Hotham Family Apiary

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...