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.

Scaffold set up under the eave and smoker... smoking.

We settled on a weekend to perform the cut-out and the homeowner, graciously rented a scaffold for me. I really do need to get one of my own – that was a very handy tool indeed. I had intended to use the large wooden crate that my 18/9 Mann Lake extractor came in, reinforced a bit and sitting in the bed of my pickup-truck, but her solution was ultimately more practical for that location. She had a fence that would have needed removing to access the area with my truck.

Beautiful little three week old colony and very fresh comb.

Saturday started off unusually cool. Since I wanted to avoid chilling the brood-comb any more than necessary, I waited until a bit after lunch to perform the cut-out. Ideally, I want the colony to pretty much pick up from where it left off, and having to discard hundreds to thousands of brood because they got chilled would definitely set the colony back. Fortunately, it warmed up a bit – enough I think to ensure the brood was safe. As usual, I loaded up my truck with way more than I needed. There are always unforeseen variables in a cut-out and you just never know if you’re going to need something. This time around I remembered my water spray-bottle – forgotten on the last cut-out. It’s handy to have to reduce flying when the bees are being swept into the bucket and dumped into the waiting hive. Of course, my implements of demolition too – what would a cut-out be without a couple of crow-bars?

A view of the colony from below.

I wanted to try something new this time and brought along an empty hive-body with me along with the receiving hive. I’ve seen some packages installed by placing an empty on top of a framed hive-body and pouring the bees into that, with the empty helping contain the bees while they go down into the hive. This can be covered with the inner cover for a few minutes while the bees settled in. So, I figured that would work as well when I started dumping bees into the receiving hive too. Just about every cut-out I do becomes an experiment of one sort or another – I’m still quite the student of bees and beekeeping and there’s always something neat and new to learn.

The end-comb that's loaded with honey and pollen and some eggs.

When I arrived at the location the bottom part of the scaffold was already assembled. The bees were lively as ever but fairly docile. I decided that we’d need one more level put onto the scaffold to allow me to adequately reach the cavity. With help from the homeowner, we popped on the next level, bumping the side of the house in doing so. A couple of bees came down to investigate and we both got tagged. Sigh. Well, life of a beekeeper…

Frames are prepped with six 3.5" rubber-bands ready to receive comb.

After getting the scaffold up, I suited up and got the smoker going. This I put on the scaffold to infuse the air around the hive with the scent of smoke. It was perhaps 7′ below the hive, but just enough that the hive would start getting ready by sucking up honey. This tends to calm them too and the smoke hides the alert scent. While the smoker did it’s work, I got busy putting everything in its place – mise en place. This included preparing the empty brood-box by removing the frames, and placing six 3.5″ rubber-bands on the receiving frames. I positioned the scaffold platform so that I just had to bend over a little to access the cavity. The top of the second level supported a 2×6 that made a perfect work-bench for me. I placed the hive-body on one end of the platform and my various tools on the other and got busy removing the soffit.

Scaffold in place, soffit removed, it's time to start cutting out some comb.place

Very fortunately, the soffit came out really easily. The nails just pulled out without a lot of prying. The last job was a bear to get out so this was a big relief. I had to move the scaffold back slightly to fully remove the soffit as the top level was in the way but that was all. Once removed there before me was a beautiful colony on fresh comb. It was only a month old perhaps but it already had eleven combs, nine of which were fully drawn to fill the cavity. Very straight and very clean. This is definitely going to be a good cut-out. Challenging in that the comb was going to be very delicate and I was wearing my leather gloves this time. But everything was in reach and right in front of me.

Two end-combs tied up and ready to go in the receiving hive-body.

I grabbed a frame from the receiving hive and placed that on the 2×6 that served as my work-bench. Then I puffed just a little smoke on the end comb to clear the bees away. With my fancy paint scraper – which I had sharpened the night before – I carefully excised the comb from the ceiling, making as flush and straight a cut as possible. This comb was primarily nectar at top surrounded by a ring of pollen and around the edges there were empty cells containing eggs. It was smaller than the rest. This I placed on the wires of my wired frame. Since it was smaller, I had room to place the other end-comb so I went ahead and cut that one out too. With eleven combs, this meant all ten of my frames will be occupied with comb. I placed these two end-combs side-by-side close to the top. I didn’t press it into the wires – the bees will cement them to the wires on their own and I’ll probably rotate this comb out as the bees make new comb. Once positioned, I carefully work the rubber bands over them to secure them in the frame and this I put in the receiving box. I grabbed the next empty frame and repeated the same on the next comb – smoking away the bees, cutting the comb and positioning the rubber bands over it and putting it in the box.

Comb full of bee-bread (fermented pollen) and nectar.

It actually proceeded very quickly and in very short order I was down to the last comb. I like cut-outs that are as quick and smooth as that. And virtually no scrap comb! Now, the bees were heavily clustered on the last comb so I decided to leave it be for a bit and prepared to start collecting the bees themselves. I grabbed the empty hive-body and placed that on top of the receiving hive-body. It will form a sort of funnel that’ll help contain the bees as I dump them on top of the frames. On top of that I placed an inner cover that had screen stapled to the escape. If the bees were going to exit the hive, I wanted them to have to crawl down the tied up comb first – which will motivate them to start identifying this new cavity as their home. That way I would retain more bees, with less flying back up to the original cavity.

Egg visible in a cell near the lower right-hand corner - looks like a little grain of white rice. Cool!!!

I grabbed my water mister and misted the cluster carefully, taking great pains to avoid misting the comb itself. Then with my bee-brush I brushed the cluster off into my square bucket, almost like brushing a swarm off. This I quickly dumped on top of the frames of the receiving hive, recovered with the inner cover and misted the cluster a bit more and flicked more of it off into the bucket and repeated the dumping. Just a few times and virtually all of the cluster was now within the receiving hive.

Now that the last comb was exposed, I cut it out and placed it on the frame and secured it with the rubber bands. Before putting it in the receiving hive, I lifted off the inner cover, flipped it on it’s edge and knocked it down on the hive to remove the bees clinging to it. That I set aside. I repeated that with the empty box, jarring it down to knock the clinging bees down into the receiving hive-body. Most had already gone down onto the combs but there were enough clinging onto the insides of the empty that I wanted to clear it first before setting it aside. I set aside the hive-body and put the last frame into the receiving hive-body and then put the inner cover on top of that and that was that.

One of the pristine combs meticulously cut out and trussed up, ready to go back into the receiving hive-body.

There were still bees clustering in the cavity so I periodically misted them, flicked them into the bucket and dumped them at the entrance. Most of them entered the new hive immediately – a good indicator that the queen was in there and that the smell of the brood was making that smell like home to them. I couldn’t get all of the bees that were clustering as many were hiding behind the corrugated tin cladding of the building. However I got it down to just an estimated few hundred bees. I’d let them cluster then I’d wrap the tin with the butt of my bee-brush to encourage them to come out and then I’d mist those and sweep them into the bucket and dump those in front of  the receiving hive.

Happy looking brood - future bees that will emerge in the new hive.

Before long, enough was enough. I was concerned that the queen may have sequestered herself behind the tin because I didn’t see as much fanning on the hive entrance as I’m accustomed to, however I knew there were eggs and that 95% of the bees were now in the new hive-body so queen or no, I had a new colony – they’d make a new queen if I missed her. Nevertheless, I loath leaving lotsa bees behind and have seen bees move the queen into a new hive before so just in case, I decide to leave the hive there overnight. Of course, it’s often not 100% – some bees just don’t get the message. However, every forager I get to take with me is a forager that can feed my bees.

New hive positioned up near the old cavity to help stragglers find their new home.

The “work-bench” 2×6 was actually the perfect height to bring the new hive very close to the level of the old cavity. So I put the telescoping cover on the hive, and put a ratcheting strap around the hive to secure it together. Then I carefully lift it up and place it on top of the 2×6. I grabbed another 2×6 to make it more stable and then carefully slid them over until the hive was right underneath the eave. Then I sat and watched the bees for an hour or so, observing traffic going into the hive fairly consistently. Returning foragers are no doubt going to be confused, but with the smell of the new hive so close, and with their sisters going in and out, I was certain I’d mop up most of the stragglers. With that thought, I packed up and went home.

Empty cavity after the cut-out with just a few stragglers.

Sunday evening I went back out to the hive. It had been cloudy all day but got sunny just as I arrived. I stood on the ground observing the hive for about an hour, noting that most of the traffic was going into the new hive itself. There were still bees going up into the old cavity but not as many. As the evening rush started to wane and the bees started settling in, I got suited up and grabbed my Florida Moving Screen and some duct tape. Very carefully I climbed up the scaffold, trying hard not to jostle the hive and produce more flying bees. They’d almost settled in for the night, even tho it wasn’t particularly dark yet. When I got up there I observed a much smaller cluster of bees behind the tin. Way too few to mess with – likely the older foragers who were too stubborn to adopt their new home. They will have to be left behind. Activity in the entrance of the new hive was now very low so I put the screen over the entrance and duct-taped it on. A few bees came out and crawled on the screen, but none crawled out the entrance holes. Pretty nifty device.

A bee scenting on the landing board of the new hive.

With that, I carefully lower the hive down to the scaffold platform and then climb down to the ground and grab the hive and carried it to the truck. Then I dismantled the scaffold and put that against the home-owner’s barn. That pretty much marks the end of the cutout. The remaining bees didn’t budge and there were none flying around that I could tell so I removed my suit and continued wrapping things up and departed the premises. I was a little nervous that perhaps all the bees had abandoned the new hive and gone into the wall underneath the tin – the low activity behind the screen made me a bit nervous. However as I drove and the wind was blowing on the entrance, I noticed a lot of bees coming out and crawling around under the screen. That made me feel better.

Florida Moving Screen worked excellent to keep the bees in while moving the hive.

I got back to the bee-yard with enough light to see what I was doing. A first for me – usually I move bees when it is pitch black. That screen really made a big difference. Once I parked the truck beside the bee-yard I carefully carried the hive to it’s final position and put it down. With a lot of bees crawling on the screen I was reticent to remove it right away – they were in a new location, the sun was going down and I was certain they’d get lost. Maybe not, but I didn’t want to risk it. I grabbed my water-mister and misted the bees on the screen. That told them that it was raining and in short order their numbers went way down as many started crawling back into the hive. After waiting a bit, the buzzing in the hive calmed down and most of the bees went back inside. I carefully removed the duct-tape and took the screen off. A few bees were crawling around – these I shook off onto the landing-board. With the screen set aside and out of the way I put the entrance reducer on. I suspect my strongest hive may have been robbing the hives that never went anywhere so this entrance reducer would help a lot, producing less entrance for the guards to defend and reducing the robbing opportunities. In front of that, I placed a twig of leaves that the bees would have to go around to fly off. This would prompted the bees to re-orient themselves to the hive so I’d have less drift into the other hives. And that was that.

Entrance reducer in place and curious bees getting to know their new home.

Today the bees are foraging and are very active in their new home. I’ll go into the hive in a week or so to inspect for comb development, the queen or queen-cells. I expect  them to fill out the frames pretty rapidly because we’re in the middle of a pretty decent nectar flow right now and I hope to grow this hive into at least two hive-bodies before winter. The homeowner reported a handful of bees flying around at the old location – those stragglers will eventually die and that’ll be the end of bees in that old cavity. After a bit, the homeowner will put the soffit back up and seal it in better against future colonization.

Here is a video that the property owner shot of part of the cut-out:

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!

I believe this is Asclepias asperula - Spider Milkweed

Unlike other flowers where the bees will fly from flower to flower fairly quickly – even if the flowers are part of a raceme, in this case the bees crawl over the surface of the ball of flowers, going from flower to flower meticulously. They also seem to take longer collecting nectar from these flowers than I’ve seen from other flowers, as if they’re sucking up a large amount of nectar. I have no idea just how nectar rich these flowers are and will attempt to find out with a little more research, but it seems that they hold a special attraction for my bees. So far I only have a small scattering of these plants on my property, tho they are common across the ranch-oriented landscape in this region. But I can reliably find bees on every flower-head with open flowers – usually two or three bees at that. They seem to ignore the butterflies that settle down beside them, and don’t give much attention to the crab spider that ambushed one of their sisters.

Bees are totally engrossed in these flowers, completely ignoring me.

I periodically collect seeds from these milkweed, intending to sow them when I get around it hoping to provide for the struggling Monarch butterfly. So far I haven’t gotten the gumption – just so many other projects clamoring for my time. But I may want to give further attention to these seeds and collect fresh seeds too. Normally they waft away into the breeze, never to be seen again. I’ll collect many of them, remove their filamentous umbrellas and scatter them back out over the property to get a denser growth of them going. It’ll be neat to see them sprouting next Spring and producing a lot more of these balls of flowers for the bees. And perhaps I may find a Monarch caterpillar or three on them too.

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.

The eave where the bees have taken up residency.

The particular colony in question had taken up lodging in the eave of a house. The homeowner had tolerated them for a bit but needed roof-repair work done and it was time for the bees to go. Since it was late in the year, I convinced the homeowner to wait until the Spring to give the bees a better chance of survival. And a good thing I did because local organic farmer Ty decided it was time to get into beekeeping and the timing worked out perfectly. He got his equipment and top-bar hive shortly before the cut-out.

Me trying to wrest the soffit from under the eave.

There are no better honeybees that a beekeeper can keep than those that don’t require the beekeeper for survival. Many potential beekeepers spend money on equipment, build up high hopes and buy an expensive package or nucleus colony of bees, only to have the hive collapse after a year or two, and after spending a lot of money on and applying a lot of dopes in an attempt to keep them alive. For me, my favorite bees are those that cost nothing to get – so at worst case I’m not out anything and have empty wooden-ware to fill with other bees, and at best case I have bees in my wooden-ware that are trouble-free and don’t require dopes to survive.

That soffit was a challenge to get opened. Here you see the bees going thru their entrance up where the wires goes thru the fascia.

So we have a hive that’s in an eave of a house to remove. We decide on a day and meet at my house to get loaded up for the removal. As usual, I bring much more than I need, while at the same time end up leaving behind things I would have found useful, like my water-mister bottle. Oh well – not a critical piece of equipment. With directions to the location, we’re off to retrieve a bunch of bees. My first cut-out of the year. Ty’s first cut-out altogether. I got my start performing cut-outs – for me it’s the normal way to acquire bees. One I prefer – comb, brood, queen, bees – I get a complete colony with a cut-out that is ready to rock-n-roll.

Finally, soffit comes down and lookee there - a cavity full of bees.

After a quick survey I decide that we could reach the cavity from the bed of my truck. I had hoped so, since climbing up and down a ladder would be very tedious. Being able to stand on my tail-gate really made the cutout go easier. I backed the truck up close to the hive, trying hard not to hit the house or the peach sapling growing in the corner then got to work setting up. We suited up and I got the smoker going and gave the entrance a few puffs. It would take a few minutes to get everything else set up so I wanted to give the smoke some time to waft deep into their hive.

The top of one of my Lang hives would be the cutting bench to cut the combs. I was going to bring some cardboard to put on top of it so clean-up would be simpler, but that didn’t quite work out. However, now I tend to keep a bit of cardboard in the truck – it would have made things a bit easier to have a sort of cutting board. Anyway, the tin top of the hive worked just fine – better than some of the surfaces I had to use to trim comb in previous cut-outs. With the tools to cut the comb positioned on the shiny tin surface, I got the distinct impression of some mad scientist operating table. Perhaps it’s just me, tho.

A decent colony of bees filling up their cavity.

Ty’s top-bar hive sat on the ground next to the truck. I pulled out various implements of demolition and cutout – a couple of pry-bars, a fancy paint scraper, a bread knife, bunches of rags and whatnot. We got busy cutting cloth strips to tie up the combs. These strips will form a hammock around the comb and are tied to the top-bar on either end. I’ve found that this method keeps the comb pressed to the top-bar far better than string which can cut into the comb and cause it to sag.

With everything prepped and ready to go, it was time to begin the demolition. I smoked the entrance again, then got to work removing the soffit. In this case, the soffit was flush with the rafter-tail, which meant that the maximum height of the combs would be four to six inches or so. Not ideal for a top-bar hive cutout – I prefer a deeper comb, but not a show-stopper either. The soffit was rather difficult to remove but I was able to get it down to look into the first section between rafter-tails and saw nothing but mud-dauber nests. No beehive! They had completely skipped the first cavity closest to the entrance. So I kept prying at the soffit until I finally got it completely down and there it was, a cavity completely filled with comb and a LOT of bees. They were less than happy with the ruckus, of course, but were still pretty docile all things considered.

Comb cut and being tied up to the top-bar. Hive-top works pretty good as an operating table.

Using the smoke, I gently cleared the first section of comb and cut it out with my nifty paint scraper tool. Since there was a lot of comb, I decided that we’d only use the best of it for tying up so after a few smaller pieces I got some nice comb suitable for tying up. I cut and attached it to the top-bard and handed it to Ty who put it in the top-bar hive and we went like that as a team, cutting comb, selecting good ones for hive, trimming and tying them up and putting them in the hive. As I went along I’d give a little puff of smoke to clear the next comb and corral the bees further back into a cluster. The goal is to keep them pretty much together as I remove comb so it’ll be easier to sweep them into a bucket later on and so it’ll increase the chances of getting the queen, who will feel safer in a large cluster rather than a bunch of smaller clusters.

Handy dandy fancy paint scraper. I gave latex kitchen gloves a try too but the bes still tagged my hands. Oh well...

Before long I started coming across honey. This I do not like to tie up so I put this in another bucket. The honey-comb is drippy, sticky, heavy and just too unmanageable to tie up onto a top-bar. Most of this would be fed back to the bees so they can make repairs to the comb and put it where they wanted it. Of course, that also meant I was nearing the end of cutting out comb, since the honey is almost always furthest away from the entrance. The bees themselves had formed a massive cluster hanging at the back of the cavity and now when I remove the comb I carefully pull it away with part of the cluster and hand that to Ty to shake the bees off into the hive. The brood-comb already in the hive has by now filled it with the scent of home, and many of those bees are nurse bees that are not as prone to flying just yet so we very quickly accumulated a lot of bees in there as I removed the last few pieces. Many of them hung out at the back of the hive, interestingly and some started festooning from the comb-guides even, forming drapes that herald the creation of new comb.

Before long I got to the point where any bits of comb left were now covered by the cluster. It was time for the bee-brush and bucket. Normally I mist them with water, but seeing as I brought everything and the kitchen sink with me, the mister was the one thing I forgot to bring. So I did without this time. Speed is key to collecting the bees. The brush is used to more knock them into the bucket than sweep them, using quick flicks. This way bees are not dragged along the face of the building which would produce more alert hormones which would produce more flying bees. Instead, most of the cluster was startled into releasing and falling into the bucket. This I quickly passed to Ty who in turn dumped the bees into the top-bar hive and then covered up the top-bars to help prevent them from just flying out.

As the hive filled up, they start scenting, or fanning, on the entrance. A sign we got the queen.

Collecting bees this way takes a bit of persistence and patience. The cluster had split to the next cavity so I had to alternate, flicking bees from there then when I get the bucket back, flicking bees from the other cavity as the flying bees return to start clustering again. As the cluster fragmented I waited for them to build up to a decent number then I flick them into the bucket and hand that off to be dumped into the hive. Before long, the sizes of the clustering bees began to significantly reduce and not build back up as more and more bees remained in the top-bar hive. As I waited for the remaining bees to re-cluster I strung up a few more choice pieces of comb to pass the time. Interestingly, the bees we put in the top-bar hive were clustering at the back of the hive, far from the entrance – similar to how their old hive was configured. And that’s where they formed new comb too. Definitely some interesting bees.

Scrap honey comb left by the hive for the bees to rob out.

Once we determined that there were no more clusters to get, I sprayed the interior of the cavity with diluted Pinesol to destroy the hive scent, avoiding the remaining bees, of course. That helps reduce clustering and returning foragers are more likely to smell the new hive scent. We closed up the TBH tight and that was that. There were still a fair number of bees flying around but not so many now. A lot of bees were on the entrance of the new hive and there was traffic going in and out – a very good sign. A few bees clustered by the old entrance of the old cavity but the bulk of the colony was now in their new home.

Empty cavity with just a few stragglers. The roofers will close it up and seal it against future occupancy.

Shortly before sunset we returned to retrieve the hive. There were still a fair number of foragers clustered up in the old cavity so we decided to give the hive one more day and get it the next night. That morning the foragers would depart then most of them on returning would migrate into the new hive. There were still a few left the next night but not nearly as many. We taped screen over the entrance of the hive and put it in Ty’s truck. Unfortunately, since the roofers were coming the next morning and one was extremely allergic to bees I couldn’t sweep the stragglers into a bucket because with a full moon there would be many flying bees that would remain the next day to be a threat to the roofers, so I spritzed them with water and vacuumed them up in my shop-vac. We spot treated any stragglers until there were none left. That was the saddest part of the job, but there was no other choice.

Ty reported a week later that the bees had formed combs at the back – six or so, tho they were still using the cutout combs too. It is an interesting hive to say the least. But they were foraging and have brood – which means we got the queen thankfully. Another successful cutout and another beekeeper on the road of natural beekeeping. May this be the first of many hives for Ty.

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.

Comb drawn out like drapes, quickly filling in most of the frame after only a week.

I pulled a frame to inspect it and it turned out to be one of the empties I put in last Sunday. Lo and behold – it’s already over half-way drawn. It’s neat to see how several combs were started on this frame and then joined up into a single comb, perfectly built. The other empties were likewise filling with comb too. I didn’t look for eggs, but after examining one of the pictures I took of it later, I could easily tell that the frame was heavily laid with fresh eggs. The queen was busy and the colony is ballooning rapidly. I’m very happy about that, what with the set-backs I’ve had this and last year. I’m hoping to get a little honey harvest from this hive this year and perhaps a much bigger honey harvest next year.

Fresh, well made comb without any help from foundation whatsoever.

I decide that they’re full enough for another box. I remove four brood-frames from the box – in this case two of the new ones and a couple full and mature frames that are mostly capped – and I place them into a waiting empty brood-box. I put them in the center then divided them with an empty frame so I had two pairs of frames with room for expansion in the middle between the pairs and to the sides of the pairs. This became the bottom box. They now have room to build more comb as the colony exploits the robust nectar flow in this area.

Soon the mesquite will be flowering and I want a large population of bees to get that good nectar. While neighborhood trees and flower-beds as well as wildflowers in the area represent the primary nectar flow in the Spring, the bulk of my honey comes from the abundant mesquite trees in this area that blooms when the other blooming plants are subdued for the summer.

And no sooner is the comb made, before it's even finished, the queen is busy laying eggs in it, visible here looking like little kernels of rice.

In the original box I now have room for four empties. With the speed they filled up the three empties from last weekend, I have no doubt they’ll repeat their performance with these. I’m building combs that I’ll use for the next several years here, on foundationless frames no less and they’re as straight as cardboard. The comb-guides help a lot, plus the straight combs on either side of the empty frames. In the original box, I put two empties on either end. I put the other two empties spaced between two or more combs within the broodnest. All brood-combs are at least in pairs so that there’s enough nurse bees grouped together to keep the brood properly maintained – no brood comb is isolated between two empties.

I removed the original box from the bottom-board and put the new bottom on, then placed the original box on top of this. More occupied combs on top and less occupied combs on bottom. This exploits the bees tendency to build downward. They’ll fill the spaces in the top box and will be drawn into the box below by the occupied brood-combs down there. If they build this up fast enough, I may add a third  box in late May to hopefully get a small honey harvest from this colony come August. With a third added on this year, a fourth will go on early next Spring right as buildup begins and then about this time I’ll cut the hive in half and make two hives of it to begin my walk-away splitting process of multiplying the strong hives. I can hardly wait – this one is a very strong and happy hive.

May 2nd, 2010

My footer solution, simple as can be.

When I migrated from Top Bar Hives to Langstroth hives, I was faced with a conundrum. What the hives sit on. Most Langstroth hives sit on a foundation or footer of sorts. It keeps the bottom-board itself off the ground to reduce rotting issues. A lot of people seem to use bricks or build fancy stands to put their hives on. But, if you have a bunch of hives, either option is expensive. Not to mention that bricks are heavy to lug around and stands can have a tendency to tip over, especially as the colony matures and the hive gets very heavy. Additionally, the taller a hive gets, the harder it is to work. My concern is not with a short two-box baby hive, but a full grown hive that’s five deep-boxes tall or six even. Put that on top of eight inches of brick and it’s just that much taller to have to deal with.

Sits pretty flat and solid with a low center of gravity and wider foot-print.

Using bricks is a bit of a hassle. Up until now, I’ve been digging a shallow depression where I want my beehives to go and then painstakingly positioning some bricks I had on hand, making sure they’re perfectly level since I don’t use foundations. It is a bit of a pain – I’d get this brick looking good and the next brick is skewed so I’d have to level that and then the bricks behind it are out of whack and so-forth. Cinder-blocks – large concrete blocks – are another option, but still has the same issues with leveling. I’ve seen people use just two of them and with the hive tall it looks like it’s just about to teeter over with the slightest breeze. Three or four would be better, but then the cost gets up there, plus that’s three or four heavy bricks to lug around and position. Not ideal if you have a lot of hives. I don’t yet, but will so it pays to think forward.

Setting the bottom-board is as simple as kicking the area level and plopping it down.

As I vacillated between the different options for footers, Dee Lusby suggested using 2×4′s on the bottom-boards. Hers are actually integrated into the bottom-board itself and can also serve as a lid. But it’s good advice even for regular bottom boards. So that is what I settled on – placing a pair of treated 2×4′s across the bottom of the bottom-boards and screwing them in place. I only use the 3/8″ side of the bottom-board so it’s no problem for me to screw the 2×4′s to the 3/4″ side. Now, I just kick a plot level, plop down the bottom-board, tweak it a bit and start stacking boxes on it. That has simplified matters enormously. For one, there’s no other components to keep track of – it’s all built in. Secondly, it’s light – no problem at all to pick up the bottom-board and move it if need be. Placing this has also become much easier. Just a little digging to level the ground – sometimes just kicking it a bit – and I plopped the footer down and checked level. If a slight bit of a slant forward can be facilitated, it’s all the better. That way less water would puddle inside during heavy rains.

The bees don't seem to mind.

I can do two hives per single 8′ stick of lumber. I cut this 2×4 into 2′ sections. I supposed 4×4 lumber could be used too, but where my hives are situated, 2×4 is perfectly adequate. I take two of these and position them on the bottom-board – the 3/4″ side for me. One I place at the back and across the back. Remember, all the weight of the hive transfers to these footers thru the bottom-board, so letting the full back rest on the rear footer is surely a good thing. I then drill guide holes to ensure no splitting, and drive in a couple of screws – the kind meant to be used with treated wood. The front footer I place at about where the front of the hive itself rests rather than the full front of the bottom-board. I don’t want the rails of the bottom-board have to take any more stress than needed. Perhaps I’m over-thinking it, but it’s worked out well. Same thing as the rear footer – just drill and screw and that’s it. I only used one screw per rail. After all, the weight of the hive will keep it put, the screw just holds it together when I’m moving things.

All lined up and happy.

Of course, this is a system that depends on no flooding in the area – after all, the hives do sit really low to the ground. The best placement for hives is high and dry anyway – where it doesn’t flood even during heavy rains. Tupelo hives excepted, perhaps. If it’s unavoidable that some puddling may occur, the 4×4 option may prove useful too. A little heavier, but still easier to transport and situate than heavy concrete blocks or fabricated bee-stands.

Another benefit is with the wider foot-print, high winds are less of a problem and the hive sits lower to the ground. The boxes themselves resist sliding mainly because of weight and the bit of paint that coats the edges. Of course, enough wind and any hive will come apart, but having a secure footer will be helpful in anything up to that. Let’s also not forget that some critters will push against the hive as well, attempting to topple it. Top-heavy with a narrow base just makes that job all the easier. With footers like this, that keeps the center-of-gravity a bit lower and provides a wider foot-print, this is less of an issue.

Of course, if that critter happens to be a bear, this is a moot point and additional exclusion measures must be taken. However, here we just have coons and skunks to deal with. Skunks won’t push on the hive and just scratch on the entrance and gobbles up bees that come out. A raccoon tho will push against the hive. If it’s not heavy with honey yet, they could even topple it. I have also found deer hairs on the corners of my hives – deer seem to like using beehives as a scratching post too, which can also topple a tall hive. So for me, lower and with a wider foot-print just seems to make better sense than some of these really tall hive-stands I’ve seen. Your mileage may vary, of course, but give it some thought. For those concerned about treated wood, untreated wood could be used and changed out every couple of years or three, or the treated wood can be painted. I plan on slapping on some exterior paint onto mine here after a bit.

Here's a foundationless Langstroth frame with drawn comb. Very straight and true to the comb-guide.

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.

Comb guides can be a variety of things but their common attribute is that they’re attached to the top-bar either in a frame or a top-bar style hive. There are many options for comb guides – chamfer-trim or similar, Popsicle-sticks glued into a grooved top-bar, a piece of foundation similarly attached, or in some cases just a big of wax poured into the groove of the grooved top-bar.

When the bees make comb, they form little curtains of bees, hanging to gravity. These curtains are what determines the comb’s dimension. With the comb-guides in place, they’ll often grab onto the guide as the lowest point and use that as the base of their comb-making. While they are not guaranteed to stick to the guide, in most cases they do so long as other conditions are adequate – such as top-bar spacing and condition of neighboring combs. If the spacing is too far apart, they’ll begin to disregard the comb guides after a comb or three. And if a neighboring comb has a big bulge at the top – as can happen when they start filling out for honey, the next comb will be likewise off-center from the comb-guides. So the guides are at best recommendations, and it still takes a bit of management to ensure the bees properly utilize them.

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

I use chamfer trim attached to my frame’s top-bars for comb-guides. It worked GREAT in the top-bar hives so I simply kept using them on my frames when I migrated to Langstroth last year. The bees appear to have taken to them just as well. Chamfer trim can often be found in the trim department of most hardware stores and I use the 3/4″ chamfer trim, which is all the store here carries. It fits the grooved top-bars perfectly. They come in 8′ lengths and I cut them into 16 3/4″ sections, with five sections per stick plus a little “waste” that can be cut to size to pair with another to fit in a frame. It takes two 8′ sticks per hive-box. With the TBH’s hives, I used to glue and nail the trim to the top-bars – which was rather tedious. My latest batch of top-bars that go on the frames I’m glued and used 1/2″ staples instead of nails and that’s worked pretty well. I purchased an electric stapler to make it easier.

Here's chamfer trim comb guides glued and nailed to Langstroth top-bars, ready to go in the frame-jig.

The basic technique is to run a couple of beads of glue like Titebond III on the chamfer trim section and position it on the top-bar then staple it. It needs to be held firmly to make sure it doesn’t shift while being stapled. Not all the staples go in all the way – sometimes I have to re-staple if the previous staple didn’t go deep enough to hammer in, but in most cases I can just tap it the rest of the way in with a hammer. I prefer the staples with the flat edges rather than the pointed staples. The points are usually angled in a way that when the staple goes into the wood, one part goes in one direction and the other part goes in the other direction, and I want it to pretty much go straight in.

While it may seem more work than Popsicle sticks or paint stirring sticks, I prefer the chamfer trim because the angle promotes the bees to go down to the lowest edge before they start making comb, then they build it up either side of the comb guide as they draw the comb down, cementing the new comb to the top-bar securely. Eventually you won’t even see the comb-guide as the bees will exhaustively cover it with comb.

Close-up of the chamfer trim glued and nailed to the top-bars. These will be attached to the frames next.

It’s not a 100% guarantee – you need to monitor them while they’re drawing comb as they still can cross-comb. Once you have some straight combs, you can use these to help guide the new combs by placing an empty frame or top-bar between two straight combs. Just be sure that you always have at least two brood-combs together – no “empty, comb, empty, comb” because that makes it harder for the bees to tend to the brood and keep it warm. So, “comb, comb, empty, comb, comb, empty” and so-forth is better. It’s also good if you don’t overdo it too – just one or two empties at a time. Of course, this assumes that the bees already have comb to use to help keep neighboring combs straight. If it’s a swarm, you can pull straight comb from another hive and put it in to help get them started. Then just feed in an empty here and there as they draw their comb once they have a few frames or top-bars filled. If you feed towards the center, that will keep the bees making brood-comb and hopefully by the time they start prepping the outer frames for honey, they’ll already be up against the wall and they won’t be able to go so wild with it.

Here's the frame jig in action - it really has saved me a ton of time and helps keep the frames straight and consistent.

I wire all of my frames to help support the comb, regardless of whether it’s brood or honey. Since I don’t use queen excluders and run an unlimited broodnest, I like my equipment to be uniform and interchangeable – so it all gets wired. That way, as I rotate my frames through the hive they’ll always have wire and will reduce blowouts in extraction. Bees build right over it with no problem at all. The wiring also makes attaching cutout combs much easier – I just place the cut-out comb on the wires close to the top-bar and then put the rubber-bands on. I don’t mess with trying to embed the wires – this comb will end up being rotated out and cut from the frames in time anyway and it’s better for the bees and the brood that I get the cut-out done faster.

Finished frames wired and ready to host comb and bees.

In any case, the bees hardly notice the wires when drawing down their comb and the wires quickly disappears under the comb as the bees start filling it with brood and nectar. This makes the comb much stronger, especially if it’s rather young, and simplifies inspection and extraction. It is a bit of work to wire them, but in the end I think they save more of a headache than they cause. Once the bees have fully drawn out a frame, it is nearly indistinguishable from a frame that used foundation. Save for more spaces on the sides and bottom of the frame, the frame is fully filled in and if managed correctly, pretty flat. As the comb is rotated up and used for extraction, the uncapping knife will help level out any bumps and irregularities too.

Foundationless takes a bit more work than foundation, but it allows bees to build the comb as they deem necessary – seeing as most of the time they know what they need better than we do. And it allows bees to size their cells according to their needs and not what we think their needs are. Their cell sizes will generally be smaller than the oversized foundations commonly sold, but honey production will still be high and the difference is often indistinguishable. And finally, the advantage of foundationless over foundationed is money. A dollar a frame for wax foundation adds up, especially if you’re growing your hives up to five or six deeps tall and have multiple hives. While it takes a bit of management to develop straight combs, once they’re built you’ll get several years of use out of them and basically for free. Time to draw isn’t any different from foundationless or foundationed – some report one is faster and others report the other is faster. But the bees can fill a deep frame with comb in less than a week, foundation or no. So give it some consideration. With their own comb, you will always know where it came from.

Swarm Bucket

One of the most useful tools in collecting bees is the humble swarm bucket. Trying to lug a heavy brood-box around to gather a swarm can get very cumbersome sometimes. The very first swarm I was exposed to as a six-year old – one that I aided the beekeeper when he wanted to snap a picture and had me hold a branch out of the way, inches from this mass of bees – the beekeeper used a brood-box to shake the swarm into. My first swarms I did likewise. But, it was heavy and hard to place when out in the brush. Some people swear by specially made bee-vacuums but I had a bad experience with a bee-vacuum killing bees, and it’s also inconvenient if you’re out in the brush too. Me, I like the simple 5-gallon bee bucket. The bucket is light and easy to lug and can be kept in the truck for those chance encounters that we all hope we come across as we’re driving around doing our errands. However, there is a caveat. Making sure I get all the flying bees but keep the queen in the bucket.

The solution came from a member of The Feral Bee Project. Create an entrance near the bottom of the bucket and use a section of queen-excluder in the entrance to keep her in while allowing the workers to come and go but mostly come. Sometimes a lot of bees cluster on the entrance, but just gently lifting the bucket and putting it in a card-board box will get most of them and you’re ready to transport.

Detail of queen excluder within the entrance of the bucket.

The gist of it is taking a PVC coupling and threading it thru a hole drilled near the bottom of the bucket. I used a 1.5″ coupling but will probably opt for a 2″ coupling next time around – and there will be a next time around because you’ll want more than one bucket. Anyway, this coupling has a male threaded end that goes thru the hole in the bucket, and a smooth female end into which the piece of queen excluder goes. On the inside of the bucket I use an upsizing adapter with a threaded female end and a smooth female end to secure the coupling in place tightly. The queen excluder is of the plastic sort, easy to cut. I cut a square out a little bigger than the inner diameter of the female end of the coupling and then went to work trimming it to size until it fit snuggly within the coupling but without warping. To secure it further, I took a short piece of PVC and pushed it in tightly after I put the excluder in. I didn’t glue it tho – it’s pretty tight as it is. Personal preference – you may want to glue.

The inside, showing a PVC upsizing adapter used to secure the coupling to the bucket.

This actually proved enormously useful to me. Grabbing a swarm off a branch is pretty easy but sometimes the queen scent lingers on the branch. I’ll get a bunch of the bees into the bucket and put the cover on and place it nearby. Then I’ll take a smaller bucket or container and knock more of the bees off the branch and then pour this into the larger bucket, replacing the lid each time. Usually this is not necessary, but if the swarm had been there for a few days they may be attracted to the scent on the branch. A large cluster of bees around the entrance of the bucket and less and less bees hanging out on the branch is usually a good indicator that I got the queen. Then I let the bees do the work of attracting their sisters and I place the bucket in a shady location near the original cluster and go wait. Before long most of the bees will be on or in the bucket and it can be retrieved, placed in a card-board box to help keep any bees outside the bucket together and this is taken to the apiary to be installed into a hive. Easy as that.

When I install the bees into the hive, I’ll shake off the external bees into the receiving hive, then rap the bucket on the ground on the corner opposite of the entrance to dislodge the bees from inside the entrance then I take the lid off and pour this into the hive, rapping and pouring out and stragglers until the bees are in the hive. Then I gently replace the frames I removed and put the top on and that’s that. To make sure the queen stays inside and the colony sticks around, I place an entrance queen-includer on the entrance of the hive. Brushy Mountain Bee Farm sells these – they’re called Entrance Guards. Once the bees draw out some comb and the queen starts laying, this can be removed.

Incidentally, I learned something else from the Feral Bee Project that proved very sensible and helpful. Removing a swarm from a branch often involves yanking on the branch to dislodge the bees. Unfortunately, yanking down on the branch actually forces the branch to cut thru the mass of bees, meaning that the mass will often break up a bit and many will end up flying around. However, if you remove the branch from their grasp they’ll just drop as a mass. I do this by hitting the bottom of the branch very close to the mass, or yanking the branch upwards – removing it from their hold. A few still remain on the branch as always, but the greater mass just drops into the bucket and you’re set. I often mist lightly with pure water to help reduce flying too. Not sure if that really works tho. In any case, with the swarm season upon us, I hope these little tidbits open you up to an easier way of doing things. Happy beekeeping!