The bees are doing well!

Two weeks ago, I visited the beehive and it's looking amazing! I arrived at the first backyard and was blown away by the pretty garden! It is so lush and green!

Lilies are now in bloom!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 27, 2015 at 1:51pm PDT

The hydrangea are also in bloom! Isn't this so pretty!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 27, 2015 at 4:07pm PDT

The bees must be so happy living here. The beehives look great nestled in the flora.

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 27, 2015 at 2:25pm PDT

At the second beehive location, the hive is doing extremely well. The Queen is laying perfect brood! I found 3 boxes full of brood, she is such a prolific layer!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 28, 2015 at 4:52am PDT

And the top box has frames of honey! I think we shall be able to harvest honey soon!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 28, 2015 at 8:28am PDT

Since the hive is very full, and I saw signs of swarm cells, I decided to split the hive and move some new larvae frames into a new box. I also added some honey frames. With any luck, they will raise a new virgin Queen and this will be a new colony!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 27, 2015 at 8:30pm PDT

The original hive looks like a skyscraper compared to the new box!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 27, 2015 at 9:34pm PDT

I'm so excited with how well this hive is doing! I can't wait to do the next hive inspection!

A photo posted by Mimi (@meemsnyc) on Jun 28, 2015 at 6:56am PDT

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.

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.

Roadtrip to the Beehive Barn

This weekend, we took a ride out to Cranbury, NJ to do a special pickup. We were going to the Beehive Barn, an apiary that not only sells bees but sells beehives and all other kinds of supplies for beekeeping. I've never been to the Beehive Barn before so this was a special treat!

It's about an hours drive from Manhattan, and the ride out to the 'country' would not have been bad if we hadn't hit traffic on the NJ Turnpike South. We sat in traffic for about an hour. When we finally arrived, I was beyond excited! Our main goal for this trip was to pickup a package of 20,000 bees and the Queen bee that recently arrived from Georgia.  All the bee packages were stored in this barn.

Sally, who owns the apiary said to me, "Go ahead and go into the barn and pick out your own package!" How cool is that?

As I got closer to the barn, I could hear all the buzzing inside. It looked like hundreds of packages inside. Super cool!

I picked out a package and made sure the Queen was still alive. Then I went over to the workshop to pickup some deep frames with foundation.

Here's a photo of them pulling 12 frames for me. They make these and all the beehives by hand! So cool!

Here's another photo of the woodworking shop! I felt so lucky to be able to see where they make beehives. Whenever I can, I try to support local businesses. This is pretty awesome!

Another view of the workshop.

Right outside the workshop was a flock of chickens. I am so loving this place! This is my "dream farm", one day I want to raise chickens with my bees!!

Here's the package I picked out. This will be installed into the hive that we lost over the winter. Stay tuned for that blog post soon!

First Day of Beekeeping Season of 2014!!

This past winter was really tough in NYC. It snowed and snowed and snowed. Here's a photo of the backyard where we keep two of our bee hives. All the way in the back are the two hives covered in about a foot of snow. This past winter, we did things a little different. We wrapped our hives in tar paper to keep the moisture away and added a box of cedar chips to help wick away the moisture. We did this to give the beehives the best chance of surviving the brutal winter. Last year, they died from too much moisture and mold grew rampant.  Bees can survive the cold but they can't survive the moisture which leads to mold.

Last Saturday, the temperatures finally got up to the high 50s so we could finally open the hive and remove all the tar paper and cedar chips. We removed the tar paper and the bees were already coming out to enjoy the sun! We knew right away they had survived the winter of snow, 7F degrees temperatures and wind! Woo hoo! They survived the Polar Vortex!!! One of the coldest winters we've had in a long time. This method really works!

We opened the lid and was thrilled to see bees! Lots and lots of bees! They were so active! They ate through all of the 5 pounds of sugar we had left for them in the winter.We looked through the frames and saw that the Queen had been busy laying brood! She has survived! We literally jumped for joy!

We were even surprised to find that they had even started making honey!! This is so incredible!! There are some flowers blooming so they must be already foraging on the spring bulbs throughout the neighborhood!

We opened the white hive and so that it too had survived! Honeybees everywhere!  Unfortunately, there was no sign of the Queen. Frame after frame it was empty of brood. We decided to move some fresh brood frames from the green hive and transfer them to the white hive in hopes that the hive will make a new queen out of the new brood. We know that this will work because we successfully raised Queens last year using this method.

Here is my beekeeping partner Paul closing up the hive. Here you will see bees all over his shoulders and back. This hive seems to be very strong as the number of bees was really high.

Even though we had two hives that successfully survived the winter, we had less success at our other hive location 2 blocks away. As soon as we arrived, we knew they were doomed. We saw no bees flying around the hive. Here's a look of the dead bees from one of the frames. Here you will see the bees are clustering together trying to keep the Queen warm. If we looked carefully, she probably is under this large pile of bees.

We found mold all over the frames. Lots and lots of it, so we ended up throwing away all 20 deep frames. You don't want to use moldy frames. They will kill the bees. We decided to purchase a new bee package and frames for this hive which we will install in a week.

First Bee Inspection

Ok, this happened over a month ago, but I am sooo behind on blog posting. We had our first bee inspection, where we opened the hive to check on the progress of our honeybees.  I snapped a photo of the worker bees flying back to the hive, they are carrying pollen between their legs.  It's fun to watch them fly back, it's like a winged highway, all flying in line on their way into the hive.

This is the top of the first deep when we opened the hive cover.  The honeybees are all over the tops and inside of the frames.

I beekeep with 3 other people.  We met in beekeeping class and decided to partner up in keeping 2 beehives.  As a newbie beekeeper, it's great to be able to take on this adventure with other people.  It makes the experience a little less intimidating. This is May and Victoria, two of the beekeepers in our group.

This was our first time checking on the frames.  The honeybees are doing amazing!  They completely covered the frame with activity.

Isn't this incredible?  We were all so giddy with happiness.

We noticed that we saw on some of the frames that the bees were building extra honeycomb on top of the frames.  This indicates that there is too much space between the frames.

A closer look of the frame that has the extra honeycomb.  Our instinct was to knock off the extra honeycomb, but we weren't sure.... We decided to wait and ask our bee teacher what to do.

A side profile of the bee bump or extra honeycomb.  They literally have started building a second layer of honeycomb.  What we learned from class is that this is not really wanted in the beehive, we will inquire with our teacher on how to remove it.

We maintain two beehives.  One is a backyard, and the other on top of a rooftop.  Our bee teacher recommended to us to have two beehives, as novices, it helps us to know if the hives are doing well, because we can compare the activity of the two.

photo credit: DK Holland

I'm the one in the middle in this photo.  Our bee host takes photos of us beekeeping which is great!

photo credit: DK Holland

We use a bee brush to gently move the bees off the frames so that we can check them.

photo credit: DK Holland

Here we are carefully removing the wax off the top of the frames.

photo credit: DK Holland

I'm taking photos of us here with my phone.

photo credit: DK Holland

The beehive on the rooftop is also doing well.  There are no extra honeycomb bumbs, which is a good sign.  That means we did the spacing between the frames better in this hive. We saw lots of brood, pollen and honey.  All good signs!  Doesn't May look so happy holding up the frame?  We totally love beekeeping, it's so much fun!