Natural Bee Farm

My Bee Stuff Pile of "Junk (tm)"

As usual, my hobbies tend to generate a lot of clutter. Most of my projects are a WIP – Work in Progress – which usually end up with what my wife would call “Junk ™” that tends to accumulate as my gumption meanders. For most of the year, this merely festers, but with the advent of the holiday season and the imminent visitation from our relatives, these piles of very useful Project Components – “Junk ™” – can become a sore spot in any relationship. So, it’s time to clean things up. Part of that includes assembling the rest of my beehive woodenware and getting that out of the way. Since I don’t have a workshop yet, this stuff tends to accumulate in the dining-room – a room that we really don’t use all that much for most of the year but that becomes a focal point during the holidays. Hence – a huge pile of “Junk ™.”

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Honeybee enjoying a Texas Bluebonnet

Up until I got bees, flowers were just pretty colorful things growing on the weeds in my back yard. And until I got bees, I had no idea just how many flowers I had growing back there – and how many there are. There are just a ton of them back there. Always could be more, of course. There are a few that I’ve yet to identify, but I’ll amend this when I do.

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Stack of freshly painted hive-bodies.

I often get asked what I buy and where I get my components from when it comes to building my hives. Entering into your first experience of shopping for components to build your first beehives can be daunting, even tho the beehives themselves are extraordinarily simple. There is very little product differentiation – only so many things you can do with a Langstroth hive – so you see a lot of redundant sources, nearly identical prices in some cases, and you’re forced to do the eeny, meeny, miny, mo thing in deciding who to buy your woodenware from. Since beekeepers often get asked about their own preferred sources – and having been in the asking position before, I figure I’ll list my preferences here. Note that I have not ever purchased a “Kit” that many of these retailers sell. Often the kits come with 5.4mm plastic foundation and I’m very particular about my frames and keeping my bees on natural comb.

Every beekeeper ends up settling on their own preferred sources so this is just a basic guide. It’s what has worked for me tho I’m sure there’s always room for improvement. Here is my basic shopping list for my hives. Remember, buying in bulk often saves you a bit – many have price cuts at 5 or more components for the major hive components and a price break on frames purchased by the case.

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Trap-out screen in place and trap-hive... trapping.

Up until now, my primary method of acquiring bees has been via cut-outs or swarm-capture. I like cut-outs because for all intents and purpose it’s a turn-key colony complete with queen, bees and brood. I have had trap-out opportunities in the past that I passed up because of lack of brood-comb, but I decided that these opportunities needed some more thought and innovation. Sans brood-comb to act as a bait (and provide eggs to make a new queen) what is the best option? A queen. Of course, I am reticent to buy bees, but in this case, there was little choice. I am just not at the queen-breeding stage yet for providing my own queens. That is certainly something I’d like to explore later on, however right now I’m just concerned with growing my apiary and grow up the hives that populate my apiary. So far I’ve collected swarms – which are often very easy to handle. And I’ve performed cut-outs. Now it’s time to do a trap-out. So, just what is a trap-out?

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Barrel of bees with the evaporative cooler resting on top of it.

This morning, I was all set to go move a 55-gallon drum of bees. Just that. The home-owner is interested in keeping them and transferring them to a proper hive but at the moment we needed to get them away from her house until she can acquire some basic beekeeping equipment. Easy as peas, right? Besides, the colony was only a few weeks old and the comb would be rather soft – it’d be nice for it to mature a little before handling it. So, what was that saying about best made plans?

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This is what I saw when I removed the soffit.

I got a removal-gig referred to me by the guys at work – a home-owner had bees in her eave and really wanted them out. As it turns out, she also has a bee-tree that she wants to remove (tree and all), but that’s a post for another day. The colony in the eave was occupying a guest house that the home-owner’s mother is now living in and the bees were extra lively, making the homeowner a bit nervous. This was a taller eave – up near the top of the gable on the end of the building, perhaps 12′ high. And it was a fairly new colony. She didn’t see any activity last winter, and noticed them when she returned this Spring. So it’s a first-year colony, perhaps only a month old. Which is good – not as much honey to muck things up, but also can be a pain – the new comb will be very soft and extra care will be needed in handling.

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Happy bees scenting on the entrance of their new home.

I’m running a bit behind on blogging – this cutout occurred on the last weekend of April. My friend Ty of Windy Hill Organics wanted to get into beekeeping so what better way to introduce one to keeping bees than with a cut-out? You get a complete hive, bees, queen, brood-comb – and you get introduced to the structure of the colony and get a chance to experience a LOT of bees flying around you. My first hive was from a cutout I did solo and it’s been an adventure ever since.

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Bees like Milkweed Flowers

Scattered amongst the wildflowers I let grow on the back part of our property grows milkweed. A green variety that stays low to the ground and produces greenish flowers with bits of purple within. They’re neat looking plants and I hear tell that Monarch butterflies will lay eggs on them – so I leave them be. However, they have yet another benefit too – my bees seem to love them! I expected as much, but it’s neat to see the bees collecting from these flowers. The plant itself isn’t all that remarkable and the flower-heads are distinctive but not showy. And yet, the bees are so intent on these flowers that I was able to put the camera an inch from them to get closeups without their flying off. That must be some really good nectar!

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Happy bees very quickly filling up their one-box home.

I borrowed a frame of brood and nurse bees from my strong hive to bolster a struggling hive and I put an empty in it’s place. While I was in the strong hive, I split the brood up. I opened up the brood-nest, leaving an empty frame between every two drawn and populated brood-frames. I only had three empties – they were filling up the box fast! That was last weekend. Today I decide to go give the hive another looksee. Normally I’d ignore the hives for several weeks while they’re busy working, but with seven of ten frames of this hive occupied, this one is nearing maximum capacity and in need of another box. If I wait too long, it will form a swarm-cell to raise another queen and then it’ll swarm, removing several thousand bees from the work-force and setting back honey production for that hive.

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Here are the top-bar hive chamfer trim comb guides in place and ready for bees.

There was a time when bees actually made their own comb from scratch. No really – they actually did. Honeybees really do know how to make their own comb! Unfortunately, their comb making often does not mesh with our desire for order. If left on their own, the combs will often have curves, which is not conducive to movable frame management. There are a few areas in even natural beekeeping where for the sake of managing the hive and extracting a harvest without destroying said hive, we must depart to a degree from the purely natural and give the bees more motivation to make straight combs. In this case, the use of comb guides has proven beneficial.

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