Winter covers removed!

The meteorologists are calling for +27 C this Friday and other high temperatures for the days leading up. I figured it was time to get the winter covers off of the hives (Last year the covers came off on April 15th!). The weather has been cool for the last little bit but it is definitely going to be too warm by the end of the week. I took off the covers and took a little peek inside.

 The hives are looking excellent!

 The white hives' top hive box had bees completely covering the frames. I really do not know how that is possible. It seems that they have one heck of a prolific queen. I am going to have to try to continue her genetics. They also seemed to have a lot of honey stores left. Almost to the point where I am no longer considering feeding them for a while. They are also pulling in pollen on a daily basis.

The green hive has a bit less than 3/4 of the frames covered in bees. They do not seem near as busy as the white hive. I do not see them collecting as much pollen as often.

I took the cover off of my double single box. As you can see in the picture; it was time to take off the covers because it was trapping in too much moisture and caused some mold to form on the outside of the boxes. The bees are still alive in there and they still have a lot of stores. I am preparing a different site for them so that I can get them out of my garden! I am currently making a proper lid for the one hive and then I will be able to move them soon. As for now, I put the big lid back on the hives and once I have them moved I will start feeding them syrup and pollen patties. I need to stimulate some laying by their queens to start pushing their population up. I want them to graduate to double boxes in a couple of months and for them to be in a good position for when the dandelion flow starts.

Sweet Yellow Clover Field

I have been contemplating what to do with a pasture field right by my bee hives. There has not been any cattle in the field for over 2 years and we do not need the hay for our livestock. I was researching northern nectar sources on the internet and found a great summary of different plants. See the link from none other than Wikipedia:

Northern Nectar Sources for Honey Bees - Wikipedia.org

This points out a lot of great sources. I choose to do the clover because it is readily available in my area and it will not spread like a weed to my other organic fields and I could still have cattle graze the pasture. At the end of the blossom I could also bale it and use it as hay (even though yellow clover looks a bit too coarse of a stock) and it must be properly dried or it acts like an anti-coagulant (ex: rat poison).
Wikipedia claims that sweet yellow clover can yield up to 500lbs of honey per acre and I plan on only changing over 1 acre of 4 to sweet yellow clover. I am excited with the idea of a close source of nectar from May to August!

 I bought my organic sweet yellow clover seed from a local supplier; he recommended 20lbs per acre. I was able to purchase the bag for $34. I have to plow the old pasture up and disc it to break it up and then sow it. I also plan on running a pass with the packer.

Pollen is out!

It is St.Paddy's day today and it looks like the bees are in luck!

Last year, the bees were not able to find any pollen until April 5th!

This is incredible. I have not seen any flowering plants. There was 2 feet of snow here last week. There are still a couple of piles around.
Any guesses as to what it may be from?

First Dose of 2010 Venom...

Today I took advantage of the nice weather and removed the insulation from the between all of the inner covers and the telescoping covers. I tilted the hives forward and they seemed to still be quite heavy, so I am confident that they will have enough until we get a bit of nectar flow.
 The white hive also had its cover upside down intentionally to allow air to come in. Because of this, I had to pop it off and put it the right way. Unfortunately all of the bees are in the top box. My bee veil came in handy; as did my smoker. But none the less; I was reckless and forgot to tuck in my shirt and I got a bee up my back and it stung me... So much for my attempt to go without getting a sting this year! I also took the time to take off my mouse guard so that the bees had less of a hard time to clean out the hive.

I also took a look at the bottom board of the green hive and noticed that there were a lot of dead bees. This makes sense. If you remember a previous post; I found a lot more dead bees in the white hive and was impressed/confused about the green hives lack of dead bees. Sure enough they pretty much had the same amount after what I found today. Their mouse guard hindered the bees from being able to clean off their bottom board. I popped off the landing board and slid the bottom board out and cleaned it out in no time.

I will have to check my single box hives again to make sure they are not trapped in!

Winter is over!

Environment Canada is claiming that winter in south western Ontario is officially over. They have also said that it was the driest winter on record (in the last 63 yrs). This is setting things up for a bit of a disaster. I really hope that this is not a super dry summer or my bees are going to suffer; oh yeah, and it is going to also make farming more difficult.

As you can see from previous entries, at the begining of the week their was a lot of snow. In four days there is practically none left! Thanks to a large municipal drain that we installed last fall, I did not have to spend two days scooping up water in my basement and there is no standing water in my field.

The last 2 days have been super windy! I went out to check my hives and to my surprise, this is what I saw. The wind popped out one peg. I popped it back in and things were fine. I am quite happy with my little trellis. It blocks the wind so well and I really think it is necessary due to the location. The sides need to be touched up a bit. The replacement wood pieces for the sides and back are made but need to be stained and installed. I figured I could do that in the spring time so that they would be less weathered.

Major Cleansing

Today was another beautiful day; similar to the last two days except that it was 11C which is above that magic temperature where every bee comes out and goes for a cleansing flight.

This picture has my two hives in the background. If you click on it to view in larger, you can literally see the thousands of little dimples in the snow. This picture was taken at the end of the day.

This is the front of my hive at around noon. As you can see, there is a lot of traffic. Less than an hour later, the hive beside was equally busy. The green hive cluster may be located such that they did not notice or took longer to realize that the weather was so nice; their entrance is also partially covered compared to the white hive.

The single box hives had the chance to get out and do their business. I had cleaned their entrances yesterday and I assume that it helped them.
What a great couple of days! The rest of the week is forecasting rain.

Single HIves' Cleansing Flights!

Another beautiful day (high of +7C) allowed my recently dug out single body hives to do a bit of spring cleaning and some cleansing flights. As you can see by the above picture, the left side hive was able to do more work than the right side. I lifted up the front flaps and the left side clearly had things cleared up.The right side seemed to be plugged up more with dead bees. I used a thin bladed knife and scrapped out the bees and I cleared up their entrance and a couple even came out to check what was going on. Another nice day will allow them to come out and take their flights.

In continuing with yesterdays immature jokes, here is a picture of most of the possible bee poops. The blob, the straight line, the squiggly line and the dotted line. The bees must have rested on the roof of the hive and done their business.

Some people may question my assistance to my bees but I do it because I only have two full hives and two single box hives. My one single box hive is a swarm that I caught at the end of August. Another beekeeper told me that it would be impossible for them to survive the winter; I donated some of frames from my strong colonies to it and I fed it sugar syrup like crazy. All my hives are looking like they have made it through the winter.

Cleansing Flights!

There was a lot of activity coming from the green hive.  The green hive is wrapped up in a “Bee Cozy” winter wrap. It is like putting a down jacket on your hive and the best thing about it is that it literally takes less than a minute to throw it on. I am super impressed with it; it looks like the bees are happy with it as well. Today there were a lot of bees flying around in front of the hive and cleansing themselves. For those of you who do not have snow as a backdrop to see what bee poop looks like, then I guess you are in luck.

This picture shows a typical spotting of a bee. It has had some time to melt in the snow. Alright, that is enough of that. The reason was checking my hives was to see if they were doing well and taking their flights. It is also important to see if there are any potential issues; such as nosema. Nosema is a unicellular parasite which is now classified as a fungus. Beekeeping for Dummies is wrong / my issue may be out of date! Anyways, Nosema symptoms include bees appearing weak and crawl aimlessly around the front of the hive. Also the hive will have streaks of mustard-brown feces that appear in and on the hive. Beekeeping for Dummies suggests placing your hive at a site which has good airflow and a nearby source of fresh, clean water to avoid Nosema issues.

The perspective from the top of the hive shows all of the yellow snow. Another beekeeper once called it yellow rain; I think it is very fitting. You can also see how much snow is still left in my young orchard. There is 3 feet in some areas. I also took the time today to dig out my single boxes; which were completely buried in the snow again. I hope it allows them to get out a bit and clean up their hives.

Hurting less...

It has been 4 weeks since I  broke my thumb and it is starting to feel a bit better. It is still not healed but it is on its way. I have a bit of mobility with it but it still hurts quite a bit when I touch anything. It seems to be very sensitive to the touch. The nail also looks like it is on its way off. There is definitely a long way to go to get my full movement back. When I do move my thumb, I can feel the broken bone ache (so I stop)...

In other news, it appears as though the weather is going to get nicer this weekend; so I hope to see my bees out and about for some cleansing flights. The sun has been really out this week. It has reached the turning point where I have the sun in my face for my drive into work and on the drive home. The days are getting longer! Spring is near!