Hotham Family Apiary

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...