Preparing frames

Yesterday evening I prepared eighty-eight frames with wax foundation. Of those eighty-eight, two inadvertently became drone frames as the wires became too hot and melted completely through the foundation. In total, I made six drone frames. I also had to break out my box making skills, as I needed something to store the frames in.

A note about wax foundation: there are significant differences between American foundations and German foundations. The American foundations can often be ordered "pre-wired", meaning the wire has already been placed in the wax. The German foundations are not wired and need to be "soldered" into the wired frame. The process of wiring the foundation in Germany is pretty easy. You just lay a piece of wax foundation over the wires of the frame, and using electrical terminals, the wires are warmed causing the wax to melt around the wires. In a matter of seconds, the foundation is on the frame! Not too difficult, but if you warm the wires too long, you end up with strips of wax.

My hives are basically ready for bees to inhabit them. What I still need to purchase are the hive-top feeders, escape boards, and landing boards.

Comments

Swarm season

This time of the year, the bees are really starting to bust out of the seams of their hives. Stronger colonies are in full swing, while weaker colonies are trying to build up their numbers to at least become stronger by seasons end. Curiously enough, both situations can also spark swarm behavior for both types of colonies,especially in Carniolans (Apis mellifera carnica). Carniolans have a higher tendency to swarm than, say, Italians or Buckfasts, so of course keeping Carniolans can be a bit tricky and nerve wracking. A few words about swarming. The act of swarming is a natural occurrence, and is necessary for the propagation of honey bees. Since the queen mates only once in her lifetime and each colony only has once queen at any given time, the ability to procreate depends on building a colony to a sizable amount and then by splitting the colony in two. Honey bees, of course, have a brilliant way of doing this. The first thing that needs to happen before a colony can swarm is they n...

Housel Positioning: Simulating feral bee honeycomb building

Technically, I am an engineer. I know, writing software may not seem to be very engineer-y to you, but it does classify as engineering. We design, implement, test, and improve our product until the software does exactly what it should do. Why else do you think your apps are always updating? Engineering. Having said that, me being an engineer kind of also makes me a nerd/geek. I say I lean a little bit more to the geek side of that classification, because I just love anything that is science and/or technical. Well, anybody who likes technology and science needs to spend time learning about bees. They just know how to build stuff to the specifications of their own instincts. That brings me to todays blog entry: Housel Positioning. Housel Positioning gets its name from a beekeeper by the name of Michael Housel. Michael Housel discovered through observation, that feral bees build the honey comb with a specific order. If you were to take a look at honeycomb, and look closely at the bott...

Lodging the artificial swarm

On Tuesday, we lodged the swarm into its new home. Below are some photos and a video of the big move:

Hotham Family Apiary

Search This Blog