The Queen is alive!

We're more than half way done with this beekeeping season and things are going as well as can be. Here we are inspecting the overwintered hive.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 25, 2015 at 4:02pm PDT

At our last inspection, I didn't see any brood, and was so worried that the hive could potentially be Queenless. But, I was so thrilled to see that the Queen is alive and laying perfect brood! Look at this gorgeous deep frame of brood. It's so lovely. We were literally jumping for joy because I feared that the Queen had died. But she is alive and well and doing awesome.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 26, 2015 at 7:04am PDT

Not only is the hive doing exceedingly well, they are making gorgeous frames of honey. Just look how beautiful these frames of honey are! I am getting so excited to harvest! I can barely wait!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 26, 2015 at 7:27pm PDT

At my second hive, the other Queen is also laying well! We found lots of perfect brood!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 26, 2015 at 12:29pm PDT

Here's a close up of one of the frames. The pollen on the bottom looks amazing, and they have capped honey on top. This is beautiful.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 26, 2015 at 5:51pm PDT

Even Oscar the kitty was in the beekeeping mood! He's not afraid of the bees at all!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 27, 2015 at 4:01pm PDT

Frozen to Death

I received an email from my beehost yesterday and it was extremely bad news. This past Sunday, it went up to 47F degrees. And some of the bees ventured out of one of our beehives. But unfortunately, they were unaware that it's actually winter and snow on the ground.

 

 The bees became disoriented and could not find there way back to the beehive. These warm spells are the worst because they get tricked into thinking it's spring and so they will come out of the hive to forage and look for food. But with the snow all over the ground, they become confused.

Seeing all these honeybees frozen, trying to get back to the hive makes me so sad and want to cry. I feel heartbroken. I really hope there are enough bees inside the hive to keep the Queen alive. I almost can't wait until the end of next month to open the hive and see what's going on inside.

Frustrations of Urban Beekeeping

I love beekeeping, but sometimes it can be frustrating in an urban environment. Especially when you have neighbors that don't want you there. Two weeks ago, at my last inspection, I arrived to the backyard where I keep two of my hives. It's a beautiful yard, full of blooming flowers. I was getting ready to do an inspection, I started up the smoker. Only to be greeted by an angry neighbor behind the fence, screaming at me. In a very angry voice she was shouting at me to stop what I was doing and to not open the hives or continue with my inspection because she had guests in her backyard for a party. I was going to comply with her requests, and then she starts threatening to call the police on me. Upon which I stated, "Go ahead, call the police. My beehives are registered with the Department of Health. These hives are completely legal to own and have." I proceeded to tell her that she didn't have to scream at me in that manner and all she had to to was ask nicely to not do the inspection, and I would have complied. Apparently, she was stung by a bee the previous day, and now she feels scared of them. But how does she know they were my bees? And what if it was a yellowjacket, or wasp, or hornet? They all can be mistaken for honeybees. I now feel frustrated with having my hives here, if there is a chance that I will be accosted every time I show up for an inspection. I can tell she seems pretty unreasonable to talk to, since every time I tried to calm her down, she would talk over me loudly. People like that don't care that honeybees are an integral part of the eco-system, and that without them and their pollination, we wouldn't have the fruits and vegetables we consume.

Have you ever experienced something like this? It makes me really sad and start to rethink the location of this hive. Would I need to move it elsewhere? Somewhere where there are less neighbors perhaps? I have an upcoming inspection this Sunday. I'll have to see if I get into another verbal altercation with this neighbor. Hopefully, she has calmed down a bit. Fingers crossed.

Forgotten Spring Photos

I downloaded photos off of my phone and found some I completely forgot to post on this blog. The photos show how amazing the spring flowers are in one of the gardens where we keep our beehives in Brooklyn. Don't these irises look amazing? I wonder if the honeybees like them.

Here's a view from another angle. Way in the back are the beehives.

A closeup of the irises. So pretty!

Closer to the hive are some blooming alliums. I just love these flowers. They remind me of cotton balls!

Here is our other beehive location. The fun part of this location is that we are always greeted by Oscar the kitty who lives at this location. He loves it when we are doing a beekeeping inspection. He watches us beekeep the entire time.

On this day, we also had to build our bee nucleus that we purchased. I've been wanting to raise bee nucleuses for awhile. I finally went ahead and ordered a kit.

And here is the nucleus completely built. It looks awesome! I can't wait to raise nucs!!

Sweet Golden Goodness!

Last Saturday during our beehive inspection in Brooklyn, we looked at the honey super to see how things were going. We were mainly just checking to see if they had built out the wax on the frames. But to our surprise, in just two weeks time, they had literally built out a whole frame of honey! We were astounded! A whole frame of freshly capped honey! Just two weeks ago, this was a brand new frame with new foundation! This is incredible! They are so prolific and fast!

I had to fight ever fiber of my being to not unzip my hood and lick the darn thing. Hahahaha. The smell is also incredible. If you ever get an opportunity to get up close to a fresh frame of raw honey, do it. The smell is so sweet and intoxicating. Counting down the days until we can harvest these bad boys! I can hardly wait!

Brand New Beehives!

This was a busy week for us. We received our delivery from Mann Lake of our two new beehives. We bought the apiary kit from them, which includes the basics that you need to start a new hive. A bottom board with an entrance reducer, a telescoping cover, an inner cover, and we went with the 4 medium boxes with wooden frames. I prefer medium boxes over deeps as the brood box because I find that it's easier for me to lift when the box is full of wax, brood, and honey. With the addition of these two hives, we now are the proud owners of five hives in total. Two years ago, when I started this beekeeping adventure, I didn't think my passion for raising honeybees would grow to this level. I think any devoted beekeeper would tell you that it's something you can't quite explain until you try it. Maintaining your own hives is an amazing experience. One that I learn from constantly and a hobby I know I will maintain for many years to come.

Emily, one of our beehive hosts wanted the hive to be sky blue. Since neither Paul or I have backyards to keep our hives, we use her backyard as the host location. She picked out the paint and we spent last Saturday afternoon painting the hive. We use an exterior paint to paint the hives to protect the boxes from the elements of being outside. It rains and snows a lot here, so a good exterior paint helps a lot with the inclement weather.

Paul had a great idea to hang the freshly painted boxes on tree limbs in hopes that they would dry faster. I really thought this looked pretty funny. It reminded me of an art installation.

 

Hanging them on tree limbs allowed the sun and wind to hit every angle of the box. The neighbors must have thought we were weird.

We temporarily assembled the hive on top of cinderblock. This hive will get a bee nucleus which is due to arrive in late May. I really love how the color came out.

And here is a view of all three hives in Emily's backyard. I think it looks pretty awesome!

After we finished painting and installing, next we went over to our other beehive host located a few blocks away. When we arrived, Oscar the kitty was there to greet us right away! Oscar lives here and watches us beekeep every Saturday. If you look closely, you can see his "girlfriend" neighborhood kitty in the background. We don't know who owns the girlfriend but she follows Oscar everywhere! He's not very fond of that.

Here's Oscar inspecting my beesuit.

We installed the new hive temporarily next to the older one. Can you tell it's new? LOL. So shiny! We're calling this new hive Oscar's Honeywell.

I did an inspection to see how well the new Queen is laying. We installed this package this spring, so we are keeping a watchful eye on her.

The Queen in the Carlton Reserve hive is laying perfect brood. She has just about filled this entire frame of brood. This is the pattern you want to see in the hive, because it means she is laying in practically ever cell. Pretty awesome!!

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!

Bee Package Installation: April 2014

This year we were lucky. We only had to buy one package of bees instead of 3 because 2 of our beehives survived the cold NYC winter. I truly believe it was because of two factors. The first being that last year, we bought our Queen bee from a NJ Apiary that raises Jersey Queens from wintered stock. Picking winter hardy bees will help your stock survive the winter. We also wrapped our hives for the first time.  I think both of these factors contributed to the hive successfully surviving the winter. We picked up our package at the Beehive Barn in Cranbury, NJ. You can read all about our pickup here! Then we installed the package into the one hive that did not survive.  Installing a package is pretty simple. Keep a water bottle with sugar water handy, you can spray the bees with it to keep them occupied and to calm them down before you pour the bees in. You remove the sugar water can and set it aside. You remove the Queen box, and then you literally shake the bees onto one of the hive boxes. I wrote a more extensive write up about installing bee packages here.

We keep 9 frames in the box to leave room for the Queen box. At the bottom of the Queen box should be a cork plug holding in solid sugar. Remove the cork plug so that the solid sugar is exposed. The worker bees will eat through the solid sugar to release the Queen.

Here is a closeup of the Queen box. At the top, you can see the sugar. Usually, there will be 3-4 attendant bees inside the box with her to attend to her needs. After your remove the cork, place the Queen box between two frames. In a few days, she will be released by the worker bees. We usually go back to hive after 3 days to ensure that she was indeed released.

Here is the deep box with the bees poured in. We usually leave the bee package next to the bee box because there tends to be stragglers inside the box that don't come out right away. If you leave the box next to the hive, they will eventually make their way in.

Here's a view down the block from where our beehive is located in Brooklyn. I think the bees have a great view! Don't you?

As we were packing up and getting ready to leave, I saw this honeybee trying to drink coffee from this cup. She was half way in the cup with her little legs dangling. These bees made a long journey up from Georgia so they must have been really hungry. No coffee for you little bee, I moved her back to the hive to feed on sugar water.