Philips: Urban Beehive

An 'urban' bee hive

It appears as though some 'designers' have gone on an artistic spree of epic proportions without consulting a beekeeper. I will have to admit that their design (which I hope is purely a concept); looks pretty cool.
This looks like a cool idea but lets just try to imagine how you would harvest the honey from this hive when it opens up into your house.

It mounts onto a window pane hive above the street (because that is what urban settings are like I suppose). The bees have an exit which is not at the bottom of the hive and luckily they have a couple of plants in a flower pot to provide them with pollen.

'Techincal Schematic'

This is a list of problems I can foresee:

1. How do you open the hive in your house without causing a massive panic?

2. How do you harvest the honey? You just pull it out?

3. How do you treat the bees?

4. How is the hive expanded?

This is just the begining of the questions I have about this hive; which goes to show that it is purely a romantic artistic concept.

Check out what they have to say about it on their own website. This is where I got all of the pictures for this post.
Philips: Urban Beehive Webpage

Fall Time: Treatments done

It has been a busy summer extracting a lot of honey and preparing the girls for the fall. A few days ago there was a lot of action at the hives because it was a nice day.
These four hives have taken in more than 120 lbs of sugar in the form of 2:1 syrup(sugar:water). This is an incredible amount. Now the hives are really heavy, which is going to be good for winter survival.

Lots of activity

Some drones are still around?!

Took off my custom mouse guard to let the bees clean out.

Broken hive stand! Collapsed under 200+ lbs per hive.

Moldy Wax? Too much moisture in hive.

Since the hive stand collapsed in the summer, I think this caused both hives to have extra moisture. I fixed the stand and placed it on some cement blocks. These bees really worked hard this year.

Fixed the hive stand so that the hives are off the ground.

Sorry to my few readers for the excessively long time between posts. The outdoor work is almost done! All the treatments are done for my hives now and I will be wrapping them in the next weeks.

Extraction: Round 1

My bees are not done capping all of their honey so I decided to take off the majority of it.

The honey looks great again this year. I was able to find a home for two 30lb pails of honey which I sold at a wholesale price because I was given the pails and it was fairly easy to fill. It also saved me the task of bottling them; labeling them and selling them individually.

Here is the current tally of what my hives have given to date:
Blue hive:                                                                            White hive:
1 deep box =     56 lbs + wax honey                                    1 deep box = 56 lbs + wax honey
2 med boxes =  52 lbs + wax honey                                    1 med box  =  26 lbs + wax honey
TOTAL            108 lbs + some extra (in cappings)            TOTAL           82 lbs
Grand Total: 190 lbs so far (from two hives; was a single hive June 13)

I have still have 2 deep boxes (113lbs + wax honey) + 1 med from another hive at home (26lbs + wax honey) = total of 130lbs more left to extract...

Peak population = Lots of honey

My blue hive was split June 13th. I had found some hatched swarm queen cells so I found the old queen and took her and half the hive and placed it beside the blue hive. I placed a queen cell which was ready to emerge in the blue hive in case there was any issues with the swarm queens.

To say the least, the timing was impeccable. Both hives have been doing very well.

This is the time of the year which the hive is experiencing its' peak population; which in turn means that honey collection is at its peak as well. Look how many bees are in the top box!

Lots of bees!

How am I going to lift this honey off?

I am interested in seeing how much honey I will have this year.

Egg frame: Beautiful

This newly drawn frame has lots of eggs. The queen was busy getting all of those eggs laid. As you can see she did not miss many spots.

Young Eggs (look like grains of rice)

 The weird shadowing is due to the trellis surrounding the hives.

Newly drawn frame has new eggs all over!

Sorry for the short post, but the pictures really speak for themselves.

Drone Layer: Oh crap...

I have been having consistant problems with one of my hives. I trapped the queen in the bottom box by placing a queen excluder ontop of the bottom box. She is for sure in the bottom box. I have found her several times.The brood pattern is poor in that hive, and I have finally figured out why. There is a drone layer in the hive. The following pictures are from above the queen excluder.

Why is there larvae above the queen excluder?!

New egg top left

 I am trying to decide how to remove this drone layer. I have dealt with drone layers in previous years, but this year I want to try something less dramatic/destructive. Stay tuned...

Lavender Bloom

Lavender is a great treat for the bees. I took these pictures of a lavender plant which is continually expanding at my parents.

Lavender plant

Bees love lavender

A nearby plant. Click on photo to spot the ants and spider!

 My attempts to grow lavander has been unsuccessful. I may be selecting a poor variety. I am going to attempt to take some of this lavander to grow at my place.