You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

-Posted by Isaac

So it's Saturday morning, Jayne left for market an hour ago, and I'm here waiting on nuc customers to show up. Maizy has "Kid's Bop" on the kitchen Pandora, so I hide here in the office with my Bob Dylan. First song to pop up, an oldie but a goodie. One that our little band loved to cover way back in that other life that I can hardly remember. 

'Clouds so swift, the rain won't lift...'

Yes, that about sums it up. 

What a horrendous week. Hilarious almost. Ironically, my last post was titled 'A Beautiful Thing.' The day I posted that, the rains had moved in, and eight days later they're still here.

Hilarious on account of what also happened: our spring bloom. Every year in this little nest of central Ohio heaven, we have about 10 days of intense spring bloom. The black locust and bush honeysuckle fire off at the same time. Like peaches and cream if you're a honey bee.

And if you're a beekeeper you just sit back and smile. You pat yourself on the back for all the hard work of prepping strong colonies. And you think about all the honey extracting to come. 

Not this year. We're nearing the end of our 10 days and I don't think the bees have even made it out. Not only rain. Cold! Last night the temp bottomed out at 35 degrees. And wind! The one day it wasn't raining and actually warm enough to forage, the winds were clipping along at about 30 mph. It sucks. I mean it sucks.

Not that I'm one to complain. (hehe)

The farmers have had it worse.

It's planting season, nothing's getting planted.  What did get planted is getting drowned. If not drowned, it's getting frozen.

It sucks.

Not that I'm one to complain.

Oh good... here comes another Dylan... 'Come in she said, I'll give ya shelter from the storm.' 

Today my shelter is music. A little folk music always brightens the gloom. It's true! Try it! 

I'll leave you on a happier note.

I fell into a new bee location this week. A random guy on a Worthington market food tour last summer said, "Come on out, see what we've got." 

So this week I did. And it's awesome! (Picture above.) Almost 300 acres of non-row cropped forage. It looks like somewhere in the Dakotas. And it's only a 25 minute drive. We'll have 20 hives out there next week. What a stroke of good luck.

Well I'd better get out there. It's hard work selling these nucs! (Kidding. This sure beats working the market...)  

Customers will be here soon. And so will the warm weather.

Hopefully.

Yesterday my dad mentioned that it hit 90 degrees in Montana this week. That stings. In fact, I thought he may have been stretching the truth a little just to rub it in. So I looked it up.

He was... it was only 86.

'Climb that hill, no matter how steep, when we get up to it.'

A Beautiful Thing

-Posted by Isaac

A lot happened this week on the bee farm.

Yes of course much of the work surrounded the bees themselves.

About half of the hives that went into the apples are now supered up and enjoying greener pastures in their out yards. And the honeysuckle just started to bloom! A beautiful thing.

The other half are still here, waiting to be moved. All the apple pollinators were split on the last week of March, and I've found that about half of them need split again. Not a hard split, but a frame or two or three... Just enough to temper that swarming instinct. Yes, another beautiful thing-- strong hives!

But we couldn't spend all our time on bees.

This year we're planting pasture and buckwheat in the field adjacent to the honey house. I was able to disk, seed, and drag the three acre pasture just before the rains came yesterday evening. It was only possible with the help of an ace rock picking crew. The buckwheat will follow next week. Or whenever things dry up.

And another big event happening yesterday-- We got our 4-H goats! Or I should say Mason got his goats. It's his project.

But Maizy has already deemed herself the goat expert and, well, the boss. 

With great power comes great responsibility. 

To celebrate our new arrivals we hit up Underdogs for some ice cream.

Still the boss.

The biggest thing going on this week was the nuc sales.

We were seeing so many go, I felt like we needed a sign.

Confusing the locals...

The photo below is Laura Urban and Apiary Dave. They departed with 80 beauties, hit up Dan Williams in Frankfort for some wholesale comb honey, then drove all the way to the Akron area. I was a little worried because it was such a long trip and the afternoon temps went over 80 degrees. But she texted with the good news that all went well and the bees looked great.

It truly was a beautiful thing.

4/20 Dude, It's Intense!

-Posted by Isaac

When I was in college I was a geology major. For whatever reason today's date was held in high esteem by the students in this particular field. To study geology, it was requisite to not only understand the importance of the date, you were fully expected participate in the day's activities. It was charming.

The charm had worn away when I taught school years later. My freshmen science students would rush in, "Mr. Barnes! Mr. Barnes! It's 4/20! How bout it, Mr. Barnes! Whatcha doin' after school, Mr. Barnes?" Huh! Huh!"

They had all the motions to align with what they were insinuating. 

I didn't laugh. I didn't smile. I played dumb. 4/20? Whatever do you mean?

And years after that, here I am, a beekeeper. Thank God. The only thing getting smoked is the hive. 

Let me take you through the busy busy week leading up to this special date. Last Thursday we had yet another batch of queens arrive.

Soon after welcoming 50 new ladies, I said goodbye to my one lovely lady and four very loud children. They were heading to Myrtle Beach! Without me. I had to work.

Bridger christened the van just before departure.

The very next day, Jayne's tulips bloomed.

They missed it!

But I don't think they cared.

So I busied myself in the days following. 

To the point of exhaustion.

These are nuc boxes shown above. Filled with bees, almost ready for their new owners. I needed a wide angle lens. This shot doesn't even show a third of them. I think we're nearing 300 total.

Sometimes they have issues.

And as in life, if the issue isn't resolved, it escalates.

At least the chickens got a free show.

Where do you find the nucs? Let me show you... this is what I did all week. Out in the bee yards I would lay everything out.

And after about an hour or more, hives were split and supered, the nucs were packed and ready for a queen.

Yard after yard it went like this. I think I missed a few meals.

In fact it got so intense, I lost track of days. Yesterday I got the call to move bees out of the apples. I was far from ready! Usually I can drop them off in prepared out yards. This year there was no preparing. I had to plop them right back where they started-- here at home.

If you count the nucs, we now have around 400 hives on two acres.

Yes! Intense!

If you happen to be deathly allergic, maybe this week isn't the best to visit the farmstand.

So the family came home on Monday night. It was late, but they were still loud. I hadn't realized how much I missed the noise. And I finally got around to splitting the last yard today.

On 4/20. A special day indeed. You can see what the bees were up to. Almost all the hives looked like this.

I'm about a month late in removing that spacer... 

These hives were near Tarlton. Or untamed redneck wilderness, if you live in Columbus and have never been to Tarlton. I was driving home and checking out the real estate. You know, for investment purposes, and I saw some fine acreage with some autumn olive growing out front. That's what the bees have been up to: Making honey! If you've ever tasted autumn olive honey you know it's the best in the world. 

Above is a young autumn olive bush just starting to mouth off. Whole hillsides of this grow around Tarlton. I was able to capture this beauty just before the shotguns came out.

I love Tarlton. 

They celebrate 4/20 in their own special way.

Beauty and the Beast

-Posted by Isaac

On Saturday Maizy and I dolled ourselves up and attended the annual Westfall Elementary Father-Daughter Dance. 

It's a ball! This was our third year in a row and I don't think we'll ever miss. If you check Facebook after the dance, you learn that it's a big picture taking thing. All the mothers like to get a shot of their beautiful couples and post it to the world. Jayne posted the above photo and said something about a "beauty and the beast" theme.

I'm not sure what she was talking about there, but I thought that 'beauty and the beast' would fit the bill in showing some of the recent juxtaposition concerning the bees. So here we go:

Beauty- The splitting process and the brood that the bees are giving us. Unbelievable! 

You can make a lot of nucs relatively quickly when you have this kind of brood.

Beast- the weather. Old crotchety mother nature is still up to her tricks. Besides giving us four inches of rain in the last couple weeks, we've had two nights with 20 degree wind chills. 

Here you can see a wind break that I threw together in about ten minutes:

We didn't lose any bees, but I'm guessing our queen acceptance is not the best due to the cold.

Beauty- Apple pollination. (So far.) The other night, after an amazing dry stretch of three days, I moved bees into one of the apple orchards. Pulled it off without a hitch.

Beast- It was a long night. I was alone. Lafe got sick and couldn't make it for the fun. So I started early with my ancient forklift and worked slowly. So early in fact, I managed to snap a shot in the daylight. Without Lafe, I was forced to use only one truck. And as you can see, I was slightly overloaded.

Beauty- once again, the bees are doing awesome. I've only got seven bee yards left, but I'm falling behind. On almost every hive now, you pop the lid and the bees have given us some sort of sculpture. They're really artsy!

They use the space provided by the winter spacer... which shouldn't be on in mid-April.

Beast- keeping up with them! I'm working as fast as I can, but it looks like we're going to see some swarming from those last seven yards Yesterday we had our first:

But the end is in sight. I can see the light! Maybe another week, maybe two? 200 more queens coming, about 100 more hives to move to the apples, 1500 supers yet to place...  What a rush! Beekeeping in April is hardcore. Nuts and bolts and elbow grease.

But we always manage to clean up nicely. 

Right Away Quick Splits

-Posted by Isaac

The last post was about fattening the bees up on artificial pollen. Well, that time has past. 

The bees are doing just fine now on the real thing, thank you.

In fact, they're blowing up.

We've got to do something!

Ha ha, April Fools. This picture was taken during the splitting process. Sometimes the hives look a little out of sorts.

This is a post about how we relieve the spring congestion problem by splitting the hive.

Quickly.

It's only the first week of April, but the mild winter gave us some huge hives. We have split around 200 already, and day by day, yard by yard we'll be making our way through the next 400 by the middle of the month. Hopefully.

Splitting hives and working alone is the best. I've got my wandering thoughts to myself, and there's no one around to look at me funny when I talk to the bees. By myself, if you include all the steps, I can split a hive in about ten minutes. Working with someone, we average something more like six minutes, but it's not as much fun. I have to act all serious and pretend that this beekeeping is hard work.

Truth be known, it's so fun it's the easiest job I've ever had.

Here's a little step by step. It can happen all at once, or over several trips covering about a week.

When we arrive at the yard, things need cleaned up. Most the the hives are still working through some winter feed, and all the spacers need to be removed and put away.

Once things are more tidy, it's time to smoke the bees down and one by one shake each frame.

What we're doing is finding that elusive queen without actually having to find her. We're simply putting her and all the rest of the bees into the bottom box. It's pretty fast. 

The center frames have the brood nest. Great looking brood for early April.

One guy puts some sugar syrup in the bottom feeder and throws a queen excluder on. We're going to isolate that elusive queen to the bottom box.

The other guy scrapes propolis off the lid and the now empty top box. It makes working a hive much easier if it's not all gunked up with proplis.  If I'm working alone, well, I cut corners. Not everything gets scraped.

It doesn't take long before the bees come back up to protect and care for the brood. The queen stays in the bottom box.

In theory, you could start grabbing brood as soon as there are enough bees covering the frames. Usually what happens is that we move on the the next yard and come back in a few days.

I've missed some photos showing the removal of the brood and replacement with new foundation. Sorry about that.

But it's a pretty simple recipe- take out three frames of brood and bees. (Ideally capped brood) Add one frame of honey/pollen. Put in replacement frames. (Ideally drawn comb) Right now all we have is foundation. And oh yeah, don't forget to remove the queen excluder. With a little feed and the coming spring nectar flow, the bees draw out new foundation in a heartbeat.

 If you want to keep all the older bees, you need to take your split to a new location.

And this time of year you need a queen. By May, if you don't feel like shelling out another 25 bucks, you can skip the new queen step. (But there are a few more details to explore if you're making a new queen.)

Above are fifty young beauties just arrived by next day air.

Within about fifteen minutes the bees have discovered the queens.

It takes about half an hour to install 50 queens. But only if you're all set up and ready, having done the real work days in advance.  

The first queens went into strong splits that will soon be going into the apple orchards.

These girls have work to do!

A strong split is basically the entire brood box. Maybe five or six frames of brood.

Most of the splits in the next few weeks consist of three frames of brood going these cute little nuc boxes. It's our first year selling nucs in mass. Both exciting and a little scary. 

These girls will have work to do too. I suspect some of that work will involve educating their owners.