Hotham Family Apiary

It's been a while since I have had time to write blog entries. We have a huge construction site behind our house and it is taking up all my free time. Anyway, today, I took the time to check in on my colonies and my nucs. Things are looking good all around. I will need to harvest the last round of honey next week and soon thereafter begin with formic acid treatments on the full colonies, but I'll save that for a future entry. The nucs have all been placed in their own hive bodies. As you may recall, I started on May 21st by placing three frames from colonies one, two, and three into a single hive body separated by two separation boards. The separation boards are just pieces of wood cut out to fit exactly in the hive body without letting bees pass into the space behind it. The boards are often times used to shrink the amount of space the bees have in the hive, in case a colony is weak in numbers and needs time to develop. The nucs were then placed in my neighbors backyard, due...

Yesterday, June 11 2017, we harvested 75 lbs (34 kg) of honey from three colonies. This is an excellent yield, considering I started 2017 without having any bees at all! There was a bit more honey in colonies 2 and 3 compared to colony 1. We even left a little bit more honey in the hive of colony one just to be sure that they will be fine in the current honey dearth. The next big phase is moving the nucs into new hives. Next Sunday I plan to treat the three nucs for varroa mites using a lactic acid solution. Each nuc colony should have a laying queen by that time. Once the treatment is done, I will wait one more week and then I can move them from the nuc box into regular hive bodies. After that, I will begin monitoring varroa mite populations and will react accordingly.

On Friday June, 2nd I took a look under the covers of my colonies to try to get a feel for how far along the honey production was. All three colonies have some completely capped honey while there is still a lot of uncapped honey as well. I took my refractometer along and measured some of the uncapped honey. All samples were under 19.5%. Basically, the honey is dry enough for harvest, as the capped honey probably has a lower water percentage. I decided to wait one more week (this coming weekend) before harvesting. Today is the day where my three nucs should have their queens hatching. 16 days have passed since I created the nucs. The queens will emerge, and after a few days they will venture out on their mating flights. Ten days from now, I will treat the nucs with lactic acid solution to kill off any mites that they may have. Another seven days after that, I will move them into a more permanent home. On a side note: I was pleased to discover that along the edge of a neighboring woo...

To my surprise, all three colonies have gathered a lot of nectar for honey production. There's a good chance I will harvest within the next ten days. This is an interesting prospect, as I wasn't too sure about colony #2 ever making their way to being a productive colony. One thing that helped in this was swarm prevention. By cutting out the drone frame and by also creating nucs, it is easier to manage the swarm behavior. Swarm behavior normally begins when the bees feel as if they are crowded. By constantly giving them more space to build, the swarm behavior is somewhat circumvented. No swarm ultimately means more honey. Last season I had harvested my first round of honey on May 22nd. This shows how much affect the weather has on nectar collection. This year we are harvesting a bit later, as the canola blossoms are starting to dry up. Timing is still important here, especially with honey that is largely consisted of canola nectar. Due to the higher fructose content in canol...

that is all. Actually, that isn't all. Saturday was one of those touch-and-go days as far as weather goes. Most of the day was pleaant and sunny, temps in the upper 70s. This was good, right up until I was inspecting the third frame of the first colony. It started to rain and to thunder. That's when things started to get hairy. I noticed that the bees were beginning to become more restless. No amount of smoke was calming them down either. As soon as I could, I closed up the hive and decided to leave them alone. Just as I placed the last frame in, a bee stung me on my right thumb and two more somehow made their way into the sleeves of my shirt.The other two escaped without stinging, which was good for me. Regardless, I was a bit frsutrated because I was hoping to get a bit more work done, so I decided to come back later. After the stormy weather, and about two hours, had passed, I went back out and finished up the work. I cut out the drone frames and added a second brood cha...

On Saturday, 29th of April, I checked in on the colonies. Development is very slow right now, due mostly to the poor weather conditions of the last two weeks. It was however interesting to see that the bees have begun drawing out the drone frames at a pretty good pace. Colonies 1 and 3 have drawn out approxiamately 30% of the drone frames. Colony 2 is a little slower and has only drawn out about 20% of the drone frame. I also placed the queen excluder on all three colonies and will just let the bees store honey in the second chamber that I gave them on the 15th. Today I stopped by once again, just to see how they were flying as we had two consecutive days of sunshine and relatively warm weather. The bees were flying very well, but colony 2 is just not quite as strong as the other two colonies at this point. A lot can of course change in the next two weeks. All three colonies have queens that are laying well in the brood nest. Since there is a lot of brood in all three (ca. 7 frames) ...

This post comes a little late, since I have done a few things since my last post. On the 2nd of April, I moved all the bees from the old hive bodies from my mentor to my own hive bodies. The move was for the most part quick and easy. My focus was to be sure to place the frames in the hives so that the brood nest was in the center of the hive body. Doing this ensures that bees will be expanding toward the outer edges. If the brood nest is not centered, the bees may go into early swarm behavior as they do not like to go over the edges of the food frames. I also removed a few older frames that were too short for my hive bodies and replaced them with wax foundations or with drawn-out comb. On the 15th of April, I decided to expand all the hives by giving each a second brood chamber. The weather from the time I moved them in to the time I expanded the hive was quite pleasant for April. The cherry blossoms were appearing, which is the time to expand. At this point, I had decided to just gi...

Last week I had a short conversation with a fellow beekeeper. We talked about the usual stuff (colony strength, varroa management, honey harvest, etc.), but one point came up that I had not really given much thought to: the business of beekeeping. Up to that point, I had only thought of my apiary as a hobby with the added benefit of monetary gain. So, it of course sparked an interest, and I decided to go about viewing my apiary from a business perspective. When you start collecting up old receipts, and start writing down costs, you rapidly gain an overview at the success or failure of the business. Since starting in the summer of 2015, I have not seen a positive return on my costs, i.e. my honey sales were not covering the losses, not by a long shot. A big fat red bottom line! For me, it is clear why this is the case; beekeeping costs quite a bit of money when you are starting new. If you take into consideration what the costs are of obtaining and keeping a colony for an entire seaso...

Fortunately, things have worked out as I had hoped. I was able to acquire three colonies this week from my mentor. He was clearing out the training stand for renovation, and was happy to have someone to take some colonies of his hands. My timing turned out to be just right, as another beekeeper had been there a few days before and purchased six colonies. I met my mentor late in the evening, after dusk, and packed the hives into my car and drove the bees over to my bee house. After some minor modifications to the bench, the hives were placed inside the house, and the paper towel pieces that were used to stop up the hive openings were removed. Back in the game. The waiting and anticipation of a new season is kind of killing me. One on hand, I just want to see the apiary grow. On the other, I want to be sure not to make the same mistakes as last year. Varroa treatments will need to be done more precisely and scientifically this year; I am not willing to suffer a total loss ag...

It pains me to write that my apiary has suffered a total loss. I have no colonies. My bees have all died. That is pretty sad. Now, I have to figure out what went wrong, and what am I going to do to prevent it from happening again. I've mentioned on several occasions that the varroa infestation this year was extreme. In my case, the late summer/early fall re-invasion is probably what did my colonies in. Welp, guess I am going to have start from scratch. Bummer.

so, 2016 was an interesting year (interesting does not always mean good) for me as a beekeeper. I went into the season with two viable colonies and ended the season with four. We harvested about seventy pounds (thirty-two kg) of honey, almost all from one colony. Throughout the entire season I expressed my concerns and doubts regarding the varroa destructor situation. My colonies seemed to be plagued by them, and I wasn't ever able to really keep the numbers manageable. In the end, that cost me dearly. Since November, three of four colonies have perished as a result of varroa destructor. My cash-cow colony also succumbed to those little bastards! The fourth colony, which is actually the artificial swarm I created in July, seems to be holding steady (fingers crossed and praying), but they had less than desirable numbers heading into winter. Now, it seems, that 2017 will be a rebuilding year. This happens to everyone who is in the beekeeping game, or at least I have...