Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas

April 14, 2012

A Tale of Two Hives

It was the best of hives, it was the worst of hives. Today’s inspections of Queens Rosemary and Rue were on completely different ends of the spectrum.

As I previously mentioned, I switched over to pail feeders in an attempt to reduce small hive beetles and make it easier on myself to add syrup when needed. My first stop was at Sunshine Community Gardens to check on Queen Rosemary to verify her release and see how the girls were taking to their new home.

I know something was wrong as I started to take off the inner cover.

The girls decided to build comb from the top of the inner cover around the feeder instead of on the frames. This is what I had to deal with today.

I was forced to remove all this wax and get the bees into the super with the frames. I also never saw Rosemary so I can only hope she is still in there even though I feel like Gitanjali and I looked at every single bee inside and outside the hive. I ran home and got my old top hive feeder so I could feed the bees without having a repeat of the same situation. It stinks that I lost a week of comb building, but hopefully I got this hive back on track.

As I was driving down to Baab-Brock Farms, I was anticipating the exact same situation with Queen Rue and was dreading opening her hive. Luckily, Rue is awesome and they actually built comb on the frames like good little bees. Our cheering startled the chickens in the coop it was so loud.

Here is a shot of nice drawn out comb with eggs and an empty queen cage.

Even though I didn’t have errant comb issues on this hive, I still switched over to the old top hive feeder. I didn’t want to tempt fate and end up dealing with another mess.

I know you aren’t supposed to play favorites, but Rue gets my vote this week.

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April 10, 2012

They got smarter….

Texas Spiny Lizards love hanging out by the hives as they are very quick and can usually run in during an inspection to grab a tasty bee or two in the chaos. This particular lizard has upped his game and took up residence inside the nuclear nuc.

I placed the nuc out at Baab-Brock farms during the height of swarm season in case Marge, Knives or the feral hive in the yard next door swarmed. I sprayed the frames with some water and lemongrass oil to make it more appealing. Not a true swarm trap as I didn’t put it up in a tree, but better than nothing. No bees moved in, but one lizard made it a home. Perhaps the scout bees that found the nuc never made it back alive…

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April 9, 2012

Hive Installation at Baab-Brock Farms

After a successful installation over at the Sunshine Community Gardens, it was off to Baab-Brock Farms to install the remaining package of bees.

This hive is going in the same location formally occupied by Large Marge so the new queen Rue will have Knives 2.0 as a neighbor. Here is a shot of the bees yearning to be free.

The syrup can on this package almost defeated me, but we eventually got it removed without using a chainsaw.

Here is Queen Rue in her cage. You can just see the yellow dot on her back.

Bees love getting dumped into a hive.

Another successful hive installation!

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April 8, 2012

Hive Installation at Sunshine Community Gardens

Saturday morning I picked up two packages from BeeWeaver with my first stop being a hive installation at Sunshine Community Gardens.

Here is the package sitting on top of their new home.

Jean has a plot at the garden and is also interested in beekeeping. She met me at the garden to assist in the installation. Here we are performing the hardest part of a package installation – getting the syrup can out of the package.

After removing the syrup can and the queen cage, the bees got dumped into the hive.

Once the bees were in, I added the frames to the hive including one with the queen cage attached.

I then added some syrup for them to jump start the wax producing. I decided to go with pail feeders this year. While I liked my hive top feeder and had good success with them, so did Small Hive Beetles.

Here is the hive all closed up and ready to start pollinating the gardens. I hope Queen Rosemary will have a successful year.

Stress Testing the New Suit

One easy way to test that your suit is indeed bee proof is to simply knock over your hive. I find this gets the bees rather worked up and in fighting spirits. In my attempt today to confirm or deny Knives’ status, my hive slipped off the hive stand. Luckily there were only 3 medium supers remaining on the hive at the time, and I was able to use my cat-like reflexes to catch it before it tumbled to the ground. I had a heck of a time getting the hive wrestled back on the stand which was made slightly more difficult with a bunch of angry bees in my face.

The good news in all of this is my new suit’s reputation for being bee proof came through with flying colors. I obviously do not advocate kicking over your hive to test the integrity of your suit, but I’m trying to find the silver lining in today’s almost disaster.

I also believe I confirmed that my hive is indeed queenless. I had tons of drawn out frames with nothing in them. Considering it has been 30 days since I last saw eggs, it has been long enough that a new queen could have been raised and laying.

It was fortunate that my new queen arrived today. I first wanted to replace my existing hive stand with something more stable. The stand was nice, but the plastic made it very easy for the hive to move around when pulling off supers which is what caused the almost disaster today.

First, I broke down the hive.

After I removed all the supers, I was able to take the old stand away and lay down two cinder blocks and level them. I then put the hive back together again to introduce the new queen. Here is the new queen attached to a frame ready to go.

I then added the frame to the hive. I’m hoping the hive will quickly accept her, free her from the cage, and she can start pumping out some brood.

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March 26, 2012

The best-laid plans of bees and men…

I believe Knives’ hive may now be Knives-less. I inspected the hive this past weekend and didn’t see any sign of the queen and, more importantly, no signs of eggs either. I didn’t see any the previous weekend, but my inspection was cut short by a rain shower before I got too deep into the hive.

Here’s a shot of me in my fancy new Ultra Breeze suit going frame by frame looking for some sign of a laying queen.

My only other thought is perhaps the hive swarmed and the new queen hasn’t started laying yet. I did checkerboard the hive in late February, but perhaps that didn’t do the trick to suppress the swarm instinct.

Luckily, I have a new queen coming next week so all his not lost with Knives. After the Large Marge incident, I decided it was best to go ahead and requeen this hive with known gentle stock. I should get one more inspection in this weekend to hopefully confirm or deny if my hive is queenright. If I do find eggs, I can look forward to the fun task of finding an unmarked queen to “retire” before introducing the new queen. Otherwise, I can be fairly certain I can requeen with a minimal of fuss.

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March 24, 2012

Sunshine Community Garden Site Prep

In a few short weeks, I’ll be starting a hive at the Sunshine Community Garden in central Austin.

The hive is going to be behind the garden’s offices and away from the main planting areas.

The first step was to weed and remove brush from the area.

I then put down a layer of decomposed granite to create a level base. Here’s a shot of me using my amazing upper body strength to tamp a level surface.