Hotham Family Apiary

We are now well into December, with Christmas just around the corner, and already things are looking grim for my apiary for the 2017 season. Unfortunately, I have lost two of my four colonies. At first glance, it would appear that in both cases, the colonies absconded, perhaps due to the rather stressful onslaught of wasps toward the end of summer and deep into the fall. The first colony that I lost, was about four weeks ago. I was just peaking under the hive cover to see if the bees had already begun to huddle closely together. Naturally, I was shocked to discover that my strongest colony at the peak of summer was gone. There were several hundred dead bees at the bottom of the hive floor and no traces of living bees on the frames whatsoever, the first total loss. A few days later, I ran into my beek mentor. He told me that he was also observing colony losses and he wasn't sure to what strength his apiary would be come early spring. Not good to hear, at all! This past weekend, ...

Well, it has been several months since my last post. That has mainly to do with some personal issues with family,  but rest assured that in the time that has past, I have been busy helping the bees prepare for winter. Late summer and early fall are the times when the bees get ready for the long state of relative inactivity. They have to store up a lot of food to get them through,  and since the beekeeper was busy taking away those hard worked for stores from spring and summer, it is only fair that the beekeeper give something back. I fed my two colonies and the one nuc several portions of Apiinvert syrup. The syrup is a syrup mixture that also contains enzymes that help the bees to convert it to honey for storing for the winter. This syrup is also relatively odorless making it difficult for robbers (other honey bees and wasps) from detecting it. The bees can process the food rather quickly and the job of feeding them for winter is over rather quickly. For my artificial swar...

Honeybees know when to increase and decrease the amount of brood in the hive. Many factors contribute to this behavior; some natural, some man-made. The art of beekeeping often revolves around identifying and properly diagnosing problems. This past week, I was also faced with an interesting situation: a brood free colony. Now, as a beginner, it is sometimes difficult for me to understand what is really happening with the bees I tend after. Often times, during an inspection , I will see something and just say, "hmmm, that's interesting" without giving much of a second thought. Well, as I noticed that one of the colonies was free of brood, I mean completely barren of any signs of brood, I started thinking, "hmmm, this isnt so good" and I began to worry. A colony without brood cant survive very long. After all, the bees need to have a steady flow of new bees to keep up with the attrition. So now I was faced with a situation I hadn't observed before and I need...

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

We decided to go ahead and try to split one of our colonies and place a brood nucleus in our backyard.    Within 4 days, the bees had begun raising queen cells throughout the hive. Then I waited for two weeks and then I made an inspection. I was pleased to discover that the queen had hatched, and the bees had begun "dismantling" all the queen cells.Within 10 days, the queen was laying eggs. She is very busy and the bees really thrived in our backyard. They drew out come at a very rapid pace, and the queen was eager to lay eggs in all available cells. Next year, the queen (we named her Babsi) should be running a very strong and successful hive. I was sad to have to move them back to the bee stand, but I needed to make room for our newest project: an artificial swarm.  An artificial swarm is a method of hive splitting that is quite common after the last honey harvest. (By the way, our last harvest of the season yielded 17 kg / 35 pounds)The method is rather straig...

Yesterday, we were able to harvest 21kg (46 pounds) of honey! The majority of the honey, about 19kg, came from one colony with about 2kg coming from another. We were happy to finally see the liquid gold that our bees produced for us, flowing from the extractor and finally into jars for the first time. Removing the wax cappings Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 Almost ready for the extractor Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 Turning the extractor Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 Raw honey flowing through a double sieve into the storage bucket Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 Liquid Gold! Copyright Jason Hotham 2016

So, me being the curious person I am, I decided to have a little look-in today, just to see if my beek mentor's advice was good or not. The short answer: yes. The long answer: yes. The reason I say that,  is because I saw some things I wasnt really expecting, and it took me a while to diagnose the situation. Today, I actually didn't panic, maybe that is because I just finished reading 'The Martian' and I was wondering, what would Mark Watney do. Anyway, I stopped to think about what I was seeing. The below photo shows a queen cell I found in Chewbacca's hive. A queen cell (swarm cell) on the lower right side of the frame. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 I have to admit, at first sight, I thought, "wow, that will be one helluva queen!" But, having said that, I really don't want my bees to swarm. Naturally, I broke out the cell (after of course finding evidence of the queen) and continued with my inspection. A few frames later, I found another queen ...

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...

On Saturday, we decided to give Chewbacca a honey super. Katie did all the work, I just took the pictures! Smoking the bees down. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016   Next comes the queen excluder. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016   Place the honey super on top of the queen excluder. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016   Plastic covering to keep the bees from building comb on the cover. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016   Place the cover over the plastic. Done! Copyright Jason Hotham 2016   Good work, Katie! Now both colonies can get to work drawing out comb in the honey supers. The forecast for this week shows a lot of pleasant weather with plenty of sunshine. The bees should be ramping up activity. 

Yesterday, I performed an inspection on both of my colonies. The weather in Seidmar was beautiful, 19°C, sunny and a very light breeze. I figured it would be good to get an evaluation of my colonies and see if I should expand the hives as I mentioned I would do in my previous post. The cherry blossoms are out in the lower elevations (under 500m above sea level) but in Seidmar, which is at 539m above sea level, the blossoms have not yet opened. I knew that both hives were thriving but I was surprised to see how many bees were now in the hives. The frontrunner is the queen Adriana. Her hive was literally overflowing with bees. Adriana's colony is overflowing. Time to expand. Copyright Jason Hotham 2016 The bees were hanging all the way through the frames right down to the varroa screen on the floor. On one frame, they had actually begun building large chunks of burr comb. They were busting out at the seams. Although there aren't any cherry blossoms out, I still decide to...

The cherry blossoms are starting to emerge, which means it is just about the right time to expand the hives. There are basically two things we can do. The first option, we can add a second brood chamber to the hive. To do this, we place an empty hive body on top of the hive, and fill it with empty drawn out frames, preferably frames that we used in our honey super the season before. The second option, we can place the queen excluder on the hive and then place a honey super on top of it. These are the normal steps that a beekeeper can take at this time of the season. I, however, have a special case, in that I do not have any empty drawn out frames from the previous season, as I only had nucs to work with. I can still choose one of those options, the only difference is that I will be working with wax foundations. I think I will go with option two and go ahead and give each colony a honey super to work with. This isn't a big problem, as I can snatch up a drawn out foundation from la...

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...

The weather around here has been pretty mild. Normally, winter in Bavaria is snowy and cold. This year, it has been rainy and warm. Most people aren't put off by it, because it generally means clear roads and less layers. Myself, on the other hand, I am worried. I have a bad feeling that at least one of my colonies will not make it through this winter, and that just saddens me. The colony in question, is the weakest one that I went into the winter with: Leia. I did all I could to help her increase her colony size, but it was just difficult to get the necessary production. It is not really a complaint towards Leia's offspring production, but rather to the efficiency of the bees. Right from the get-go the little ladies had a difficult time drawing out comb. This also is not their fault. It was a nuc that was created toward the later end of the optimal nuc creation period and they just were not in the strengths to go full bore into comb production. They were never able to draw o...