A Long Hard Summer and New Developments

Here's the most recent photo...

Business has been good.  I just sold my first two nucs last Saturday.  A gentleman drove up from Texas to purchase some late season nucs.

As you may be able to see in the picture, the grass is green again but it hasn't rained in two weeks.  Here's about the worst it got.

Here, I recorded temperatures of 114.8F and went from June until August without significant rainfall.

Fortunately, the temperatures are far more reasonable than they have often been throughout this warm season.  Since I last posted, I have set up my second outyard at a local organic free range chicken farm.

This pallet is on the bank of a small pond which is often dry.  I put extra bricks on top in case the local goats decide they want to play king of the hill.  With that many bricks, it's quite stable. 

In preparation for the move to mediums, I have been buying equipment that will fit.  As you should know by now, Mann Lake sells 4.95mm (PF-120) plastic frames which look something like this:

You can also see one of the medium division board feeders I bought and am currently using even though they're being used in deep hive body equipment.  In fact, two hives have two each due to the fact that I sold those two nucs.  And one could go even further if one wished.

Here are four feeders in a box just for fun.  That would total about five gallons of syrup if you really wanted to pound it down.  However, the drowning of bees could very well be quite significant.

I also purchased a little batch of Walter Kelley's foundationless medium frames.  As is my custom, I trimmed the end bars to 1 1/4" and as you can see, eleven fit in a box.  The box they are in is a former deep box which I trimmed down after the lower part rotted.  There are five more that I have marked for this same modification.  I did notice that the space between the topbars is pretty small, but I think it's still large enough for small cell bees to fit through, especially after the endbars have been propolized a bit.  In the future, I think I may trim the topbars a little bit so as to maintain a larger beespace.

Here you can see the beveled edge of the Kelley frame.  I was expecting more of a sharper edge, but we'll see how this works.  I have heard good things.

I am going to have to make a financial decision on which direction to go.  These frames are priced a little bit lower than Mann Lake's medium frames (which are standard types, not foundationless).  On the other hand, Mann Lake's frames are clearly superior in quality.  Mann Lake will be getting my business for the PF-120's which I plan to offer at a ratio of about 2:1 to foundationless frames.  Kelley also offers cheaper boxes as well, but I am not sure which direction to go on that either.  But that still may be in the future.  I still have to cycle through all my large cell equipment and systematically sell it as nucs.  10 frames down, 600 to go.

Going into fall, situations surely could be better.  I harvested no honey and many of the hives, in fact all the new ones, are either very low on stores or have none at all.  I am usually against feeding artificial feeds, but in this case, even if I had all the honey I ever produced, it might not be enough to get these hives through.  So I have to feed.  The heavy splitting I did earlier in the season allowed an increase in hives but a massive decrease in honey.  Such are Arkansas' seasons.  I am considering the fact that in the long run, it may be far more profitable to produce nucs rather than honey.  We shall see.  Until then, I need to get these bees through the winter.  Lately, every week I have been taking two and now three five gallon buckets filled with four gallons of 3:2 sugar syrup to the yards.  That's $15 a bucket.  No bueno.  Soon, I'll fill the feeders up with granulated sugar as the bees will stop taking syrup.  Then, it will be up to them.  Gotta keep a little survivorship in there.

Don't forget to check in at parkerfarms.biz from time to time as I continue to add content there as well.  Suggestions are always welcome.  Visit beesource.com where I am the moderator of the Treatment-Free Beekeeping section of the forum as well.

My First Outyard

Yesterday, I moved my first hives away from the home yard.  Here's what the yard looked like mid-move.

I started by designing and building a pallet to hold my hives.  I used the design of my bottom boards and my ten frame deep nucs as a center piece.

The result is a very sturdy and strong pallet of which two fit in the back of my pickup.

And here's the result in the field. 

The hives went to my church's farm, called "The Farm" which provides food to subscription holders and those subscriptions also pay for food for the economically disadvantaged.  So, I'm essentially treating it like a free pollination job.

I've discovered that the flat dark green paint I used to paint those boxes makes the hives way too hot, so I've begun switching them out.  While this is probably only a problem this time of year when it has been over 105 just about every day at my home for the past two weeks, I don't want to put the bees at a big disadvantage.

To Do:  Need to repaint the green hives. 

Thinking about making a slow switch to medium boxes.  I have 68 deeps which is the equivalent of approximately 100 mediums.  If I start selling nucs, it will be easy to sell anything away, and replace deeps with mediums in the process.  I don't need to get rid of the boxes, they can be trimmed, but it is a little harder to trim the frames, especially those with good comb still in them.  I think it can be done pretty well in a progressive fashion, as I sell 5-frame nucs.  All I need to do is sell two nucs, trim one box, buy eleven new frames.  Eventually I'll have nothing but mediums left.  But that means I'll have to sell about 130 nucs.  Could take a few years.

Also, learning about how to do combs.  As I now trim all new end bars to 1 1/4", I can fit eleven frames to a box.  So I do that for three deeps or five mediums, then above that place nine frames to a box for honey storage.  I'm also probably going to switch to Michael Bush's frame system where he uses mostly PF-120's and the rest foundationless.  The only difference is, I trim the endbars, which was his idea, but with is volume he hasn't taken the time to do it on all the plastic frames.

The Worst Robbing I've Ever Heard Of

My biggest, most prolific hive, which is the mother to about four or five others got robbed the other week.  I'm not sure why.  I have never seen robbing on this scale.  I have never seen a strong hive get robbed.

Every drop of honey was robbed from this hive, I don't know how much, I hadn't checked this hive in a few weeks, but there was probably plenty.  After the robbing was done, after the bees gave up and left, I dismantled the hive, removing the top three boxes and placed a frame of honey in to avoid starvation.  The population of the hive had been reduced drastically.  There was a pile of dead bees in front of it more than an inch thick.

One of the changes I'm making due to this occurrence is to begin to place bees in outyards.  I'm developing a custom pallet in order to have four hive units that can be moved to other places.  The first one I have lined up is my church's farm where they need a little pollination.  It's also where I hope to sell nucs retail style in the future.  I'm going to try to limit my home yard to ten hives.  If all works well, perhaps I can move beyond sixteen total hives in the future.