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Here’s a video that I took while performing the trap-out on Monday’s arrived swarm of honeybees to a neighborhood in Richardson, Texas.
After the bees exit the window-screen mesh cone, they are unable to find their way back in. Their choice is to (a) use the 5-frame nuc box with a frame of my honeybee’s eggs.. or (b) to abscond. Their choice is usually to move into the box. After no bees are left in the tree, I’ll remove the box, and take it to my bee-yard. Today is marked as the first swarm call for the Spring 2012 season. When I received the call, a few bees (scouts) were coming in and out of the tree. By the time I got there, the bees were coming in – and it was looking like a tornado of honeybees. I quickly placed my swarm trap box in a good location – but the ladies had already decided that the tree was their new home. Pics below… I’ll be doing a trap-out later this week on this colony. I should be able to initiate the trap-out on Wednesday of this week. It’s been three weeks, now, since I added the foundation-less frames to the hive. Yesterday, I saw another beekeeper in the neighborhood working with his hive at a community garden. His single deep hive had swarmed, and he had caught the swarm and added them to another box. I decided that I should check on mine. No smoke today. I don’t know why… But I decided to go smokeless for today’s hive check. I removed last years’ honey supers, and checked the brood chambers. In each deep, I had placed five foundation-less frames. I was very surprised at the rate of drawing fresh comb. 3 in the top chamber were fully drawn, 1 was about 1/4 drawn, and the last outer frame was seemingly untouched as yet. I rotated the full frame which was almost a full frame of capped drone comb, larval brood, to the outside, and moved the outer untouched frame to the center. Again – I’m amazed at the speed as which the ladies draw out comb on their own. I’ll post pics next time around. I took a week of “vacation” and worked on flooring for the house in Tyler. Here’s a quick time-lapse video of my tear-out of the old carpet, and installation of new flooring. I decided that it was time to REALLY check out my bees for the spring… I’ve only got the one hive, so I’ve been wanting to add a box or two – to allow them to increase their numbers so that I can make a split or two off of it. I decided to checkerboard my frames as such: I currently had (1) 10-frame deep and (1) Shallow super. I suited up, grabbed my hive tool and fired up the smoker. I pulled the shallow super off of the deep box, then pulled a deep frame, and placed it into another deep box. This allowed me to move the other frames without worrying about rolling any of the bees (especially the queen!) between frames. I wound up, with the following layout: Med Super: 0000000000 The shallow super had capped brood, developing larvae, and freshly laid eggs in it. There was still 2-3 frames of honey in the shallow super. There was also what appeared to be a swarm queen cell – placed between the original shallow super and the deep hive box. Unfortunately, the swarm queen cell was destroyed when I removed the shallow super. I was curious as to the taste, etc of the bee larvae, so I ate one of the larvae that had been in the destroyed cells from my removing the super. Kind of sweet! I really hope that I have not created TOO MUCH space in the hive. I don’t want them to abscond from my giving them too much area in which to live. I’ll wait a week or two, and let them repair their propolis and hopefully draw some new comb on the empty frames.
We’ve had such a mild winter – it makes me worried that we’ll have a cold snap in the next couple of weeks approaching Spring Equinox. Today was such beautiful weather. At 7pm, it’s 75 deg. F., and we hit 77 today. We’re supposed to have lows in the mid-30’s this Friday night, though. The bees have consumed quite a bit of the dry sugar that I had placed on top of the inner cover. That leads me to believe that the honey super may be empty (or close to empty) at this point. The bees are bringing in a HUGE amount of pollen, though. Today I also worked on building several screened bottom boards, and I branded some of my hive bodies & supers with a branding iron that I had custom made by a friend that is a metal-worker. I’ll post a pic of the brand as well as the branded woodenware tomorrow.  Fabien Cousteau and Rex Smith I just received word that I’ve been invited to spend an evening in April 2012 with Fabien Cousteau – grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. You remember him, right? Back in the early 1970’s, Jacques brought the wonders of our Earth’s underwater realms into the homes of America. I grew up with a healthy respect earned for Jacques and his entire crew (including his grandson, Fabien) that worked with him. The Calypso – though I never saw it in person – will always hold a dear place in my mind. (Fade to John Denver singing “Calypso”)
How did I get such an offer? It’s part of the STEM scholarship that I received from my local county college (Richland College – Dallas County Community College) this spring. Scholarship recipients are invited to a STEM Summit in April of 2012 – which has Fabien Cousteau as speaker in the evening, then he’s available the next morning for one-on-one talks. I am one happy “Nature Nerd”!!! Sorry folks… There are too many ‘bots’ – and I’m getting about 50-100 spam comments per day. Turning off comments until WordPress can figure out a better method to protect site owners. I wanted to share a few of the podcasts that I listen to in regards to beekeeping. If you read this, and are aware of others that I should take a listen to – then please send me a note to let me know what the link is – and I’ll evaluate it. Organically Managed Beekeeping The Wildlife Pro Network (BeeMaster) The Barefoot Beekeeper The Beekeepers Corner KiwiMana |
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