Welcome - Explore my Blog

I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

Even if you find one post on the subject, I've posted a lot on basic beekeeping skills like installing bees, harvesting honey, inspecting the hive, etc. so be sure to search for more once you've found a topic of interest to you. And watch the useful videos and slide shows on the sidebar. All of them have captions. Please share posts of interest via Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Capturing and Installing my Own Swarming Bees and Installing them in a Hive

 One of my own hives tried to swarm two days ago. They swirled all over the yard and were landing in all kinds of places. I think the queen didn't go with them. I also wondered if they may have confused a virgin queen leaving for a mating flight with a message about time to swarm. But the queen may also have just not been persuaded to leave the hive. This hive has been wanting to swarm all spring.


I watch the hive for the rest of the day but it never swarmed. Then the next day it poured rain all day and no bees were flying. So on the 27th (the following day), I went to walk my dog and when I returned a swarm had obviously emerged from a hive while I was gone. I assume it was the swarm-defeated hive from a couple of days previous.

I captured the swarm easily (it was just at my right height for a capture) and installed it at the community garden where I have no hives so far this year. 



Sunday, March 24, 2024

Painting Hive Boxes Efficiently

 I do this every year so decided to include it in my beekeeping tips on YouTube and to share it here:



Thursday, March 21, 2024

Swarm Lure Attracts HUGE Swarm

 Yesterday I came home from the mountains around 4 PM. I was sitting in my den when I felt bored and thought I'll do this same work out on my deck. I stepped outside into a whirling mass of bees. A swarm was moving into my top bar hive.

Last week, I was sure a swarm had already moved in because there were so many bees flying in and out of the hive. I had actually thought whatever moved in was a secondary swarm because I had not seen any pollen coming into the hive, which would mean there was a laying queen. I even thought they were there overnight, but clearly I was wrong. 

The bees I had been seeing were just hundreds of scout bees, responding to my old equipment and the swarm lure I had rubbed on the upper edge of the entry and on some top bars inside.

The swirling bees yesterday were part of the enormous swarm that had been investigating the hive for a couple of weeks. I taped the whole hour and fifteen minutes that it took for the thousands of bees to move into the hive, but I've shortened it to about ten minutes for you to see how amazing it was.




Monday, March 18, 2024

Beekeeping Tips for Spring: Making and Using Swarm Lure

 We appear to have begun an enthusiastic and intense swarm season in Atlanta. In most of the country, this month or in the next couple of months, swarm season will begin. 

I've been posting some videos on my YouTube channel that might be helpful in getting ready for spring.

One of the best ways to get free bees is to bait an old hive with swarm lure. Every year hives are driven to swarm because it is the evolutionary push for the beehive as an organism to split into two hives. Previous to swarming (when the old queen will leave with about half the hive - taking 75% bees under two weeks old) scout bees look for a new home. 

It's just like when humans move. When I moved during the pandemic, I looked at lots of houses that were for sale before I found the house I moved into in 2021. Bees are just the same. They send out scouts to find the right sized place for the swarm to move into and start a new life. 

Every year, old equipment in my yard is scouted by bees looking for a new home. And almost 100% of the years, bees move into the old equipment. Truly these are free bees. I didn't lift a finger to help. Just provided the empty space. 

I have a large top bar hive that was in my daughter's yard, empty of bees. They swarmed several times last year and failed to make a new queen and dwindled away. I moved it into my yard into a great sunny place and as soon as any semblance of warm weather began in Atlanta, the scouts began to visit. Last Tuesday (March 12) a swarm moved into the top bar with no effort from me. 

If you want to up the chances of a swarm moving into old equipment, then bait your hive with swarm lure. Here is a video I posted on YouTube last week of how to do just that - make your own very effective swarm lure. 


You use the swarm lure by smearing it not too lavishly on your old equipment. I typically put it around the inner cover, on the upper edge of the hive entrance, and on the top of a couple of frames in the top box. Here's a video on how/where to apply the swarm lure:

 

I've posted on this before but thought it would be a good idea to refresh your knowledge and put this right in front of you.

Good luck and I hope that everyone who reads this gets some free bees! 
Note: If you do, leave me a comment either here on the blog or on YouTube. 

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Short Course is a Week from Today

 If you live in the Metro Atlanta area and have wanted to become a beekeeper, the best short course you can possibly imagine is happening next Saturday, the 27th at Peachtree Road Methodist Church in Buckhead. Registration is still open. Just click here.



Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Rosalyn Carter and the Bees

 As Rosalyn Carter's memorial service was held in Atlanta yesterday, I was reminded of how I was lucky enough to meet her through beekeeping. My friend Curt Barrett and I were volunteering for the butterfly festival at the Carter Center in Atlanta, representing the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers.

Mrs. Carter was there to attend the festival and to dedicate a butterfly trail. As part of the festivities, she participated in the inspection of a beehive. I helped her with her gloves, always too big for women's hands in those days (2016).


If you'd like to see the original post, click here.




Monday, March 13, 2023

Secondary Swarm Saturday, March 11, 2023

I'm sure it's not a national holiday, but it was a day of celebration for me that both started and ended with secondary swarms. 

I was still in my pjs when I got a call from a beekeeper who belongs to my local club, Metro Atlanta Beekeepers. She has two hives and no extra equipment and her hive had swarmed. She asked if I would like the swarm. I was THRILLED to go and get it; threw on my clothes and was out the door. Like most beekeepers at this time of year, my swarm collection gear is always in my car so I can literally jump in and head out, as long as I have put on my own clothes!

She had made a split from her largest hive and there was good evidence that it had swarmed as well. Then a few days later she sees this little teardrop of bees in the tree above her hives:


The swarm was quite small, as secondary swarms often are. The original swarm leaves with the hive's queen mother and about half the bees. But if there are virgin queens in the hive as may happen as queen cells emerge, a virgin queen may head up a smaller secondary swarm. This swarm has less of a survival chance because after the secondary swarm is rehived, the virgin queen still has to fly out, successfully mate, and return.

I have sworn not to go up ladders this year but this swarm was small enough and on a shrub at about seven feet off the ground. I climbed the ladder (very carefully!) and was able to snip off the branch and lower the bees into a honey bucket. 

Here's the video of the collection and rehousing of the bees in a nuc at my house.


Later that afternoon, I led a MABA hive inspection at the community garden where the two swarms I collected last week are installed. The first hive is going wild - building tons of wax and filling it with brood and nectar. They looked fabulous except for a couple of wonky combs in my foundationless frames. 

As I drove home from the inspection, my cell rang and it was the man who lived at the house where I collected my first swarm last week, the one mentioned in the paragraph above. He had another swarm in his yard and wanted to know if I wanted it. When I arrived, he told me that he had discovered the origin of the bees. He lent me his binoculars to look fifty feet up into a nearby tree where the bees were living.

The swarm was another secondary swarm, my second in this wonderful Saturday. It was equally easy to collect. 

Here is the video of that swarm capture and installation in my backyard.
 
What a wonderful, bee-filled Saturday! I'll take a day like that any day.














Thursday, March 02, 2023

A Very Bee Week So Far

 It's only Wednesday, but I've been very bee-sy. On Saturday I discovered my community garden hives were both gone...the first died before winter and the second was without a queen (who had been there two weeks ago) and was in terrible shape. I didn't open the hive two weeks ago - just lifted up the top and took off the feeder. The bees were flying in with pollen and I felt pretty sure that we were coming out of winter fine. Then I did an inspection on Sunday and found them broodless and queenless with a tiny diminishing population.

These are teaching hives and the MABA philosophy is that our swarm hotline will supply swarm calls to the teaching hives first until we have two hives for teaching. I called the swarm commander, Dave, and he called me so quickly the very next day, on Sunday, with a swarm ten minutes from my house. I got it  in the early afternoon.

I installed that swarm at the community garden with a queen excluder to keep the bees there. Swarms have often left that garden after being hived - maybe they don't like the GA Power electrical lines - so now I routinely put a queen "includer" between the bottom of the bottom box and the entrance, keeping the queen (and unfortunately the drones) in the hive until I remove it.

Monday I was called for another swarm, literally six minutes from my house. It was on a mailbox and much more difficult to collect. I was there for over an hour, coaxing the bees onto frames of old comb. When most of the bees were in the nuc box, I left the box propped slightly open and went home to get the queen excluder (which I have forgotten - I always forget something!). 

I took those bees to the community garden and installed them in a second hive and put a queen "includer" on that hive. 

Yesterday, Tuesday, in my own yard, I did a walkaway split with my one and only hive in my yard. It was boiling over with bees and I was afraid they were already making swarm plans. It was an old hive that I had neglected when I moved into this house in 2021 and the brood boxes were full of cross comb. The original hive died and before I could clean it out, a swarm moved in while I watched! So this new occupant is dealing with crossed comb and I can't inspect the brood boxes. So a walkaway split is the ideal way to manage this. I could see looking between the frames that there was brood and hopefully eggs in both boxes. Because I am not sure about this, I am trying an experiment.

I used a double screened board and did the even split but kept the boxes stacked on each other with the double screened board between what is now two hives. If one of the halves does not have a queen in three weeks, I'll recombine them. 


Bees testing out new hive's entrance

The red arrow (above) points to the Snelgrove or double screened board between the two colonies. The center of the board has a movable entrance, open on the upper side to allow bees from the upper colony to have an entrance. 

Then I drove over to the community garden (20 minutes there and 20 minutes back) and removed the queen includer from each of the hives. There were still bees at the queenless hive - appearing to protect the entrances so I know they weren't robbers - but what are they doing there?

I hadn't been back at home five minutes when my phone rang. It was the beekeeping teacher at SPARK where there is a hive of bees. They had had an "incident" in which a teacher was stung. I haven't been in that hive this year, so I got back in the car and drove 20 minutes to the school. There I found a healthy hive, boiling over with bees with not a queen cell in sight. There were, however, plenty of eggs in the brood frames.

So to change the atmosphere over there, Whitney (the new beekeeping teacher) and I made an even split into the second empty hive on the school rooftop. The bees will be calmer, will be distracted by the need for one half of the split to make a queen, and they are not likely to swarm. 

Needless to say, when I drove home 20 minutes in the Atlanta 5:00 traffic, I was bee-exhausted and truly tired from four solid days of Bee-Ing!


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