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

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

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!

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.

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!

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!!

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.