Feeding dry sugar:

I ONLY recommend feeding dry sugar if feeding is necessary to accomplish YOUR goal of keeping a hive from starving. Let me be very clear that the proper way to keep bees in the TF concept is to let an established hive die if it refuses to gather enough honey to survive the winter. They are not pets. They are not rabbits. You don't need to dump food in their home. Their very purpose is to go out, get food, and bring it back to you.

That being said, sometimes when you're just starting out, or starting with packages (not recommended) or the first winter with a swarm or a split, feeding might be necessary to accomplish YOUR goal of the hive not dying. I find syrups to be very risky because they cause robbing and bees will refuse to take them in the winter. Pollen substitute should never be fed for the simple reason that the best way to stimulate hive to make brood in the spring is to have bees well adapted to your area. Feeding dry sugar has the benefits of: minimal amount of work, not stimulative, will not cause robbing, cannot be fed except in winter when needed, and will not end up in next year's honey crop.

How to do it, Follow these steps:
1. Open the top of the hive.
2. Find the cluster.
3. Remove empty boxes above the cluster. (If you have boxes of honey above the cluster, then you don't need to feed. Only do this if there is not enough honey left to survive the winter).
4. Place a paper towel on the top bars right above or on top of the cluster. Those shorter sheets work well because three of them are about the size of the box.
5. Pile sugar on the paper towel. If bees are flying, you may want to moisten it. I recommend not doing this until well into winter so bees aren't flying.
6. Place an empty box on the top of the hive around the sugar. The shorter the box the better. My favorite is the bottom three inches of a box sawed off a deep box to make a medium. But a medium or shallow or even deep will work.
7. Put the lid on.
8. As needed, open the top, lay down another paper towel, and pile more sugar on. The bees will only use what they need.
9. At the end of winter, remove chunks of sugar and store for reuse next year.

That's all there is to it. But remember, if you have a sufficient number of hives to absorb losses, it would be better to let poor performers pass on and replace them next year. Better yet, go into winter with more hives than you want or need so your losses will actually help your accomplish having the number of hives you want rather than work against it.

Winter of 2013-4 Will be One for the Record Books

This is what I've been going through lately.  In the picture above, you can see the eight remaining hives in my home hard.  The double stack on the middle left was my oldest hive, brought with me from Oregon, lasted for nearly 11 years.  After doing a post-mortem, I left the honey to be robbed out by the other bees.  The back left hive is gone also.  The two tan cube hives are doing great.

There has been more snow, more snow days, more days under 20 degrees, more days under 10 degrees, and more days under 0 degrees, than any winter since I have been living here.  I've lost six of 25 hives so far, and have gone days without stepping outside in several stretches.

The chickens refuse to go outside and we're down to two eggs a day.

End of January Update

It's 35 degrees right now and I was heading home from a meeting and decided to stop and check on my north yard.  I set up this yard about a year and a half ago and it has gone through two winters.  Only last summer did I discover that it is actually within spitting distance of a commercial (ish) queen mill. 

I like to do quick checks on hives when the weather is cold.  I can look down in the hive and see how much honey is left and the size of the cluster.  It's cold so the bees don't fly out and the propolis is brittle so it breaks loose pretty easily.

Turns out, four of the six hives at that location are dead.  The other two have very small clusters and I expect them to be dead in the next month.

I'm not disappointed and I'll tell you why.  First, due to what I expect is the queen mill down the street, these bees were mean.  I visited the queen mill and his bees are mean.  My bees are not mean and I breed against meanness.  I replaced most of these queens last summer.  Second, it was a bad location for the reasons above.  The hives didn't make much honey due to over saturation of the area.  Third, I'm in the process of moving and don't need a plethora of hives to take with me.  Fourth, as I did not feed at all this past fall, the process of losing hives not adequately prepared for winter is actually a positive.  It is selection for hives which store a lot of honey and which are frugal with it.

I've also lost two more hives at my home yard which I am slightly bummed about.  One of them was an old queen I purchased from Zia several years back, and the other was my oldest hive, one continuously alive since I purchased it, 11 years ago.  So it lasted about 10.5 years.  It was however susceptible to robbing which is not very helpful, so there's a positive to that as well.

So that's six down out of 25, a 24% loss.  I expect I'll lose a couple more including the remaining two at the north yard.  If I get down to 18, I can fit them all on my truck and trailer and move them all at once.

As some of you already know, I am not able to raise queens and nucs this year.  As I said, I am in the process of moving and all my queen rearing equipment is in storage.  Any makeup splits I need to make will be with walkaway splits, with the goal of covering equipment and maintaining no more than 18 hives for the time being.

Paring Down for Winter, September Snapshot

Last Saturday, I undertook to combine some hives I had left over from summer nuc production.  Several five frame nucs survived the summer, however, only one was packed out with honey and a little brood like I’d expect a good nuc to be, so I saved that one and mooshed the rest.  That leaves me working with a total of 27 colonies.  I’d be comfortable losing around seven this winter, however, if the trend keeps up, the chances are pretty slim.

What this did was allow me to get rid of less desirable stock (probably lowering my winter loss rate) and enlarge hives that I want to keep but that are unable to build up sufficiently during our long summer dearth.  In doing this, I’m accelerating natural attrition and accelerating my selective process to produce better bees for human uses.

This is also one of the benefits of having a larger number of hives.  You can operate more like a population rather than an individual.  There are many more possibilities to achieve success and many more things you can do to affect that success.

Furthermore, it goes counter to the idea that every hive must survive.  That’s not how it works in nature, why should we try to pull it off in agriculture?

I am also finally coming into full utilization.  Right now, I only have two empty deeps that are not being used.  I think with the exception of a couple new medium hives that all hives are of the size of three deeps or bigger.  The only hives that will be fed granulated sugar only in an emergency would be the medium ones, they are new and I want the medium hives to make it because I’m making a partial switch to mediums.  Nobody else will be fed under any circumstances.

There’s my September snapshot.  During a time when many beekeepers are treating or thinking of treating, this is the sort of thing a treatment-free beekeeper is thinking of.

So Much for My 100% Survival

I inspected my south yard yesterday and found a couple interesting things, one of which I have shown before.  It's a hive that created its own dam of propolis across the entrance area presumably to act as an entrance reducer.

Secondly, that hive died.

That makes it one hive dead for this winter, a percentage loss of 4.3%.

While opponents of treatment-free beekeeping continue to disagree, I'm considering this a wild success.  For three years now, my losses have been below, well below, or far below industry and national averages.  This is not a miracle, it's the result of nature handling disease and a decent beekeeper handling management.  This latest inspection demonstrates a greater number of active and productive hives

Winter Prep - Bee Informed National Survey

I like to participate in the Bee Informed national survey (beeinformed.org).  It allows me to really see what helps and what hurts in beekeeping management.  Here is an example:

This graph shows how many people used different types of winter preparations and what their loss rates were.  Now you may say "All of the methods helped."  But rather than looking at the bar graph which is the average, look at the range denoted by the little black whiskers.  That's the actual range of results.  Statistical analysis dictates which difference is significant.  But you can usually tell by which whiskers overlap.

For instance, the range of values for tar paper wrap overlap, demonstrating that the results were not significantly different while the use of an upper entrance were.  In fact, the greatest differences were found among the Upper Entrance group.

The other three that were effective were the 'Equalize,' 'Lid Insulation,' and 'Mouse Guard.'  The use of insulation or wrapping in tar paper are not shown to have different results than not using those methods.

I've never used equalizing, but I have Robin Hooded honey rarely.  But I'm happy to say the ones that I have been recommending for years are effective, upper entrances and insulated lids.  Mouse guards are pretty obvious, mice crawl in and eat honey and make nests.  Upper entrances allow better ventilation and the release of humid air which can cause condensation.  Insulated lids keep that condensation from collecting on the roof of the hive and dripping water on the cluster possibly killing it.

And as I've said for years, the bees don't heat the hive but rather heat the cluster.  Insulation is largely irrelevant.

A New Year

Sorry, no pic this time.  Weather is dreary and cold.  I don't like winter.  I'm very glad it's short here.

So, what's up this year?

Well, great news thus far.  As of yesterday when I stopped by one of my outyards, I have 100% survival of my 23 hives.  After last year's survival numbers (10/11) I am really stoked that my methods are finally being proved to be successful.  Just in time for my tenth anniversary of the day I drove to Orland California and bought my first 20 packages of bees.

This year, I plan on continuing to do what I began last year. 

I will be making more queens and nucs:  I have talked to several of last year's customers and as far as I know, they've had 100% survival of my stock.  I already have around ten reservations for queens and nucs.  After making 30 hives out of 7 last year, I should be able to make easily as many this year and make a fair amount of honey too.

I will continue my switch to medium hives:  I just finished (minus paint) eight new medium boxes.  It was great to fire up the old table saw again, though somehow I bent the fence.  And it is definitely an old table saw, it's older than me.  But it's a quality machine, all cast-iron and whatnot.  I need to make more of my ten frame nucs, but in medium sizes. I need to start moving mediums to the outyards and deeps back home.  Selling nucs will get rid of my deep frames and I will need to buy more medium ones.

I'm not going to attempt to catch swarms:  Last year I expended a lot of time, effort, and resources to put up swarm traps and got less than 10% return.  Now that I have as many hives as I want, I don't need them anyway.

I will continue to grow the hives that I have:  I have about a dozen deep boxes remaining, totally empty, ready for foundation.  And after my incredible increase from last year, I have a lot of hives which will need supering very soon.  Right now it is cold and the foundation is brittle so I'm holding off on that chore for the time being.

Settling into final numbers:  I originally wanted to run 20 hives, but with two locations with space for 8 each and the home yard with space for nine, 25 sounds about right.  I shall have to be more diligent this year in the fall with combining weak hives.  Not that they have trouble wintering, they seem to do fine, but I want to focus genetics on hives that are a little larger and build up faster in the spring.

And of course, I'll continue to be obnoxious on Beesource.com.  I have to keep needling the naysayers, explaining that after all these years, it still can be done and I am still doing it.

First Deadout of Winter

Here's today's yard.

 Sad news, today I discovered my first deadout of the winter.  I've gotten better at knowing a deadout without even looking inside.  Bees will be coming and going, but they will be acting more like robbers and in this case, they will be trying to use the lower entrance which this hive never took to.  Around here, dead hives not uncommon for this time of the year, but the reason varies.  Let's look at some of the signs.  What's left of the hive (all the uncapped honey) is located in the back middle of this picture.  I figure any hive able to be out flying through the winter can have all the honey they can carry home.  The hives headed by the queens I ordered from Zia seem do be flying just fine in 45 degree temperatures.

The first thing I found was this in the second box from the bottom.

At first, I thought the hive was queenless because the queen wasn't in this cluster.  There was a hive beetle though.  There was also plenty of honey around the cluster, though it was uncapped.

As I began to take the hive apart and take stock, I found this right at the top of the hive right under the sugar.  Like the lower cluster, they were surrounded by uncapped honey and you can see in this picture just how close it was.  They also had a very healthy supply of pollen.

There the queen is.  She looks like a standard Italian if not just a little dark complected.  This hive was a swarm I caught last spring, and I saw old used queen cells in the hive so I assume this is not the queen that swarmed with the hive.

I also took a good hard look at the bottom board.  That's one of the most important things to look at.  There were about half a dozen beetles and about two dozen mites.  Neither of these things is likely the source of the demise of this hive.  There were dead bees, but not enough to form a solid layer across the bottom.

The primary issue with this hive seems to me to be a divided cluster.  But the question must be asked as to why their population is so low.  I checked my records and this hive was designated SW-NWA-0000-0004 meaning that it was a swarm from around here with unknown parentage.  This hive mysteriously showed up clustered under my comb melting vat last year.  It made it through last year well enough, but had a tough start this spring taking heavy damage from skunk predation.  This apparently triggered a supersedure this spring.  Later on, the hive was healthy enough to harvest three frames of honey from to supply some new nucs.  This hive did show some minor signs of dysentery this spring, but every thing cleared up.  By fall inspection time, they were just about the least provisioned of any of the hives and I put a top feeder on.  They did not take much syrup, and I found what they did take (it was dyed) on one of the combs.  Most of what they had was real honey.

I did my best, but this hive was never a performer.  Perhaps in the future, a hive like this will be placed in a nuc or combined with another hive so that it won't be taking up valuable equipment.  However, at this point, I have plenty of equipment so it's not really an issue.  They ended up being comb babysitters more than anything.  So far, survivors are 10 of 11.  Let's hope there will be very few more deadouts.  It's another big splitting year next year.

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.

RIP GGA011

Many of you had a big snow storm in the last few days. 

I had one hive that had a very small cluster and I knew they were in trouble going into the storm.  They had literally two dozen bees or less.  With a small cluster, a hive cannot keep warm and simply freezes solid. 

The dead hive was purchased as a five frame nuc from Don Kuchenmeister the "FatBeeMan" in Georgia.  I've come to the conclusion that while his bees are pretty good, they just aren't as able to handle the winters here.  That's why I'm attempting to add some colder weather stock to my collection this spring.

Healthy sized clusters, probably that of a softball or larger, are able to survive by huddling tightly together and keep warm by vibrating their wing muscles.  If they are making enough heat, they can move about the hive as a cluster to find stored honey and keep fed.

Also, if the cluster is not large enough, they cannot keep warm enough to move and may starve.

On the other hand, large clusters need a lot of honey to maintain operations.  So it is imperative that they have enough honey to survive the winter. 

Thus far, I have forgone a late season harvest so that the hives have enough honey to last the winter.  It's part of the more biological/natural/organic method of beekeeping.  Because I still have not been able to produce enough honey to keep an emergency store for bee feeding, I still need to feed sugar syrup from time to time, but I always put food coloring in it so that I know not to harvest it as honey.  However, as I only feed when necessary, the sugar syrup is concentrated around the brood nest and never in the supers, I have never actually seen dyed honey when harvesting.

Christmas Oregon Trip Report

I went Oregon for Christmas and brought back some good stuff.

I brought back 24 deeps and a shallow with frames, a frame grabber, a hive tool, and a bunch of Parker Shims.

Unfortunately though, it seems that the cold snap we had while we were gone killed 3 of my six hives. That means I'm going to have to work extra hard to build up this year to have good numbers for the following year. Hopefully I can still pull off a decent harvest. It is a setback, but it is doable.

Good news though, I now have 54 deeps plus two double wides (more on them later). That's enough for about 11 whole hives, though filling 25 boxes with foundation will represent an investment. It's going to take a bit of time to rehabilitate that many frames and get them ready to go on hives.

I'm gaining some experience with the double wides. They seem good for keeping empty boxes on to keep moths out, but it seems that they would have difficulty changing positions between the stacks in winter time. Also, I've noticed them move out of the entire bottom box just as with a regular hive when they have room.

More information to come as it is gathered.
Sol