Hotham Family Apiary

Well, it has been a disappointing year at the apiary so far. First, I lost three of my colonies (50%) over the winter, so I knew the 2019 harvest would be rather low. Second, the weather in May was very cool and wet. The bees started out great in April with developing, but then with the cold May, nectar collection took a hit. Two of the three colonies have barely brought in any amounts of honey. Only one colony has a pretty full honey super. I plan to harvest Sunday morning (June 30th) and then we will see how it goes from there. I may give the bees a few more weeks after that to see if we can scrape out some more honey before staring the varroa treatments. An interesting note: last year on the 30th of June we harvested for the second time with a total of 80kgs (130kgs combined with the first harvest).

Hello again, sad news to start the 2019 season: I lost three of my six colonies. I think there were two factors contributing to the losses. First, and foremost, the varroa mites. I did my best to treat the bees as always, but obviously I was not successful. Having six colonies at least gave me a chance to have some colonies survive the winter, but it is still sad to lose the bees. I will create 1 or 2 nucs after the first harvest, but I do not plan to ramp up to six colonies again. Second, the weather in late January and early February was a rollercoaster ride. We had days above 8°C followed by heavy frosts at night. The bees were leaving the winter ball and were dispersing too much in the hive. I lost a lot of bees due to this. The lack of bees leads to less warmth and ultimately the colonies dies. So that's the situation. The three colonies that survived the winter are booming right now. The beginning of April is similiar to that of last year, warm and dry. I will probably gi...

Having six colonies is a lot of work BUT it is paying off in a big way. We harvested our first honey on June 3rd from three colonies and we had a yield of 50kg. I was blown away with how much honey we got from a pretty dry spring. Then, we harvested a second and final time on June 30th from all six colonies and had a yield of 80kg. A very good honey year. I am sure I could harvest more but there are a few reasons why I will not. First, I want to leave honey in the colonies that was stored in the brood chambers under the queen excluder. It wasn't the case in all the hives but in two colonies the bees stored a ton of honey in the second brood chamber. Maybe I gave them the brood chamber too late or the honey chamber too early or both, I don't know. In any case, I estimate around 25kgs of honey was "lost" because of it. The upside, I may not have to feed those bees winter food and also, what will I do with an extra 25kgs of honey?! Second, I want to start hive hygien...

We haven't had enough rain yet this spring which is having some serious affects on nature. The bees are bringing in nectar, but I honestly don't know where they are finding it! Since the beginning of April, the weather has been warm and dry, which is uncommon for central Europe in the spring. Water is scarce, so the bees are trying to get it wherever possible. We even observed some bees trying to get moisture from my mother-in-law's freshly watered vegetable garden. My in-laws have a water container about 150 meters north of the bee house, and that is where the bees have been collecting water. My father-in-law placed a few pieces of old board in the water for the bees to float on, but now it seems there are too many bees congregating there.  I suggested that they place a water container to the south of the bee house and to also empty the water container where the bees have been collecting water. Once the bees have found a constant and stable source of water, they w...

The weather the last two weeks has caused the flora to explode. With that, there is an over abundance of nectar, and the bees are working hard to collect as much as possible. I gave all of the colonies a honey super and am now waiting and observing their development. One colony is overflowing with bees and they probably will need a second brood chamber by the weekend. The same colony as mentioned above also displayed some aggressive behaviour which I will need to keep an eye on. I was stung three times by the same colony and I certainly do not want to have bees that like to sting. On the other hand, I will observe them, as they are by far the strongest colony and have already made great progress drawing out comb. Replacing the queen would be a possibility to mitigate the aggressive behaviour, but I'll only do that if absolutely necessary. The weather this week is cooler, but still favourable for the honey flow and for bee reproduction and flight. Things are pointing in the right ...

My last post was July 2017. Oops! I am still in the beekeeping business and it looks like we have a good start to the 2018 season. It is sometimes hard to find the motivation to update the blog especially during the offseason. All six of our colonies survived the winter and were left relatively unscathedfrom varroa destructor. I was diligent enough to be sure to treat the colonies against the mites. In winter the bees received two oxalcilic treatments that rendered them nearly mite free. I have also begun to give each colony a drone frame to jump start the culling of infected drone brood. My plan is to make 1 or 2 nucs sometime after the first honey harvest. I will write about that when the time comes. Hopefully I will stay on top of the blog this season.

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...

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...