil’s terrific write up in the February 2012 issue of American Bee Journal, I had to get this book.  It’s a single, 128-page volume containing all 5 comic books chronicling the life and adventures of Nyuki, of clan Apis.  I love this book.  I bought several copies to give to my friends.

Jay Hosler, Ph.D, who wrote and illustrated Clan Apis, is a neurobiology professor and a wonderful story-teller.  Dr. Hosler has an amazing talent for entertaining, while presenting a complete and accurate treatment of honey bee biology.  We follow the heroine of the story, Nyuki (Swahili for “bee”), as she undergoes her metamorphosis and development through all her stages as a larva through the phases and activities of adult bee life.  Other characters in the book, such as her older sister, Dvorah (Hebrew for “bee”), Sisyphus the dung beetle, and Bloomington the flower, explain the facts of life and counsel her to heed her ”inner voice”.

The story is filled with humor, puns and wisecracks, affectively masking the educational aspect of the tale.  Very entertaining and informative, I recommend it highly, as the first bee book for anyone over the age of 8.  My new favorite.

You can order Clan Apis directly from Dr. Hosler’s website, http://www.jayhosler.com for $20, or from Amazon for $17 or $18. If you live in Reno, you can pick one up at River School Farm for $15.

Filed Under: Bee Biology, Books and Videos, Kids and Bees Tagged With: ,

River School Farm Offers “Getting Started” Workshop for New-Bees

February 10, 2012 By 7 Comments

Image of Honey bee“Getting Started — First Steps” presented by yours truly and Tom Stille of River School Farm, is a two-hour overview of beekeeping as a hobby.  Primarily targeted to the beginner beekeeper (new-bees) and urban or surburban dwellers who are curious about beekeeping, this workshop will cover the  pro’s and con’s of beekeeping in an urban or suburban environment, equipment needed, basics of honey bee biology, seasonal activities, and basics of how to get started in beekeeping.

Date: Feb 25 (Saturday)

Click for Details

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: , ,
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