Where's the Brood?

So during this weekend's beekeeping session, I am completely bummed because I didn't see any brood in the hive. I'm fearing the worst, that either I injured the Queen at the last beekeeping inspection, or she may have swarmed. At the last inspection, I saw frame after frame of brood, so this is heartbreaking.

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 15, 2015 at 3:27am PDT

I did see brood inside the split that I made, so I decided to recombine the split to the original hive. In the split I saw 2 swarm cups and a supersedure cup empty, so a virgin queen was born and has mated. Hopefully, the hive will take to this Queen and she will be productive as the last one.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 14, 2015 at 8:57pm PDT

Despite all the disappointments, there was some good news, in the honey super there are 3 frames of honey! I can't wait until there are 10 frames of honey so we can do a harvest!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jul 14, 2015 at 6:36pm PDT

Forgot to Post This Beekeeping Day

I have been so busy this month, that I forgot to post this beekeeping day! Last month, on my birthday, I went beekeeping. I was so happy to see that one of the Queens have been laying lots and lots of brood! This makes me super happy!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 30, 2015 at 4:19pm PDT

The hive was super active. This is how the hive looked after I inspected it. The bees were flying around.

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 30, 2015 at 11:36am PDT

I love these bees! They are so docile! Really happy bees, and very mellow. Which is quite lovely.

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 30, 2015 at 5:01pm PDT

At one of the beehive locations, the roses are in full bloom. Isn't this just gorgeous??

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 31, 2015 at 10:12am PDT

I just love filming these bees in slow motion. I can watch this footage for hours!

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 31, 2015 at 12:06pm PDT

Honeybees in Iris Heaven

Last weekend when I arrived to do a hive inspection, I was so blown away by how pretty Emily's backyard looked. There was a sea of irises and allium blooming! So pretty!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 18, 2015 at 4:33am PDT

This is my favorite time of year! Isn't this just stunning! I just love spring flowers, and they best thing about bulbs is that they naturally split, so year after year, more and more bloom! Look closely, you can even see bleeding hearts blooming too!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 18, 2015 at 1:43pm PDT

I brought our dog to beekeeping for the first time. And she loved it. Valentina spent the day exploring the backyard.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 18, 2015 at 9:09am PDT

Valentina, was loving the backyard. Smelling all the flowers. Finding sticks. She even got pollen on her little forehead. She is the cutest!

The alliums are so pretty against the lush green!

The beehive looks amazing! I added an additional honey super box on top of the beehive. I already saw evidence of them making honey!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 18, 2015 at 12:28pm PDT

I was using a feeder on this hive, but since there are so many flowers in bloom now, there is no longer a need for a feeder. I removed the feeder and found that the bees have made some burr comb to fill in the space. It was very pretty! I removed all the burr comb.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on May 18, 2015 at 5:36pm PDT

It was a perfect beekeeping day. Can't wait to see how the season progresses! Hope to get a good honey flow this season!

Beautiful Day to Beekeep

I love beekeeping this time of year because the magnolia tree where my beehive is located is in full bloom! When I arrived to the beehive this past weekend, I was overwhelmed with how beautiful this scene was.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 11:46am PDT

I did a hive inspection of the overwintered hive and the Queen is laying really well. Perfect brood pattern. My only concern was that on the left there looks to be two supercedure cells forming. I didn't remove them and let the bees do what they do. If they decide to replace the overwinter Queen, I will let them be, to see what they do. They know more about the health of their Queen than I do.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 6:41pm PDT

Here is a closer view of the brood. You can see that there is larvae in those Queen supercedure cups.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 8:40pm PDT

I moved the brood box to the bottom and put two more boxes above it to allow the Queen to go up and have plenty of room to lay eggs. I really love how the blooming tree looks next to the beehive.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 8:16pm PDT

Here is a video of our other beehive in slow motion. I could watch this for hours.

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 3:24pm PDT

The bees were building a lot of burr comb, so I removed all of it. I'm so happy the hives are doing well! I'm still feeding the bees sugar water because we are still waiting for the neighborhood to start blooming. Look forward to the next inspection!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 25, 2015 at 10:13pm PDT

Installing a new bee package for 2015

Two weeks ago, I went over to my friend Amy's house to check on her beehive. She installed a new bee package on her rooftop hive and it was looking good. Her kids help her beekeep too! I love that. Teaching a whole new generation of beekeepers!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 12, 2015 at 11:59am PDT

Then I went over to my hives to install a new package since one of our hives did not survive. My friend Amy picked up the bee packages from Beehive Barn in Cranbury, NJ. This year, I decided to do the gentle install of the bee package instead of pouring the bees out of the box.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 12, 2015 at 5:16pm PDT

To do this, you remove the Queen box and put it in between two beehive frames. Then you leave the open bee package box next to the frames in the deep. The bees will come out of the box to find the Queen. This is a more gentle way of getting the bees out instead of pouring them out of the box. Here is the Queen at the top of the Queen box.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 12, 2015 at 6:45pm PDT

Here is the hive all installed! In 3 days time, I come back to check that the Queen bee is released from the Queen box by her attendants. They will eat the sugar plug to let her out. We named this Queen George Lee. Long live the Queen!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 12, 2015 at 8:29pm PDT

First day of beekeeping season 2015

On April 4th, it was finally warm enough to open up our hives for the first time this season. I was so nervous to see if any of our 3 hives survived. At the first hive, I didn't see any bees flying in and out of the hive. This is always a bad sign.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 4, 2015 at 10:27am PDT

I unwrapped the hives only to find frame after frame of dead bees. The whole hive of frames had mold. And on this frame you can see all the bees clustered together trying to stay warm. Moisture and mold killed these bees. I feel so sad. All these frames along with the honey went into the garbage. I don't want to reuse frames that have mold on them. It might be diseased as well and I don't want our new bees getting sick from it.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 4, 2015 at 11:48am PDT

We decided that we were going to purchase a new package of bees to install into this hive. Then I went to our other beehive location. I saw bees flying around and already knew that this was a good sign. One of the two hives in this location had survived the winter! What a relief!!

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 4, 2015 at 3:20pm PDT

I was smiling, grinning actually from ear to ear. This makes me sooooo happy! We had a really harsh winter with lots of cold days and snow. So to know that this hive survived is pretty amazing! Here is another video of a closeup of the hive.

A video posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 4, 2015 at 5:50pm PDT

I moved the hive back to it's original location and removed all the tar paper wrapping. So happy to see the bees flying around!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Apr 5, 2015 at 7:07am 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.

Fall Honey Harvest 2014

It's been months since I wrote on my blog. I'm terrible. I don't know where the summer went. It went fast. Here's a quick update of what happened last month. We harvested honey from our hives. In the beginning of the season, we had high hopes and was hoping to have a big harvest of honey. We started the season with 2 hives and grew it to 4 hives by adding 2 Nucs. We had a series of problems such as some kind of poisoning killing off almost half of our bees. Plus we had a slow cool summer, with wet temperatures. We were lucky to even have any honey to harvest with these issues. We inspected the hives and pulled the super frames for harvesting.

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Of the 4 hives, we only could pull 10 frames of honey. Way less than last year's harvest. Last year we pulled 18 frames in the Fall and we had less hives!.

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But at least we had a harvest. Our first year we didn't have anything to harvest. So we are glad to have some honey.

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It's amazing to me that these two frames of honey are from the same hive! The top one is likely from early summer and the bottom one was made recently, late summer. Just beautiful and two different taste profiles!

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I love scraping the wax off the frames. It's almost therapeutic.

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Can you believe how dark this honey is? Some of the frames of honey was this really deep black coffee color! Now that is rich fall honey!

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And when it starts flowing, oh my gosh. It smells incredible. Like you want to dunk your head in it!

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The flow of raw harvested honey! Yum!! #honeybee #honey #beehive #beekeeper #beekeeping #brooklynbees

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A quick video to demonstrate what I mean. If only there was a smell app!

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After we harvested the five frames of honey and split them up between the four of us (2 beehosts & 2 beekeepers) this is what each of us ended up taking home. 1 quart & 1 pint jar. This was the saddest harvest ever! But, at least we got a harvest.

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I'm going to savor every last drop of this precious drop of my local Brooklyn honey!

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Frustrations of Urban Beekeeping Part 2

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how sometimes beekeeping in an urban environment can be very frustrating and disheartening. This past weekend, the frustrations continued. When we went to the first beehive location, we were shocked to see that there was yet again, another huge die off of bees. Has this ever happened to your hives? What did you do to combat this?

I’m not exactly sure what is causing the bees to die off in this manner. We are looking into moving this hive to another location in hopes that whatever is causing this will stop. Luckily, when we opened the hive, the bees looked healthy. They weren't disoriented like last time.

There was also pretty good numbers of bees, so the hive had healthy numbers as well. We saw that the Queen was laying very good brood. So that is a good sign that it hasn't affected the inside of the hive. We suspect the die off the bees are likely the foragers. Hopefully with the Queen laying well, the foragers will be replaced with the newly hatching brood.

We pulled some frames and they were also building out wax and filling the frames with honey.

We looked inside our other hive and they have also been busy with making honey. In fact, they built some honey on top of the frames.

That looked and smelled so incredible, so we scraped these off the frames. And had a little taste for ourselves. Oh wow, is this every good! Floral, sweet, deliciousness!

After beekeeping duties were done, I saw that my favorite Cesar's taco truck was sitting outside the subway station.

I picked up one of these beauties. This is a chicken empanada. It's a perfect snack after beekeeping. Yum.

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!!

A Heartbreaking Inspection

Last week, we installed two new bee nucleuses into 2 of our hives. Therefore, we were excited to do an inspection to check on the status of the installed nucs. A bee nucleus is a miniature hive that you can purchase instead of a bee package. It usually consists of 4 - 5 frames with a laying Queen, and the frames should contain brood, pollen, and honey. I just love the look of the old nuc frames next to the new bee frames in our new hive!

The new bee Nucleus is looking great, the Queen is laying well and there was pollen in the frames which meant they have been foraging well. However, what's not looking great is the green hive. For the 3rd week in a row, we've seen a pile of dead bees in front of the hive. It's completely heartbreaking. We think it's probably a poisoning of some sort, most likely pesticide spray. We thought by now that whatever the bees were exposed to would have gone away from all the rain we've been getting. But seeing this means they are still being afflicted. Not knowing who is spraying makes this incredibly frustrating. Because the bees are obviously feeding on sprayed plants.

We saw a lot of bees on their backs unable to flip themselves around.

I took this video of the honeybee on her back. When I pulled the cover, she was moving her legs trying to flip over, but she did not have the strength to do so.

I filmed the front entrance of the hive as well. The bees in the front were walking around disoriented and shaking their bodies. They don't normally act like this. It makes me extremely sad.

Here is the inside of the hive. More of the same strange behavior. The only thing we can really do is to wait and see if the bees can overcome this. Hopefully there are still enough worker bees in the hive to get all the tasks done in the beehive. Luckily, the Queen is still alive and laying well. Since she is still alive and healthy, we have hope the hive will bounce back. We had pesticide poisoning happen to our hives before in the past and the hive never recovered from it. The numbers dwindled and they didn't make it through the winter because there weren't enough of them to keep warm. Hopefully this is early enough in the season that the Queen will keep continuing to lay and the numbers will go up.

Next, we went to the other beehive location. Fortunately for us, the beehives are doing amazing. The Nucs have a couple of frames of nicely patterned brood. That means the Queen is laying really well. Look how beautiful this frame is.

Here is a closeup of another frame. This was full of bees, honey, and brood.

We spotted the Queen on another frame. This Nuc came with a marked Queen which makes it so easy to find her. None of our other hives comes with a marked Queen. Look how amazing she looks!

After we finished with the inspections, we headed over to the farmer's market which is a few blocks from the beehives. Our beehost told us that they had a farm vendor there that sold free range eggs for only $4 a dozen!  $4!!! What an amazing deal! The farmer's market near my apartment sells free range eggs for $6 a dozen, so this is a great bargain! You really can't beat fresh farm eggs from a local farm. Incredible!

Look at these beauties! Aren't they gorgeous? Now that I know where to find fresh eggs like that, I'll be stopping by here every time I go beekeeping from now on! Score!!! Great find!

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!

Raising Another Queen

This week I ordered new front feeders for the beehives because our bees seemed to not care for the top feeder. The ones I ordered are just plastic cap holders that you screw on top of mason jars. At $3 a pop, this will work just fine. I like to use Mason jars as feeders because you can clean them easily and get all the gunk out that builds up when the jars are in the sun.

The main goal for this hive inspection was to look for Queen cups or evidence of a new Queen. At the start of this season, this hive was Queenless. Then we raised a virgin Queen which died. So we moved fresh brood over to attempt to raise another Queen. Since it's still early enough in the season, and we have another hive that is very strong, we decided to take the risk of raising another Queen instead of buying a mated Queen.

When we looked closer, the hive was brimming with activity, so this is definitely a good sign.

The first frame I pulled from the middle of the top box had a Queen cup. Woohoo! And all that spotty brood are drone cells. That means there is a laying working somewhere in the hive as well.

Here's a closer look at the frame. At this capped stage, the Queen should emerge in 7 days, and then hopefully a week after that takes her mating flight. I saw around 4 Queen cells in the hive so the first one to hatch will kill the other Queens.

 

Here's a look at the new blue hive. It's just waiting for my new Nuc to arrive. I spoke to the Beehive Barn and they said with the cold weather we were having this spring, they are about a week late with the Nucs being ready. I am hoping that we can pick up the Nucs the last week of May. I'm eager to get the Nuc installed so that I can get this hive up and running.

Since the day was a bit overcast, the bees were super aggressive when I inspected. I suspect that most of the bees were close to home because they sensed it was going to rain. I actually got stung 3 times! Twice on my legs, (one sting on each leg).

AND... I also got stung on my neck. Somehow, a bee got into my veil and stung me square in the neck. Oh man, did that one hurt! It got pretty swollen and my neck pretty much "disappeared". I get a really bad reaction to beesting. My doctor says I have a mild allergy to bee venom so I carry around a prescription bottle of Cetirizine, which is an anti-histamine that my doctor prescribed for me for times like this when I really need a strong dose to calm the swelling.

After getting stung 3 times, I went straight home to take a relaxing shower. I found a bee stuck on my clothing. She must have been one of the bees that stung me. Poor bee. If you ask me, she got it worse than I did.