Urban Beekeeping in Brooklyn!

Every Saturday, when I see this bridge, I get excited. Only blocks from this bridge lives our Brooklyn honeybees.

This is one of the locations where our hives are located. How pretty is this? Idyllic if you ask me! The fragrance alone is dreamy!

 

The magnolia tree was in full bloom last weekend. Just gorgeous! Can you see Oscar, the beekeeping kitty in this photo? He likes to watch us every weekend when we inspect the beehives.

At this location, we installed a new package of bees 2 weeks ago. So our goal was to see how well the new Queen is laying. It's important to make sure she is laying well in order to have a strong hive. We need the numbers of worker bees to increase.

I look forward for the week to go by, just so I can do this. There are so few things in life that make me happier and more calm than when I'm beekeeping.

We had to use all new deep frames in this beehive because we had to throw away all the frames from last year due to mold. The worker bees haven't had enough time to build out new wax comb on the new foundation. Sometimes when there is too much room between new frames, honeybees will build out burr wax comb or "wild wax comb" to fill up the space between the frames. Honeybees will try to fill up as much space as possible, they don't like open spaces in their hive. Check out this beautiful burr comb that they built in one week!

 

We carefully removed the burr comb. Dave took this picture of us, but he got his finger in the frame. hahahaha

 

We saw that the Queen was laying pretty well. As fast as the worker bees can draw out wax comb, she is laying on that comb.

Here is a closeup of the capped brood. We can tell she is laying well because she is laying in every cell, one after another. That is a perfect pattern. When you see a Queen laying spotty, all over the frame, that is a sign that there is something wrong with the Queen.

After we finished this hive inspection, we went to our second location which houses 2 hives. They were brimming with activity! I didn't get any photos this time of the inside of the hive.

But I took this quick video of how active the bees are! Pretty amazing! I love watching them returning to the hive. Pretty cool! So far the green hive is doing really well! They are booming in numbers of bees because this hive survived the winter. We are doing so well in fact that we put a Queen excluder on and have put a honey super on top! Woooo! Excited!

Honeybee Highway

This is the location of our second beehive. I just love this location. It's nestled under a gorgeous Magnolia tree, and when it's in bloom, it's just spectacular! It not only smells amazing, it looks amazing. Since we had only installed the bee package the previous week, We had a pretty low maintenance inspection, all we needed to do was to check a few frames to see that they started building out wax comb. We also needed to refill the sugar water feeders. Since it's April, there aren't enough flowers in bloom for foraging so we have to help and feed the bees with a sugar water solution.

This inspection was pretty quick, we saw they had started building out comb and then we closed up the hive. The Queen has not started laying yet, because all the frames are new with foundation, and the bees have not build up the wax yet. We didn't want to disturb the box too much so we just literally peeked in and that's about it.

Here is a photo of the guys chatting about where we will be installing the next hive. We have ordered a second hive for this location and we will be installing a Nuc in mid-May. I can't wait!! I'm beyond excited!

Here's a photo of the hive, very little activity going on, they are all busy inside building comb or out foraging. Also, the number of bees in the hive are still pretty low since we just installed last weekend.

Here's a video of the bees coming back to the hive after we finished feeding them. They are coming back to feed. Looks like a honeybee highway doesn't it?  It's fun to watch!

How to Raise Your Own Queen

Last weekend, we had another beehive inspection of our Brooklyn hives. When we arrived, there was lots of activity at the hives. I can watch this all day! It's so interesting!

The goal for this inspection was to see if we had successfully raised a new Queen.  At our last inspection, we noticed that although the white hive survived the winter, the Queen in that hive did not.  We had successfully raised Queens before in the past so we know we can do it. 

 

We pulled some frames from the white hive and did not see the Queen so we had to find some freshly laid brood from our green hive and move it into our white hive in efforts to raise a new Queen.

This frame was full of bees, but the brood was all capped so this wasn't a good candidate.

A close up of some capped brood.

Video of looking for the brood frames.

On this frame, there was some freshly capped brood with some uncapped larvae. We pulled two frames like this and placed them into the white hive.

After placing the frames, we'll be back in a week to check on the hive to see if they make one of the larvae into a Queen.  Since this hive is Queenless, they will feed a larvae royal jelly and make it into a Queen cup. When the Queen hatches, it will go for a mating flight and start laying.  We're going to hope for the best! Wish us luck!

Hanging plant

Remember the post I wrote earlier this month? How happy I was to bring home my new hyacinth plant? Well... this is what happens when your roommate is allergic to spring flowers. I resorted to hanging it...outside the window. :(