Tag Archives: urban beekeeping

September 5, 2011 · 5:14 PM

Sooie!

During my hive inspections, I’ve started placing a line of honey along the front entrance. I figure it helps keep the girls occupied, and who knows, they may even start associating an inspection with a treat of honey. I always get a laugh when I see them come out of the hive and start taking up the honey. They really remind me of pigs at a trough.

Bees at the trough

We finally had a break in temperature today, and it was a beautiful 75 degrees when I checked on the hives. The ironic part is a good chunk of the Austin area is on fire right now as the cold front brought it gusty winds and lowered the humidity considerably. It would have been really nice if Tropical Storm Lee had decided to go through Texas as opposed to the other Gulf Coast states.

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July 24, 2011 · 1:58 PM

Knives is on Fire!

Queen Knives has settled in nicely and is an egg laying machine. She had great capped brood patterns and several nice frames of cells with eggs.

Frame of Brood from Knives

The second super had 6 frames completely drawn out with the 7th one almost done. I decided to add the third super to give them the space to build out as Knives definitely seems up to the task.

Three Supers on Knives

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July 23, 2011 · 11:12 AM

Ramona vs. Knives Commemorative Super

With Queen Knives recent ascension to power, our whole evil-ex super concept got thrown off. We will still add the evil-ex supers as needed, but decided to pay respects to Ramona by creating a super that depicts the epic battle between Ramona and Knives from the comic. We like to think this is what went down in the hive as well.

Ramona vs. Knives Commemorative Super

Thanks to the camera team for their drawing, inking, and lettering skills.

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July 10, 2011 · 1:48 PM

A swarm in July ain’t worth a fly…

It has been a few weeks since I checked Marge’s hive. The top most super is still pretty much empty from the honey harvest a few weeks back. Without some rain and a good nectar flow, they won’t make much progress drawing out wax, but I’m leaving it on to prevent overcrowding.

All eight frames on the 5th super are completely drawn out and filled with honey.

Capped Honey from Marge's Hive

The 4th super is filled with queen cells.

Queen Cells in the Making

I’m pretty sure this hive may have swarmed once already, so I’m surprised to see more queen cells in the making. With the drought and heat right now, I can’t imagine any swarm would have good luck starting out and surviving. I also don’t get the sense that this hive is overflowing with bees either.

Here is another frame with the start of a queen cell plus some really nice pollen.

Pollen on Frame

Our resident Texas Spiny Lizard also took advantage of the hive inspection to run in and eat some bees. Here he is scampering away after chowing down.

Texas Spiny Lizard

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July 4, 2011 · 3:48 PM

Total K.O.!

About a month ago, I found a very obvious supersedure cell in Ramona’s hive, but the next week’s inspection found the cell gone and Ramona still in the hive. However, I never saw Ramona after that week, but always just figured she was in there somewhere. Looks like I was wrong:

New Queen Knives Chau

You can see the new queen right in the middle of the photo. Unless Ramona was able to remove her white mark, you are now looking at the new queen named Knives Chau. Happy Independence Day Knives!

Edit: It just occurred to me that the package from Bee Weaver came with a marked and clipped queen. As this queen has full length wings, it is most definitely a new queen.

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June 26, 2011 · 9:37 PM

Ramona is looking better

I was a little nervous after last week’s inspection of Ramona’s hive, but I now think she is starting to recover from the pesticide incident of a few weeks ago. All the capped brood have now emerged and her numbers are a lot stronger by evidence of the quantity of bees in the hive. The only cause of concern was the wax moth I think I found hiding in the outer cover which promptly got squished.

I also put the feeder back on the hive to encourage the girls to draw out more frames in the 2nd super which in turn should allow the population to expand. Right now I’ll be happy if I can get all 8 frames in each of the two supers fully drawn out. The inch of rain we got earlier in the week should also help matters in the flower department. This drought is just miserable, but it has been a great learning experience on how to handle hives in these conditions.

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June 17, 2011 · 8:46 AM

Honey Harvest and Scotch Dinner

Even with this drought, Marge’s hive has still been managing to pack on the honey. One of the advantages of having a hive in an urban setting is that people have a variety of flowers in their gardens and often have watering systems to keep them blooming. Still, with no rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future, this will be the last time I take any honey off until at least the late fall, and only if we see a considerable nectar flow sometime between now and then.

This being my fourth harvest, I think I’m finally getting it down to a science. The bee escape is the best invention ever and even with this hot weather, it is still very effective with only a few bees left in the honey super. Here are some shots of the frames of honey.

Honey Frame

Honey Frame

I’m still using the crush and strain method for extraction. One of these days I’ll get an extractor, but for now this works well and I do get a lot of beeswax for other projects.

Harvesting Honey

While we were waiting for the honey to settle through all the filters, we had a wonderful dinner and scotch tasting at Brenna’s house where we keep the hives.

Honey and Scotch Dinner

We pulled right around 25 pounds off this 8 frame super, and it is the same color and consistency of our previous honey harvest.

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June 12, 2011 · 9:26 AM

The Cleaner

For the past year, we have been trying to get a picture of this super fast lizard who hangs out around the bee yard. I can only assume he takes advantage of dead bees that are thrown out of the hive for an easy meal.

Lizards love bees

With yesterday’s carnage at Ramona’s hive, this guy was having a field day. Of course, I don’t know how he will react to eating tons of pesticide ridden bees, but hopefully he will be ok.

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June 11, 2011 · 1:35 PM

Ramona can’t catch a break

Poor Ramona. She has one bad leg, a terrible Texas drought to contend with, and now what appears to be a run in with some sort of pesticide. I was greeted this morning with hundreds of dead bees in front of the hive.

Dead Bees

Dead Bees

There were also a few dead bees on the landing in front of the hive. I also noticed some bees walking around with great difficulty and were obviously affected by something. This just breaks my heart.

The silver lining is that upon opening the hive, they seem to be doing ok. I didn’t see Ramona but there were plenty of eggs to be found plus several good frames of capped brood. Hopefully this is just a minor step back, and the hive will weather this storm.

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May 30, 2011 · 1:36 PM

Ramona likes to mix it up

Now that I have two hives, it is interesting to see how each one has its own personality and quirks. Like most first borns, Marge is very organized and responsible. Most of her frames were dedicated to one purpose be it brood, honey, or pollen. As the second born, Ramona is more of a free spirit and not so orderly. Take the frame below which is a combination of pollen, brood and honey.

Frame of Pollen, Brood, and Honey

Frame of Pollen, Brood, and Honey

A good majority of her frames are like this although she does have 2-3 dedicated completely to brood. If she didn’t have those, I’d be a little worried of having a queen that didn’t lay well, but the hive appears to be growing albeit more slowly than I would like.

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