Checking in With my Honeybees
With so many things blooming at my farm, the honeybees have been especially busy flitting from flower to flower and back to their hives to feed the developing brood and to make honey. D.J. Haverkamp from Bedford Bee Honeybee Service, came to the farm recently to give Carlos, who cares for my bees, a lesson in checking the hives and splitting one hive in two, as I wanted to increase my honey production. Honeybees are fascinating little creatures that never cease to amaze me!
1 This is Carlos getting a newly painted (Bedford Gray) beehive ready to receive a colony of bees. He's placing the frames into a brood super.
2 The frames, which are made of wood, are cleaned thoroughly and reused.
3 A sheet of foundation wax is added to the frame. The bees use this foundation wax to build their honeycomb upon.
4 The foundation wax is slipped into grooves on the frame.
5 A strip of wood is added to secure the wax.
6 The strip is carefully nailed in place.
7 More nails are added to the side.
8 The frames fit snugly in the super.
9 D.J. Haverkamp, of Bedford Bee Honeybee Service, arrived to guide Carlos in the checking and splitting process.
10 The new empty hive was loaded up and transported to the existing beehives.
11 D.J. fueled the smoker while Carlos opened the hive. The third person is Nora Kerrich, a student at Horace Greeley High School, who is interning with D.J.
12 Carlos lifted the inner cover and gave the bees a generous smoking, which calms the bees. The smoke masks alarm pheromones that are released by guard bees when the hive is opened.
13 The first order of business is to inspect the hive, ensuring that there is a queen laying eggs. A hive functions with just one queen. If a second queen is made, she could swarm from the hive, taking half of the bees with her.
14 D.J. liked what he saw here. There is newly capped honey around the edges of the frame. The darker cells in the center contain brood, or new bees, being born.
15 D.J. pointed out a queen cell, which was empty. He felt that the queen in it had recently swarmed from the hive.
16 When worker bees decide to make a new queen, either because the old one is weakening, or was killed, they choose several small larvae and feed them with generous amounts of royal jelly in specially constructed queen cells.
17 This is some of that royal jelly, which triggers the development of the queen, including her important ovaries needed to lay eggs.
18 During hive inspection, you lose a small portion of bees. The white objects are bee larvae, which were forming in burr comb built between the frames and exposed when the frames were removed.
19 Each frame in the upper super was inspected and it was time to move down into the brood super.
20 Another smoking - The smoker operates with a bellows attachment, feeding air to the smoldering fire within.
21 Carlos cleaned off more burr comb from the tops of the frames.
22 D.J. saw plenty of eggs in the cells, so the queen has been actively laying.
23 D.J. was excited by this frame. The cells on the left contain drones, or males, and the ones on the right are worker bees. So organized!
24 You can actually see nurse bees feeding the drone larvae before capping the cells.
25 When conditions are favorable for swarming, the queen will start laying eggs in queen cups. These swarm cells hang from the bottom of the frame.
26 A fully constructed queen cell has a peanut-like shape and texture.
27 Upon further inspection, D.J. was thrilled to see a newly emerged queen. The bees will have to sort out which queen will reign.
28 Moving deeper into the hive.
29 So many bees!
30 Putting the hive back together, D.J. instructed Carlos to gently sweep the bees from the upper honey super frames into the lower brood super in case the queen was among them.
31 After sweeping the bees, a queen excluder was placed over the brood super. The queen is too large to pass through and will no longer have access to the honey super, which is now delegated entirely to honey.
32 The brood being born in the honey super will leave those cells and those cells will soon be filled with honey.
33 Putting the hive back together
34 It was decided that the third hive would be split in two. The empty brood super was positioned next to the hive.
35 D.J. removed the center frames.
36 And replaced them with active frames from the hive.
37 He put the empty frames into the original hive and turned it so that the hive entrances faced one another.
38 The process was repeated with the second brood super.
39 The hives were closed. The bees will figure out which hive to call home and if all goes according to plan, each hive will have a queen and eggs will be laid. If no eggs are found after a few days, D.J. will introduce another queen into the hive.
40 Nora, Carlos, and D.J. and the fascinating world of honeybees!
Martha Pins
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Thank you for the re-visit of your beehives Martha. They never cease to amaze me.
Posted by: Gail Hildreth | May 22nd, 2012 at 6:20 am
Hi Martha,
Fascinating to learn about the bees and honey.
Alright Carlos, you are more than just a pretty face. hahaha Knew that would make you laugh.
Serioulsy, it seems like there is a lot of work involved with the whole process. Very interesting.
Karen Tracy
Posted by: Karen Tracy | May 22nd, 2012 at 7:17 am
So good to see the bees thriving. Seeing DJ's exposed hands while they were inspecting the hives surprised me. Gifted man!
Posted by: Julie | May 22nd, 2012 at 7:31 am
Wow, fascinating indeed Martha! It's amazing how the worker bees know to "make" a new queen bee when needed. D.J must be very confident around the hives as I noticed he wasn't covered up like Carlos and Nora! Thanks for the update on your bees Martha, I hope the new hive takes.
Posted by: Cindy F | May 22nd, 2012 at 7:45 am
Martha,
Thanks for sharing this blog.
Posted by: KLBrown | May 22nd, 2012 at 9:48 am
Oh, I do love the bees! What a fascinating internship for Nora.
That Uncle Carlos is quite a busy guy around the farm, too!
Sunny day to all,
Sharon
Posted by: Sharon | May 22nd, 2012 at 9:54 am
Hi Martha, Buzz, Buzz, Buzz! Those bees at your Bedford farm are spectacular and extremely helpful for all the things that you grow there! Carlos is one of your best workers not only all over the farm, but is so wonderful with F,S,&GK! He and D.J. Haverkamp sure did a great job dividing one of bee hives to make four available for all of those great bees to pollenate and make delicious honey! It is so great to see the process of making the newest hive and learning something new again! I love your farm and and all of the photos that we get to see about what goes on there! What a great teacher D.J. is for Nora and of course, Carlos! These photos are very special and inspiring! Hope you have another great day and pray that F,S,&GK are much better!!!! Jan
Posted by: Jan Erickson | May 22nd, 2012 at 10:05 am
Really fascinating and complex! I regularly visit a botanical garden which has homes for mason bees. I never really watched bees until I started hanging out at the gardens and they really are amazing. Thank you for educating us further. It must be lovely, also, to have your own honey supply!
Posted by: Terry Covington | May 22nd, 2012 at 10:31 am
Hi Martha,
Making honey is most definitely a fascinating process. Anything I know about it I learned from this blog and I must say it is all very interesting. Bees are smart little buggers aren’t they! Well, I hope you get lots of good honey this year – it must be really special coming straight from the hive. Enjoy! Trish
Posted by: Trish | May 22nd, 2012 at 12:10 pm
MARTHA---As always, truly fascinating! Down here in Florida, I have noticed so very many more bees this spring. Is this just wishful thinking? I cannot fathom a world without them.
Posted by: Jonathan J. Brown | May 22nd, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Martha...the bee hives ....so very interesting ...nature is wonderful, isn't it? Thanks so much for sharing
Posted by: Marie Christensen | May 22nd, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Thanks for sharing D.J.'s hive splitting lesson Martha. The technique of having the entrances of the original hive and the new hive face each other during split startup is interesting and new to me. This is my second season beekeeping and these busy little creatures and their expert keepers continue to fascinate me. May the hives thrive!
Posted by: Linda Kobie | May 22nd, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Absolutely fascinating!
Posted by: Kim | May 23rd, 2012 at 12:43 am
Bee hives! Probably the most beautiful natural creation! Thanks for the info!
Posted by: Doyal Mallik | May 23rd, 2012 at 1:48 am
Did you use non-toxic paint on the boxes? If not, won't this harm the bees?
Posted by: Los Angeles | May 23rd, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Hello Martha.Never knew how Bee Keeping was so Involved.The best Is The End Result-HONEY!!.
Posted by: Darlene Martinez | May 23rd, 2012 at 2:31 pm
My daughter and I are hoping to have 2 hives by next year. We've taken an introductory course in beekeeping and are going to take a more in-depth course before setting up our hives. We love to look at your beekeeping posts, especially. They are so educational! Thank you!
Posted by: Evelyn | May 24th, 2012 at 9:46 am
Hi Martha, watching today's show when you mentioned you kept your epi-pen in fridge. As I've always kept one in the master bath, I just checked packaging and it states 'do not refrigerate.'
So please stay safe and take it out of fridge.
BTW, been a fan for many many years, and look forward to many more.
Posted by: Rosine | May 24th, 2012 at 10:35 am