Dipping Candles in November

    The Beez Neez Apiary Supply is a highly seasonal business. I'm like the proverbial "one armed paper hanger" in March through June. Then there is a big drop off in our business in the fall. November through January I'm more like the lonely Maytag repairman from the commercials. Actually, I don't mind the seasonal rythym of the store. I gives me time in the winter for recreational  activities like candle classes.  We held our first candle class of this past Thursday (November 12).  I have scheduled candle classes on most Thursday evenings in November and December. I say most because there will not be classes on either Thanksgiving day or Christmas Eve. I charge $20 per person to take the class. Then the class participants can buy any candles we make that night for the cost of the filtered beeswax. I currently sell filtered beeswax for $14.00 per pound. I normally sell beeswax candles for $1.30 per ounce ($20.80 per pound).

A nine piece beeswax nativity set

Beeswax Christmas ornaments

    I really enjoy making beeswax candles.  They are almost magical.  A beeswax candle will burn much longer than a paraffin candle, it will burn cleaner (no soot mark on the ceiling), and smell wonderful.  There is no nasty smell that needs to be camouflaged by the addition of any scents. Beeswax candles smell like they are made from honey.  In fact beeswax is made from honey. The bees consume honey and turn it into beeswax with the wax glands located on the under side of their abdomen. I have read that it takes anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds of honey to produce one pound of beeswax. Beeswax has the highest melting point of any natural wax which is one of the reasons it burns so cleanly. When the bees are making beeswax they hand together in big long chains like trapeze artists. This is called festooning.  As the bees produce flakes of beeswax, other worker bees climb up and down the living chain of bees to collect it and carry it to their current building project.

Hand dipped beeswax tapers

Large pine cone with tea lights and votives

    I even enjoy the messy job of rendering the beeswax.  Last year I rendered beeswax from five 55 gallon drums of cappings which resulted in about 1,060 pounds of beeswax. The little Walter Kelly water jacket cappings melter that I have was probably not intended to do that kind of volume. Last year  (2014) was a good honey year. More honey harvested means more beeswax from the cappings.  This year was not a very good honey year in western Washington due to the dry weather. Instead of five 55 galloon drums of cappings I only have one drum of cappings waiting to be processed. I will be lucky to end up with 220 pounds of beeswax from this years production.

 

Observation Hive Update, November 10, 2015

    The bees in the observation hive seem to be doing okay.  I was a little concerned when it seemed they were shutting down brood rearing a bit early, around the end of October.  It is normal for the queen to take a break from laying in the winter,  but that usually happens later in the year around Thanksgiving time. As it turned out, I think they merely ran out of pollen due to a week of rather cool rainy weather.  Since I had made up this little hive from one of my late summer queen banks, they had not stored any appreciable amount of pollen when they went into the observation hive.  They didn't have much honey either.  They have done a good job storing honey in that relatively short time, but they never seemed to get beyond gathering much pollen beyond what they needed at the time. Pollen is the essential source of protein they need to be able to rear brood. No pollen, no babies.

Lots of capped honey, little or no pollen

    Once I noticed that all of the pollen had disappeared, I added a piece of pollen supplement to the feeder on the windowsill. That was about a week ago. The weather has since been a little more hospitable to foraging, but not a whole lot.  However, I did notice Queen Abigail the First laying eggs on Tuesday (November 9).

Good Queen Abby inspecting, looking for a cell in which to lay an egg

   I made up an entrance block so I can keep the bees inside on days that are too cold for them to be flying. I think that will be particularly important once we start getting frosts. So far I have only used the entrance block on just a few days.  My theory is that because the observation hive is in a constant 70 degree environment, the bees don't realize when it is too cold to go outside. Last year the observation hive lost most of it's population in just a few weeks after the weather turned cold. My theory is that the foragers flew outside on cold days and were unable to make it back to the hive.  I'm going to try and give them a little help this year with the entrance block.

      I'm starting candle classes at the Beez Neez this week. I should have lots of candle making photos for my next post.

I Get to See a "Flow Hive

    Saturday was a slow day at the Beez Neez, not uncommon in late October.  The highlight of the day was a visit from a customer who had purchased one of those fancy "Flow Hives" from Australia. He very thoughtfully brought it by the shop so I could have a look at it. He summarized it as terribly expensive and expressed skepticism that it would work long term. However, as he put it, "What good is a hobby if you can't fritter away money on it." Actually he used a different word besides fritter, but fritter conveys his meaning and is more appropriate for my intended audience.  Those of us who have long experience dealing with the insides of bee hives can easily imagine anything mechanical getting gummed up.  His point was that it seemed like a fun thing to try in spite of the fact that it was frightfully expensive.

"Flow Hive" interior

This cap is removed and replaced with a spigot.

It comes with a window on the side

The plastic comb visible through the window

    We spent some time examining the device together. It was fun to see it up close and figure out exactly how it is supposed to work. He let me take a few photos for the Beez Neez blog and Facebook. I offered some helpful suggestions, most of which had apparently been covered in the instructions which came with the flow hive.

   I have at least two other customers that I know of who have also purchased a flow hive.  I'm sure I will have lots of feed back from each of them by the end of this next honey season. I hope we have a good nectar flow this coming summer so they will have have the gratification of having it work well at least once.

   My observation hive in the front of the Beez Neez is still doing well.  I just installed them in early September so they have only been there for about seven weeks.  The queen had been installed in the nuc in mid August so they had a three week head start on becoming a bee hive before I transferred them into the observation hive. She had filled two frames with brood in that time.

Abigail the First resting with her entourage 

   I've named the queen "Abigail the First" after one of my grand daughters. I located the queen yesterday morning (October 24, 2015) as she was resting on some capped honey. A queen bee isn't as busy in October as she in in July.  The brood nest has been reduced so there is a limited demand on her capacity to lay eggs. That is especially true in this little observation hive which is the equivalent of a four frame nucleus hive.  It is like a part time job compared to the egg laying machine the queen needs to be in July. Although, even while resting this queen is fulfilling a very important function for the hive.  Her little entourage is collecting her pheromones for distribution throughout the hive. If  she were not present in the hive to provide queen pheromone it would only take a short time before every last worker bee realized the hive had become queenless.

   I didn't think to mark this queen as I wasn't planning to use this nuc hive in the observation hive at the time. I made it up.  Additionally, it doesn't hurt for people to learn to spot an unmarked queen. Anyone can spot a marked queen. What's the big challenge in that? Note how long her abdomen is compared to the worker bees around her. Also her wings only reach 2/3 the length of her abdomen. The top of her thorax is enlarged and shiny black. The top of a worker bee's thorax appears brownish-black because of all of the little brown hairs on it.  Most of the queens retinue in the photo above are upside down, but the two closest to her head are right side up. The difference in the color of the thorax is pretty obvious.  The fact that the bees tend to cluster in a circle around the queen makes it easier to spot the queen. Even when she is walking across a frame, the other bees tend to get out of her way. It is as if she had a herald proclaiming "Make way for the Queen!"  Experienced beekeepers spot the queen as much by how she behaves and how the other bees behave around her as by how she looks.

Observation Hive Update, Mid October 2015

    On my last post I mentioned how the bees in the observation hive have been drawing out comb on the lowest of their four deep frames.  I hadn't noticed any other activity on that lowest frame other than the bees storing some orange and yellow pollen and a little bit of nectar/sugar syrup.  I was gone for about four days over the weekend on a hunting trip to Eastern Washington. When I returned to the Beez Neez on Tuesday, October 20th, I discovered that Queen Abigail the First had begun to lay eggs  in that lowest frame.  Based on the fact that the bees had just started capping the larvae,  the queen started laying eggs on this frame nine days ago.  A worker honeybee is three days as an egg and six days as a larva.

The bees just started capping the larvae which means the first eggs were laid 9 days ago

Note the white larvae curled up in the cells at the top of this photo

     Honeybee eggs are very tiny and not particularly easy to spot, especially when the frame is fixed inside the observation hive such that I can't turn it to get the sun just right shining down into the bottom of the cells.  I keep the observation hive covered with 2 inch thick styrofoam insulation when someone isn't actively gawking at them. That helps the bees incubate the brood at 92 degrees Fahrenheit.  Since they are covered most of the day and I really don't have time to watch them all day long anyhow, I had missed the queen starting to lay in the lower frame.  The larvae grow at a tremendous rate.  The new larvae start out about a fifth the size of a grain of rice.  Six days later they are a full grown larvae ready to spin their cocoon.  Imagine growing something as small as a rabbit into the size of a rhinoceros in just six days.

     Now that the bees have expanded the brood nest downward, the bees will have a lot more incentive to finish drawing out the comb on that lower frame.  I noticed that they had made some progress on that lower frame while I was gone.  One side has gone from 70% drawn to about 85% drawn in just four days.  October is a difficult time to persuade the bees to draw out comb. They are normally starting to hunker down for winter in October.  They often are not even inclined to produce wax to cap the last honey they bring into the hive in the fall. I guess they generally use the LIFO inventory method when it comes to honey storage and usage, Last In, First Out. In this particular case, they need more comb and I have provided them with lots of sugar syrup they can use to produce wax. Over the past few weeks, these bees have also capped about half of their stored honey.  A month ago, just a few weeks after I had placed the bees into the observation hive, the frames were pretty full of honey, but very little of it was capped.

This honey has been capped within the past few weeks

    I have been watching the weather forecast pretty closely. I don't want to miss the arrival of our first cold snap. I need to make sure the bees are unable to leave the hive once the weather turns cold. We've had a fairly warm and dry October thus far.  I see a lot of foragers who aren't bringing back pollen so they must be finding some nectar some where. They are going through a quart of sugar syrup every three days.  I'm not sure how much of their stored honey is from nectar as opposed to the sugar syrup.   I would estimate their current honey reserves at about ten pounds. That probably wouldn't be enough if they were spending the winter outside in a nuc box. It is probably more than adequate for their circumstances.  These bees will have access to a sugar syrup feeder all winter long.

   I'm a little curious as to what they will do once the comb on the lower frame is completely drawn out.  There has been just a little comb building activity on the top frame.  Maybe the comb building activity will transfer to the top frame.   I have noticed a change of activity in the third frame from the bottom.  It appears that they are backfilling the empty cells with honey as the capped brood emerges.  The queen laying in the lower frame may constitute a transfer of laying activity to the lower frame as opposed to an increase in her laying.

Observation Hive Update, Early October, 2015

    It appears that the little observation hive in the front window of the Beez Neez is continuing to prosper.  The bees are continuing to build comb on the bottom frame, albeit somewhat slowly.  They have started storing pollen and nectar in that lower frame, but the queen hasn't chosen to lay there yet.  I thought I saw the very start of a little comb building activity on the top frame as well.

    Since I decided to try yet again to keep bees in the observation hive over the winter, I think I should give the queen a name. I don't believe I've named a queen bee after my grand daughter Abby yet, so I decided to christen this queen as Abigail the First.  This queen is unmarked in that I haven't put a dab of paint on the top of her thorax to make her easier to spot. Note the enlarged black thorax of the queen bee versus the thoraxes of the worker bees which are covered with fuzzy golden brown hairs. Also a worker bee's wings extend almost to the tip of her abdomen while the queen bee's wings only extend halfway down the abdomen. Experienced beekeepers learn to spot the queen as much by her behavior and that of the surrounding bees as by her appearance.  Often the bees will form a little cluster around the queen whenever she stops. Also they will often clear a path for her as she walks across a crowded  frame. It is almost like there is a herald bee crying out "Make way for the Queen!"

Abigail the First is the larger bee in the center of the photo

Capped honey on the left side of the photo, capped brood on the left

    The observation hive has a rotating base and is set up on top of two hive bodies on a rolling platform. That way the entire assembly can be taken outdoors for maintenance.  There is 1 1/2 inch plastic tubing that leads from the top hive body over to the feeding station and the exit out the top of the front window.  We replaced the top window with a piece of plywood with the exit hole.  Attached to the outside of the plywood is a front mounted pollen trap which functions as the landing pad for the bees. I removed the grid from the pollen trap so the bees can pass freely.

This honey was recently capped in late September

The tubing that allows the bees to access the feeder and the outside world

    I'm trying to keep constant feed available for the observation hive.  They are currently emptying a quart jar of sugar syrup in about three days. I'm hoping that the easy availability of syrup plus the warmer indoor temperature will encourage them to build comb on the two partially drawn frames. The observation hive consists of four deep frames stacked vertically. The middle two frames are 100% drawn comb, full of honey and brood. The top frame is partially drawn on one side( about 20% drawn) with nothing done on the second side. The bees are not using the top frame at present.   Instead they are focusing on finishing the bottom frame, which is currently 70% finished on one side and about 50% finished on the other side.

A worker bee coming in for a landing

     Note the observation hive is visible through the front window.  I keep the glass covered with styrofoam insulation when I am not looking at the bees.  That makes it easier for them to incubate their brood at the right temperature.  It is 70 degrees inside the store, but the brood are incubated at 92 degrees.  1 like to make it a little easier on the bees. Besides, if the brood are not kept at 92 degrees the newly emerged worker bees may actually have learning disabilities.  We would rather not have slow learner bees.

Bee Club Picnic

   I belong to our local bee club, the Northwest District Beekeepers Association. This past July they held their annual picnic at Polestar Farms near Granite Falls, Washington.  It was a lovely event and was very well attended.  I had heard there were 115 RSVPs and I'm sure there were at least that many attendees.  The club provided hamburgers, hot dogs, and drinks while everyone was supposed to bring either a dessert or a salad.  They ended up with enough food to feed a small army. My hat is off to Helen Crozier who was the primary organizer of this year's picnic. I can remember club picnics in the not too distant past which had less than 20 attendees.

    They had a number of fun activities scheduled to include door prizes, a creamed honey demonstration, the use of beeswax in making cosmetics such as lip balms, a hive side chat, mead making, and candle making.  I assisted with the hive side chat.  Mark Salser, co-owner of Polestar farms used two of his beehives for the hive side chat. He very wisely moved them from their normal location a few days before the picnic to his front yard. This resulted in all of the older foragers being left behind at the old location to drift into the neighboring hives. As a consequence we did a hive demo with only younger house bees present in the hives.  The older a worker bee gets, the more inclined she is to behave defensively and to sting a perceived intruder.  On the other hand, younger worker bees are not very inclined to sting.

   Mark did the hive exam wearing a T-shirt and shorts.  The only safety precaution he took was to wear safety glasses to protect his eyes from a possible sting.  I, on the other hand,  had brought a new bee jacket for the occasion. I'm less inclined to trust other people's bees than I am my own bees so I decided to wear the jacket.  I imagine that I looked a bit timid compared to Mark.  As it turned out, the bees were total sweethearts and showed no inclination to act defensively.  Mark did most of the talking and it turned out to be a pretty easy gig.  We could have just as easily done the hive exam in our swimsuits. The main value in the hive side chat is for the newer beekeepers to be able to watch an experienced beekeeper like Mark demonstrate good technique and explain what they are supposed to be looking for when they open one of their beehives.

Mark demonstrates how to light a bee smoker

My obsession with propolis gets the best of me

   The other demonstrations that I watched were also well done.  I have to admit that I didn't stick around for the mead making demo. Being a good Mormon I didn't anticipate I would use that information very much. The lip balm and hand cream demo was definitely a big hit as everyone got to take home samples. Most importantly there was lots of good food and interesting company. I may have mentioned before that beekeepers tend toward the quirky side (myself included)

Harvest Time and Observation Hive Update

        A customer brought this little gift down to the Beez Neez this past Saturday.  I didn't know who it was at first because I wasn't working that day.  I was attending  my grand daughter Natalie's baptism.  I later learned that it was Susan, who works as a professional gardener. I was touched by her thoughtfulness.  Judging by the way it had healed I'm assuming the pattern was cut into the squash while it was still green.  Between the squash and my drying corn we have a harvest theme going in our decor.

A gift from a thoughtful customer

     I put bees into the store's observation hive about a month ago.  My primary incentive to replenish the observation hive was a scheduled field trip from a local home school co-op.  The hive I chose was a small five frame nuc (short for nucleus colony) that had recently been used as a queen bank.  When the queen bank had just one queen remaining I released that queen into the queen bank.  It seems a fitting thing to do after the worker bees had labored so diligently caring for about fifty queens.   This Italian queen had been released in early August so the bees had about three weeks to build up before they were put into the observation hive.  They had started with two frames of drawn comb and three additional new frames with plastic foundation.  During that three weeks the bees had partially drawn out the foundation on either side of their drawn comb while the queen had mostly filled the two frames of drawn comb with brood.

    Since going into the observation hive, the bees have done a very good job storing nectar from the Japanese knotweed on the Pilchuck river and are continuing to suck down the sugar syrup from my feeder in the window.  They have done so well storing honey that the queen now has a somewhat limited area of comb in which to lay eggs.  All of the capped brood that went into the observation hive has now emerged and the bees have backfilled most of that space with honey and pollen. That is actually a normal thing to happen in a beehive at this time of year.   The queen reduces her laying in August and September and the bees backfill with honey as the brood nest shrinks.  The bees are actually drawing out  comb in September and have given the queen a little more space in which to lay eggs. They have done so well storing nectar and pollen that I've decided to make yet another attempt at overwintering the bees in the observation hive.

The bees have stored a lot of nectar in the past few weeks

They are also storing a lot of orange and yellow pollen

    There is one thing I intend to do differently on this attempt at overwintering.  I am going to limit the bees' access to the outside world once the weather turns colder.  I think what happened last year was that the bees were clueless as to the weather outside the store.  They were living in a year round 70 degree environment.  There was nothing going on inside the hive to tell that it too cold for them to be going outside, even for a short cleansing flight.   I noticed that the population of the observation hive dropped precipitously in November, just after a week of colder weather.   I am going to build a little screen door that I can affix to their landing platform just before the weather turns cool.  Then I will keep the screen on throughout the winter except for whenever we get a nice break in the weather.  That way the bees won't have the option of going outside unless it is warm enough for bees to fly.

More Bees in the Observation Hive

   I've had a lot of customers asking me if I was going to put bees in the observation hive again. As usual, the prior tenants of the observation hive died during the winter.  Three times I've tried to overwinter bees inside the store, but it hasn't worked yet.  One would think that a nice cozy 70 degree environment with an unlimited food supply would be just the ticket.  Not so.  I think one problem is the bees don't understand that it is cold outside. I had a lot of the bees fly outside during the first serious cold snap last November.  Most of them failed to make it back inside the hive.  Maybe I need to post a weather forecast near their exit to the outside.  It would probably be more practical if I simply screened them in on cold or rainy days.  I suspect there are probably additional reasons why they fail to over winter in the observation hive.

    It has been my intention all along to restock the observation hive in the front window of the store. I just had to wait until all of the package bee craziness was over.  Earlier this week I finally transferred a small nuc hive into the observation hive. It was a somewhat smallish hive, consisting of a little less than three frames of bees.  That will give them a little more room to grow so I don't have to replace them anytime soon.  This hive has a marked Italian queen. I've decided to christen her Cozette the First, after one of my numerous grand daughters.  So far so good.  Cozette the First is working on two frames of brood. There aren't enough nurse bees to care for any more brood than that.  They quickly found the feeder and I'm seeing a lot of foragers flying.