A Beekeeper's Life on Bedrest....

Lori is officially on bedrest now, but that doesn't stop her from working. The docs said she could sit in a recliner with a laptop, so she has been busy updating the website, making phone calls for honey, and blogging. All of which is stuff that needed to be done.

And if it wasn't mentioned before - we are expecting identical triplet boys.

But on to other news: We have Bamboo Honey in! As soon as we strain the "bee bits" out, we will have it posted on the website, and send out a coupon to the email list. We are expecting a large order of Almond Honey within the next week or two, and will have that posted as well. This is also the year that we hope to get Radish Honey back in, but we are still waiting to hear from the beekeeper on that one....

One of Lori's "bedrest projects" is to update our candle listings! We have literally hundreds of candles that are not listed online, some of which we have not even displayed at shows yet. Lori's sister was kind enough to test out her new camera while taking pictures of most of them. We hope to crop and post these pictures within the 6 weeks. Some of these candles are simply amazing - 12-18" Chinese dragons, wizards, farm animals.....there should be something for everyone.

In other news - Colony Collapse Disorder has hit the country for the second year in a row. Many of the larger beekeeping operations have already closed for business, unable to make expenses. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find honey, and as a result, we expect to raise our prices sometime in August. The price of gas certainly isn't helping, either. The larger beekeeping operations use gas-powered equipment to process honey and beeswax, not to mention moving the bees around to the next crop, or to ship honey to distributors. This is going to be a hard year, indeed.

But, on the good side, except for a cool spring in Florida, growing conditions seem to be good in the majority of the country. We hope to find more varieties of honey, even if honey in general is hard to find. This should be an interesting year.....

Increasing the number of hives

Many of you probably already know, we went into the winter with 15 hives, and came out with 3. We weren't hit by the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Instead, we had a warm December and January, then two solid months of near-freezing temperatures. The queen had started laying eggs during the warm spell, and when the cold hit, the bees hunkered down on top of the brood nest in an effort to keep them warm. When they hunker down, they don't move around the hive to eat the winter honey stores. So, the bees starved to death trying to keep the brood nest warm, even though they had a hive full of honey!

We usually increase the number of hives by purchasing packages of bees from other beekeepers. A "package" is a wooden box with two mesh sides filled with approximately 3# of bees, and a queen is introduced to them in a little wooden box. The beekeepers who create "packages" shake bees into these mesh-sided boxes from several hives. It confuses the bees a bit, and gets them to accept the new queen a bit better. The packages can then either be picked up on-site, or they can be shipped. Let me tell you - when several packages of bees arrive at the local post office, they will give you a call as soon as they come in and ask you to pick them up right then - even at 3AM!

However, packages are pretty much unavailable due to CCD. The large pollination services who were hit hard (up to 100% mortality in some cases!) bought up all the packages early in the spring, leaving nothing for us small guys. So, this year I am making "splits" off my own hives.

A "split" is a couple frames of brood and a frame of honey from an existing hive. These frames are placed into an empty hive, and a new queen is introduced. It forms a weak hive, that hopefully will turn into a strong hive by the end of the summer. I cannot get any honey off a split this year, but assuming it survives the winter, I can get honey off it next year.

I have been able to purchase queens, even though I cannot find packages. Some beekeepers specialize in raising queens, and really get into the genetics of it all. They ship queens in little wooden boxes with one mesh side, about the size of two fingers placed side-by-side. The queen has a few attendent bees placed with her, and a sugar fondant plugs a hole in the side. The queen is then shipped overnight to her destination. The attendents make certain she eats and is kept warm.

I have one hive that came through the winter strong, had a quick buildup of bees in the spring before the main honeyflow, is bringing in lots of honey! This hive is not quite as gentle as I would like, but otherwise has all the characteristics of a good hive that is resistant to mites. (I am trying to build a mite-resistant apiary so that chemical treatments are unnecessary!) Because of the problems finding bees this year, I decided to try to make new queens from this single hive!

The method I choose involves placing a frame of fresh eggs from good hive into a hive that does not have a queen, and letting the bees raise multiple queens from the single frame. Before the queen cells hatch, they are redistributed to queenless splits. The new queens have the genetic stock of the good hive, even though they were raised by other bees. Since one of my splits rejected the queen I originally gave them, I expect them to raise multiple queens from the frame of eggs I just gave them!

Finally, after going through my hives yesterday, I found a pleasant surprise! Somewhere, a hive had a swarm, and it decided to settle into one of my empty hives! I know my strong hive swarmed on me a few years back and settled into a hollow tree across the street from me. I am hoping this swarm came from that tree, and thus is survivor stock - much desired in the beekeeping world today! (Survivor stock is a hive that is able to survive a mite infestation without resort to chemical treatments.) The best part is that this is a free hive - I did not have to pull frames of brood or honey from any of my other hives, or purchase a queen, or purchase a package.... The queen is going to be a nice young queen, who should be good for a few years!

Anyhow, after going through my hives yesterday, I realize that honey from my own hives will be limited in availability. With luck, I'll be able to pull 2-300 pounds, mostly off one hive. If you are interested in purchasing honey that is local to Mount Airy, MD, I highly recommend you signup for our local email list. The local email list will be getting first option on honey from my hives.

For everyone else - I have already contacted other Maryland beekeepers, and I believe I will be able to get more local honey this year than in the past. If so, it will be available around mid- to end-July. I will put the word out on the general mailing list once it is ready to ship!

Upgrades to the website are almost complete!

We are upgrading our software to the newest version, which will hopefully make things run a bit more smoothly for our customers, and the admin should be easier. As part of the upgrade, we are moving to a new webhost, and have vowed to update the blog on a more regular basis!

Over the next several weeks, I would like to use this blog in part to answer common questions from our customers. Eventually, they will be incorporated in our FAQ, but a blog may be a more convenient method to comment on current topics, such as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), or when we will be collecting honey from our bees.

If there is a future topic you would like us to include, please let us know either through this blog or via email!