Beeswax "ladder" that one hive built to more easily access the top feeder.

This is my first bee cartoon. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think this is a lot funnier than it probably is.

It rained overnight just a little bit, but we need it badly so the bees and I will take what we can get. So the girls are a little slow to get started this morning, and there is more rain predicted for later today. I forgot to add more syrup to the top feeder in the green hive last night, so I added one quart early this morning, but there is still about a third of a quart in the entrance feeder. I'm not sure if I am breaking any sort of beekeeping rules by having both an internal and an entrance feeder, but the bees seem to be taking it from both places and I don't want to do anything to slow them down.  I observed some bees at the entrance drinking water from rain drops which was a tiny bit interesting. And even before 7:30, I saw one bee coming home with a fresh load of pollen. I wasn't sure how early they really start foraging, but I guess some of them get going earlier than others.

Well, since I didn't start this journal on the first day of beekeeeping, here's a short summary of the past six days


Friday- Paul helped me install two five frame nucleus hives. In addition to the five frames of brood/honey, we added four frames of waxed rite-cell foundation in the deep brood boxes. Gave each hive 1/2 gallon of 1:1 sugar syrup in a Mann-Lake top feeder with the inner cover below the feeder to discourage the bees from building burr comb in the open spaces inside the feeder. The entrance reducer was set to the larger 4 inch opening.


Saturday- We worked in the garden most of the day, and I took as many bee observation breaks as Elizabeth would tolerate. I really liked watching them coming back from foraging flights, and was very happy that the bees didn't seem to mind if I sat about 5 or 6 feet away and to the side of the entrance. I saw many bees coming back to the hive with sacs of pollen attached to their hind legs. The bees in the yellow hive seemed to have begun to discover the syrup in the feeder, but not the green hive. From casual observation, it seems that the green hive has about twice as many bees coming and going from the entrance.


Sunday- Again, the green hive was observed to be foraging more actively, but the yellow hive was taking more sugar syrup from the feeder.


Monday- Paid attention to the flight paths of the bees. The hives are located in a closed off corner of the garden to prevent dog interference, and they are facing away from our main garden path. This placement was intended to force the foraging bees to spiral upward from the hive entrance before making their "bee-line" to whatever nectar source was nearby. This works really well because it prevents the bees from buzzing right through our yard at human eye level. Many bees were seen foraging on the privet by the deck. I noticed that some pollen being collected by individual bees varies in color. The pollen ranges from off-white, every shade of yellow, orange, even grey and brown.


Today it was clear that the yellow hive is taking a LOT of syrup, but the green hive has left it mostly untouched even though they have clearly discovered it. I'm not worried too much, as the green hive appears to be foraging well and I've read that bees will ignore sugar syrup if there is a good nectar flow going on. I emailed my mentor concerning one hive's choice not to take the syrup, and he offered to lend me an entrance feeder for that hive to see if that would increase their desire for syrup.


Tuesday- I went to my mentor's house to borrow the entrance feeder. I brought along a couple of hardy begonia plants from our garden for my mentor's wife, and we ended up having a nice conversation about southern gardening, bees, and travels through New Mexico. In order to install this new feeder, I had to remove the entrance reducer from the green hive. I gave them a quart jar full of 1:1 syrup and they took about 20% of it during the afternoon.


Wednesday- Today the bees decided to play some tricks on me. First, I inspected the feeder in the green hive to discover that they were now rapidly taking the syrup from the top feeder that had been ignored all week. I'm not sure if they were just slow to discover it or if the entrance feeder had somehow encouraged them to accept the syrup. I also noticed that today was probably the last day for the privet blossoms, at least for the ones in our yard.


Around 4:00, I finished mulching the back shady areas of the yard/garden, and noticed an incredible amount of activity around the green hive. There were at least 5 times as many bees clustered at the entrance and there were what looked like hundreds of bees swirling around the hive. At first, I was concerned that another local hive had discovered the new entrance feeder and had arrived to rob my hive of all it's honey stores. But as I observed, I saw that none of the bees at the entrance seemed agitated and there were no fights going on between individual bees. So I went inside to research this behavior and soon realized that I had just witnessed brand new baby bees taking their first orientation flight. I read that this behavior happens most days in the afternoon when brood are maturing, and that it can last from 10-30 minutes. Sure enough, when I came back to the hive 30 minutes later, this swirling swarm of baby bees had either gone back into their hive or gone off in search for nectar. It was business as usual.


This evening, we were going to do a hive inspection, but have decided to wait until. Friday morning so that we can fully document the frames with photos and take notes on what changes we are making to the hives. Hopefully they are drawing out good straight comb on the rite-cell plastic foundation.


The yellow hive was out of syrup, so I made up about a gallon of syrup: two quart jars for the green hive's entrance feeder and about a half gallon for the yellow hive feeder. I went out with my headlamp and was a bit surprised to find bees crawling around inside the feeder where they should not have been able to get. I found a crack in the metal screen through which they were coming and going. I used my bee brush to gently move the bees out of the feeder before filling both sides of the feeder. I will need to adjust that screen so that this does not happen every time they finish off their syrup. The green hive will need more syrup tomorrow, as their top feeder is almost empty.


From here on, I'll try to make an update to this journal whenever I am doing something inside the hive or when I observe something new to me.

This is my first year of beekeeping, but I have been interested in keeping bees ever since I was seven and requested, but did not receive, a beehive for my birthday. Instead, I received Classic Space LEGO sets, and my chidlhood dream had to wait 32 years to come true. In hindsight, it was probably worth waiting, and bees probably were not an appropriate gift for an eight year old, even a strange and nerdy one like myself. 


This winter, I decided to take the plunge and take a beekeeping class with the Jefferson County Beekeepers Association. It turns out that the beekeeper who sells his honey at the little Bluff Park Hardware Store lives right in my neighborhood was the class instructor. I got to know him a bit and he agreed to sell me two nucleus hives to get me started.

Soon after the class was over, I went down my beginner's list of beekeeping necessities and ordered my hives. But these hives couldn't be just any ordinary hives, as these were going to prominent feathers in Elizabeth's garden. So in exchange for some of Elizabeth's real estate, she was the one to choose an assortment of pastel colors for paint, and we splurged on the fancy English style peaked copper top roofs. I'm fairly certain that we have the prettiest hives in town. 

On Friday, April 27th, I drove over to Paul's house and loaded two small hives into the back of my jeep. With Paul's help, we had these two nucleus colonies installed in my hives less than 30 minutes. It was so exciting to don my protective gear, light my smoker, and crack a hive open with my brand new hive tool. Each hive had deep frames full of both honey and capped brood, indicating that the queen was laying well and that I could expect these to be very good strong hives to start my little garden apiary. We were even able to find the queen destined for her new light green brood box, so that was especially exciting, considering that finding her was not the goal, as getting them into the hive safely but quickly was most important.

So, of course, I spend the next several days sitting by the hives to observe their behavior. My childhood dream of becoming the "King Bee" has finally come true. Although i should have started this journal the first day I received my bees, I plan on documenting my progress/folly over the next year. At the least, this can be a good way to make sure I remember my mistakes and successes.