A little vacation

I got back from a three week vacation not too long ago and I was happy to see that the lil ladies were still doing well. Before I left, I gave each colony 800 grams of food (ApiFonda). They were able to store the food and many of the field bees were still out and about bringing in pollen and water. I wasn't able to identify any mites on the mite shelves, but there were several ants running around so even if mites did fall down to the shelves, the ants may have carried them off.

One of the first things I did when I got back was begin to feed them for winter. Each colony got 3600 grams of sirup. A day later I peeked in under the inner cover and I was amazed to see that they managed to suck down all that food! I was smart this time, and I tightened up the entry of the hive to one-bee width so that robbers could be easily defended against. That all seemed to work out well. Currently there are also lots of wasps flying around, trying to gain access to the food inside. On one of he colonies, the small pieces of wood that I placed in the entry had been pushed inside, I hope a small field mouse didn't infiltrate that hive!

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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

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