September 2013 ... a swarm of activity

Well, It's been a couple of years since I put anything on this blog. Since the last post on here those bees died over the winter. I got new bees the next spring and watched them through the year and all looked good. But, once again they didn't make it through till spring. We left them all the honey in the fall, but when I opened the hive up they were one frame away from the honey and must have starved to death. Probably my fault but I like to blame it on them being Georgia bees. This year it was too late to order new bees so we were bee-less. Katie misses the bees.

A few weeks ago I saw some bees flying around the hive but figured they were just going in there and cleaning up any honey that I may have spilled in the hive and not cleaned up. Just last week I looked at the hive and noticed that there were a lot of bees coming and going. I opened the hive up and it is full of bees. A swarm must have moved in without me knowing it. I am not sure when they moved in but it was probably around the first of September. It could have been earlier I guess because I really wasn't checking on the hive because we didn't have any bees.

Maybe they will be a tougher, smarter, local bunch of bees that will make it through the winter. I only hope that they can get enough honey put together to last through the winter.

Below is a little bit of video that I took of them today (9-28-13). It was nice and warm today, almost 80 degrees. It looks like there was a lot of pollen going in. For some of the video I used the camera's slow motion video feature. It takes something like 120 frames per second and then plays them back at 30 frames per second to slow down the action. In the last clip you can see one of the bees dragging out a dead bee.

Kayla got a Mac book laptop from school to use for the year, so we made the video below using Imovie on it. It seemed easy enough to use although I felt like I should have been sitting in a coffee shop somewhere drinking a latte while I was using it.

Late October now and the bees are starting to bunch together. Below you can see the honey area is mostly empty of bees now.

Now they are clustering together in the middle as the days get colder.

I am getting a little worried that the bees that filled the hive a few weeks ago are now down to just a couple of frames in the middle. I hope there are enough to last until spring.

December 11 and it was very mild so I went and peeked at them again. They were still bunched up in the middle. There are dead bees by the entrance but I read that that would happen during the winter and that the bees will clean them out when it warms up. I plugged up two of the entrance holes for the winter.

Harvesting some honey

So we decided that we are going to harvest some honey from the addition that we put on top and leave the rest of the honey for the bees for this winter.

I removed some of the frames from the super and you can see the cross comb where they built combs from one frame to another. Looking back we probably should not have made such a big opening for the bees to come up from below. Because the frames up top were not lined up with the top bars below the bees were trying to make the new combs connect to the top bars below and they had to curve them over in order to do that.

It was late in the season so I decided to just take a couple of frames and cut out only the capped honey from them as I don't think they will be adding any more honey up here this year.

I bought a nylon paint strainer and put it inside of our orange juice pitcher to let the honey strain through.

Originally I thought that I would just leave the bag wrapped over the top of the pitcher and let the honey strain through, but there was too much honey and the bag was sitting in the honey and not straining anymore. We remedied that by tying it to the cupboard handle and let it sit overnight.

Just over one quart from the two small frames that I took out. Not bad!

It is a very light colored honey.

Bees working on the addition and the beetle

The bees are working on filling up the addition.

I found a beetle in the hive today. You can see him in the honeycomb in the center of the picture. The bees would not let him leave that cell. Every time he tried to get out of it a bee would push him back to the bottom of the cell.

I read online that all hives have beetles in them but strong hives can keep them under control. I hope that my hive is strong enough to keep them under control.

Starting to kick the drones out

Its the beginning of September in this video. It looks like the bees are starting to encourage the drones to leave the hive. There are a lot more drones by the entrance than usual today. I couldnt get video of it but when I looked in the window there were worker bees clinging to the drones and trying to drag them to the entrance.

Summertime 3

Some more pictures of the addition and the progress in there. It is harder to see in this one. Katie wishes that Jim had built this with a window in it so that she could see what is going on every day.

You can see them crossing the comb from one frame to the other. I have to do something about that but not quite sure how to do that yet. 

It looks like they have these bars all filled up with honey.

Pretty unbelievable that they have done this much since I got them. 

Summertime 2

The hive is getting closer to being full of comb now.

Jim is demonstrating the process that we have come up with to expand the hive. If the queen ends up laying eggs in the added super we may try to split the hive. 

I don't even get this kind of pressure at work.

The completed addition.

We thought that the bees were getting ready to swarm because they started hanging (literally) out on the outside of the hive.

Turns out that they just do this in the summer when it gets too hot inside the hive. Some of them hang on the side of the hive to help keep the inside of the hive cooler.

It didn't take them long at all to fill up the rest of the hive with comb. You can see where they made the combs on the right side of the hive much bigger. That is where I spaced the top bars apart so that the bees would have room to go into the super that we put on top of the hive.

Looking through the top cover of the super on top of the hive.

Got stung for the first time a couple of days ago. It had been really hot (around 90 or better) so I had propped the top cover of the super up a little bit thinking that it would let a some of the hot air flow out of the hive. When I went to check on the hive and see what was going on in the super as soon as I lifted the top cover one came out and got me in the hand. Looking back I bet that they were guarding it like it was another entrance to the hive. However, the next time I went to peek in there I did use my smoker and had gloves on just in case. No problems since I stopped propping the cover up though. The next hot spell we had I just left them alone and everything was fine.

Activity in the new addition.