Photos from the Farm #23

Welcome back!

Your teacher brought me your questions! Thank you so much for measuring your papers so that I can scan them easily. I won't be answering questions this week, I'll pick some to answer next week.

This week I sent a frame for "Farm Friday Show and Tell."

It's not the kind of frame that holds a picture on a wall, it's the kind of frame that bees use to hold honey, pollen, and eggs.

This is the inside cover. It rests on top of the super that holds the frames.
A super is the box that holds all the frames.
There is a picture of the super later.

Do you see the dark stuff on the edge of the frame? That is called propolis. The bees gather a hard, sticky substance from some trees. They use it like glue! They fill any space or crack between frames with proplis. It is a strong glue!

If a spot is smaller than 1/4" the bees will fill it with propolis to close the space. If the space is bigger than 3/8" they will fill it with burr comb.

The yellow spots that look like wax on the lid is wax! We call it burr comb because the bees have build some honey comb in a spot that we don't want honey comb. They have filled the space between the top of the frames and the lid.

This is the top of the super after the lid is taken off. How many frames do you see in the super?
Do you see the burr comb on top of the frames?

This is what it looks like when we pull the frame from the hive. The frame is stuck in the super because the bees have glued it in with propolis.

Pollen is food for bees. Bryon said it is 'protein.' People eat protein when we eat meat and beans and eggs. Bees don't eat those types of food, they eat pollen and honey. 

Bees make honey for food. They store their food for the winter. They usually make more honey than they need for the winter. We take the extra honey for our family! 

This is what the frame looks like after it has been filled with honey.

The bees cover the honey with wax so it doesn't drip out of the hive. We say that they have 'capped' the honey because they put a wax cover on it.

This is what the super looks like when the frame is pulled out of the hive.
All of the frames are full of honey.

Each of the frames has about 3 pounds of honey and about 1 once of wax. The super above has about 24 pounds of honey in it.

If your mom buys flour in big bags, the super weighs about as much as a big bag of flour. It weighs a little less than a 2 year old child weighs.


Our super is full of honey but there are no bees. We don't know what happened to our bees this year. They didn't die because there are no dead bees around the hive. Bees don't usually leave the hive in the winter. Ours left sometime in January. We don't know where they went!

Friday Photos from the Farm #7

Welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful week. We did!

This week I have some photos and videos of the bees. It's important to check the bees before winter comes. We need to make sure this new hive of bees has enough food for the winter. They need food storage just like our family does.

Bryon is opening the hive to check on the bees. Honey bees are usually very calm and don't bother anyone. He wears a special suit because sometimes the bees don't understand what people are doing when they are opening the hive! This keeps him safe from getting stung.

He also likes to squirt the top of the hive with sugar water. The bees love sugar water! It's like candy for them. They are so busy licking it up that they don't worry about who is opening up their hive.

Look at all the bees on the inside of the lid!

Here they are on the frame. All that dark stuff that they are on is wax that is covering up honey.

Can you see them wandering all over? It's fun to watch bees working in their hive. All the bees you see are girls, they are called worker bees.
I'm not wearing a suit and they aren't trying to bother me because I'm being quite and moving slowly so I don't surprise them.

The chicks are growing up! Can you find all five? I'll give you a hint, one is hiding behind the mother hen.

I'm sorry I don't have a photo of me holding a chick. We took a photo, but it got lost somehow. Do you loose things sometimes, like I do?


We thought our black chicken was funny for hatching chicks so late in the summer. We have another hen that decided she wanted to hatch some chicks, too!

She is sitting the corner of Stall #2. She made herself a very nice nest where it is warm and safe.

She is a nice chicken and let me move her off her nest so I could take a picture of her eggs. She started sitting on them on October 2. That means if the chicks are going to hatch (sometimes they don't) they will hatch around October 23.

Do you see the 'X' on some of the eggs? I marked the eggs that were in the nest on October 2. I check the nest every day and leave the eggs with the 'X' on them for the hen to hatch. I take all the newly laid eggs for our family. There are a few different colors of eggs because many hens decided to lay eggs in this spot, but only one hen decided sit on the nest.

Here is our new nesting box. Quin and his dad built it for me. We are so happy to have a place for the hens to lay eggs. Hens don't like laying eggs in dog crates very much. Sometimes hens are sneaky and hide their eggs where I can't find them! The nesting box will make it easier for us to find the eggs.
Can you see the hen in the picture?

There she is! She has 3 eggs under her. She didn't lay all three. She was the last chicken to lay an egg in the box.

Quin likes to help gather the eggs when he comes for a visit. If children come to visit the farm, I always let them gather eggs.

Our hens are so nice that they don't mind Quin getting their eggs. Quin helped raise the hens when they were little chicks only a few days old. The hen in the picture is just watching Quin put the eggs in the basket so he can bring them into the house for me.

I thought you might want to hear what Charlie, our rooster, sounds like when he crows. What did you think?

Your teacher said that you are still learning about maps. She said you were going to draw a map of your bedroom at home so I thought you might like to see a map of our barn.

What do you think of my barn map? Do you understand what all the symbols mean?

Thank you for asking questions! I hope you start writing down your questions and sending them to me. If you do, I will pick a few and put them up on the blog for everyone to read. That means you have to have good handwriting so everyone can read what you wrote!

Have a great week!

Bees 2014

We lost our bees in late February or early March. Our fault, we didn't realize we needed to feed them this year.

He installed a new hive and Queen on Saturday (4/26). It was cold and rainy so we are hoping all goes well with them.

Hubby is planning on feeding the new hive starting in October or November to make sure they can make it through the winter.

You can see the feeder on the front. It was cold when I took the photo so all the bees are inside the hive staying warm, I hope!

Building a Hive

I just saw an excellent post on how to put together a beehive!

Check out the post: Beekeeping: Assembling Your Hive and Necessary Gear.

Then look at the rest of her blog: Blissfully Content: Living Simply with a Thankful Heart.

I love this blog!

New Bees

Hubby ended up loosing about 1/2 our hives over the winter. When he picked up the new bees he found he wasn't alone in that.

Many beekeepers in our area lost at least half of their hives. One man we know lost all of his.

And sadly, the paint Hubby ordered didn't come in, so the hives didn't get painted before the bees had to be installed. It was a special insulating paint that he wanted to try to see if it would help keep the hive cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

We'll be trading out boxes throughout the summer and painting them, then re-installing them when the paint has cured enough.

Here's a good PDF resource for installing package bees.

The location of the new hive is on the south-east side of the new shed.

Hubby decided to use some of the old frames with honey on them from one of the old hives. He thought that would be a better start for the bees than sugar water.

Can you see the new hive top? It's a copper top! I love it!

The directions on installing a new package of bees usually says to let the bees stay in the box overnight and install them the next day. After talking with another beekeeper-friend, Hubby decided to install them all the same day he picked them up, just like our beekeeper-friend does.

It was nice to do it on a Saturday instead of a Sunday.

All in all, Hubby installed 5 new packages of bees last Saturday. Hopefully they will all like their new homes.

And make us alot of honey this year!

Honey Bee Swarm-Bait Box

We're now trapping bees! Well, we're going to give it a try.

Here's the bait box that Taco built for us. This is a view from the top with the top off.

The hole in the center is 1 1/2" across. The box is 20" across the front, 10" tall, and 9" deep (from front to back).

The brads nailed into the ends hold the hanging comb in place.

We also added a bit of used honeycomb in the corner. Sheepy said if there is already some used honeycomb inside it makes the bees think this is a good place to rest their weary wings.

Sheepy also sent some smelly stuff that's supposed to attract a swarm. The 'wick' is just a few squares of toilet paper rolled up. The plastic bag is stapled to the inside of the box.

Vet2Be screwed the lid back on....

and set it on top of the shed by the gazebo. It's wedged against a tree trunk and has a rock on top so that [hopefully] the wind won't blow it down.

Bating bees is a better hobby than baiting cats and dogs, don't you think?

Yep! We have a neighbor on the next street over that baits dogs and cats on her street onto her property so that she can trap them and call animal control.

Not very nice.

What happened to nice neighbors? Sheesh!

Question on Bees

Someone, who is very nice, left a comment on one of the beekeeping posts. I wrote back to her and also planned on writting a post on it, but have been side tracked with lots of other stuff.

Here's her comment and question:

Hello!! Thank you so much for the bee info - I was hoping you might be able to help me. I know very little about this - my husband is reading up on it and wanting to try this out - but I'd like to gift him the outfit and some sort of hive starter kit for Christmas - could you please send me some info on the best place to purchase these things? I've watched your blog so I know you're thrifty, and would probably know the best place to get this stuff - It would really help me out and I would so so appreciate it! Please email me... Or comment on my blog at marcismullings.blogspot.com Thanks so much in advance!

Here was my answer (which was close to Thanksgiving... oh, please forgive me for being a slacker!)

Hubby buys some things from Dadant and some from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, both online. He also buys quite a bit locally as soon as he found out where to buy! If he buys online he prefers Dadant because of the way they run their business. They aren't always the cheapest, but when the owners sold the business (because they were getting old!) they sold it to the employees. Hubby likes it when owners do that :) You are right, we are thrifty, but sometimes it's better to spend a little bit more for quality and service.

I would also call your County Extension Office. Someone there can probably tell you the closest beekeepers association. We have loved ours! (Utah County Beekeeping Association) Some of our members run small businesses that sell beekeeping supplies, which we appreciate because then we can support a a local business. They are usually less expensive because there is no shipping costs, we love that, too. We can buy supers (or anything wood) as either kit (we put it together and finish it), unfinished (everything is put together but we have to paint it) and ready to put bees in.

We also go through our local guys to order bees in the spring. It makes things a bit tricky if we are gone for the weekend because the bees arrive on a specific day--no negotiating! If you aren't there, you better have someone who will pick them up for you.

Hopefully that will give you a few ideas on where to find supplies.

Oh, and we have a few books that we like. Beekeeping for Dummies, First Lessons in Beekeeping (Keith S. Delaplane) and Hive Management (Richard E. Bonney). I think Hubby likes the Dummies book and Hive Management best. If you have young children you might want to get on Internet Archives and download an old book called The Bee People (link on the sidebar of my blog, too) to read out loud to them. Vet2Be loved it and even made a game about bees (you can find the game on Homeschool Share).

 Two local people that we've bought supplies and bees through are Knight Family Honey and Brother B (scroll down to find Brother B's information).

When I talked to Hubby he said what I told her was accurate. If I see any boxes coming in the door in the next few weeks I'll take some photos and post about what he's ordered and what it's for.

How Sheepy Waters her Bees

Sheepy sent me a photo of how she's been watering her bees.

"I thought this was easier/safer for the bees. They aren't even going near the stock tanks anymore."

What a great idea!

Hubby worked with our bees on Saturday. We lost a hive, which was sad. But not too sad since this hive managed to get a little hostile last summer.

Hubby cleaned it out and harvested some of the honey. Then he put the hive in a neighbor's 'pasture'. It's not a really big pasture, and they don't have animals back there yet, but it could be a pasture area for a few goats.

He also checked another one of his hives at another neighbor's house. Their hive died over the winter, too. One of their kids accidentally knocked the lid off, so the bees got too cold and died.

The other two hives are at Sheepy's house. She knows how to keep bees! And her kids like bees so they're pretty careful around the hives.

Both those hives lived. The bees in the Styrofoam hive seemed to do better than the bees in the new wooden hive. She said if it got any busier at the hive entrance the bees would need an air traffic controller on the hive roof!

I told Hubby I would miss having a beehive here.

He said he'd order another one and get it set up.

Thanks :)

Warm Weather for the Bees

Yay! The weather is warming up enough for the bees to really be out and about. The other day on my walk I heard one tree just buzzing! It was so loud that I thought there must be a swarm in the tree. It wasn't, it just happened to be the bees favorite pollen source for the day!

I really should take my camera on my walks.

The new top entrance, they love it!

Bottom entrance.

We have 4 more nucs of bees coming on Saturday to be installed on Sunday. Hopefully I can get some more photos of the installation.

Hubby is installing Carneolins and Italians. The Italians will be up at our end of the county. The Carneolins will be down south. One hive is styrofoam, the other a standard hive. We'll see which hive does better.

Bees Are About!

Vet2Be and Hubby have been out with the bees a few times this spring. Yay! The bees made it through the winter!

Last week when they went out they added another box to the top. When they removed the top of the hive they found it filled with burr comb already. And the burr comb had larva in it. They saw all stages of larva!

I thought about sending the camera out with them, but didn't. Vet2Be thought about bringing the camera out with him, but didn't. So we don't have photos of the larva and the burr comb--but Hubby and Vet2Be were very excited!

Recently they went out just to look. Hubby likes to spend a few minutes looking at the bees right before dinner. I think it calms his nerves a little, seeing all the workers working and feeling the nice warm weather, too.

You can really see all the bees using the second entrance towards the top of the hive.

They like the bottom entrance, too, but it is harder to see them in this photo.

It seems that we will have plenty of honey this year! Hooray! Last year we didn't take any honey from them because we weren't sure if they would make it through the winter if we did. Last spring was horrible! Most people around here planted their gardens 3 times because it would just begin to warm up, and then we would get a frost.

Not much fruit out here last year, either. And with all the construction close to our home, there were lots and lots of trees cut down. We all think the reason the bees struggled last summer was the weather killing so much of the fruit trees, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, and the loss of the trees. Hopefully we'll have a better year this year!

New Beehives

Hubby has earned more this year than last year. Things are going much better for us this year! It's exciting for him and for our family.

One of the things he loves is beekeeping (he also loves building and refinishing violins). He decided that he wants a few more beehives this year.

At this point, the boxes are taking over the great room. But he's happy and so am I. One of the new hives is a Styrofoam hive. I'll let you know how that all works out.

For now... this is what it looks like around the great room. Lots of boxes and not room for much else right now!

The boxes on the left are full of frames, legs, and other beehive stuff. The one on the right has round combs in it.

More frames (round ones) and combs from last year that will be cleaned out and re-used.

The combs come out looking like this.

New supers. He just finished putting these together. They aren't painted yet. But it isn't warm enough to paint outside yet.

The new Styrofoam hive. No room in the house for this! It is out in the gazebo.

The new bases that will go under all the hives. Hubby thinks these will be much better than the cement blocks and wood pallets that he has been using.

He has his order in for bees and queens, too. He'll be putting Carniolins in some hives and Italians in others. It will be exciting to see how the bees do this year. He's got different spots for the bees, too. Some in our yard, some in a neighbors, and some about 40 minutes south of us.

Always the scientist (soooo great!) he will be keeping track of which bees do best where. I doubt that he will eventually go with only one type of bee or one type of hive. He has too much fun checking variables and seeing if he can improve whatever isn't up to what he thinks it should be.

That goes for everything, not just bees. Always adjusting, always tweaking, always trying to improve. And that is a great way to live life!

Fall Beekeeping

Vet2Be and Hubby checked the bees on Friday (9/25) and put on a bee escape. The bees can go down through the escape, but can't get back up. We are ready to harvest some honey (which is unusual for a first year hive where we live) and we didn't want any bees on the super.

  Here is a photo of the bee escape Hubby. 

There are a few different styles, but Hubby likes this kind the best.

  Another view. The bees come out at the edge of the triangle and can't get back up through.

Hubby also tried a new type of smoker fuel this weekend. They have used pine needles in the past. Hubby said this stuff lasts for hours in the smoker and does a better job. 

Ross Rounds in the shallow super. We got 18 full rounds this year. Many will be gifts for Christmas.

Hubby said the super weighed at least 60 pounds! He said we will probably get about 30 pounds of honey since the weight also includes the wax and the brood (the queen visited the super). You can see the 4 frames stuck to the medium super. Vet2Be is ready with his hive tool to get them unstuck.

Two medium supers (top and bottom) and the Ross Round super in the middle.

Checking on all the bees in the top deep super. They look great and have plenty of honey for the winter. Hubby is scraping off the burr comb that the bees made while Vet2Be is using the smoker.

 The bee escape installed. It doesn't look like much from this photo because the triangle screen is on the bottom of the unfinished board.

All back together.

The Ross Rounds all ready for gift giving. There will probably be a few left that we can sell, too.

Hubby went to a neighbor's house to spin out the honey on Saturday. It drained for about 24 hours into  bucket. Seems like there is about 25 pounds of honey in the bucket. We are grateful for wonderful neighbors who let us use their equipment!

Here is the first quart of honey in a quart jar. We were so excited to pick up the honey from our neighbors that we just had to fill one jar and look at it.