Feeding Sugar

Here is the latest picture of the home yard.

 Not the clearest, but you can see that many of the trees have lost their leaves, but the cherry in front of the yard has just started.  Got the hole filled where I dug out the rock in the back as well.

As I've mentioned a few times, we had a really wet spring, and a really dry hot summer leading to there being very little stored honey in the hives and necessitating taking action and feeding them.  I fed through the fall with 3:2 sugar syrup and now that they're not longer taking syrup, I'm feeding with granulated sugar.  Granulated sugar has some goods and some bads.  The goods are that the bees can take it even when it's cold, it doesn't cause robbing, and it helps absorb moisture in the hive.  The bads are that the bees don't always take it and they might just clean it out like any other refuse.

The shims that I use (which I lovingly refer to as 'Parker Shims') make a good space to pile sugar on top of a paper towel.  To the left in the picture below, there is a frame feeder and it is full up with sugar as well. We'll see how this turns out.

A Hive on the Brink.

Above is another recent view of the yard.  I'm taking a lot of pictures, because I would like to show a progression from winter to summer.

To the left is my most active hive, and I have been using nurse bees from it to fortify the hive to the right.  The hive to the was doing as well as the others, with a good brood pattern, but suffered extremely heavy losses to skunk predation.  It was to the point that they were so cold, they couldn't break cluster even on flying days.  I have them a frame of brood, but they couldn't keep it warm.  So I gave that up and started giving them nurse bees instead.  Since then, they relocated the broodnest, established a cluster, and the queen has started laying again.  The first eggs should have hatched yesterday or the day before.  I predict they will need more nurse bees to maintain their population before they reach a sustainable minimum.  But it's really fun as a beekeeper to pull a hive back from the brink without any chemicals whatsoever.  But of course, they were not on the brink because of disease, it was a skunk.

The hive to the right is also more typical of my new standard format.  There will be little to no bottom entrance.  Instead, I have constructed what I'm referring to as 10 frame nucs with a bottom permanently attached and a hole with a disc entry on it.  I would have pictures, but the discs are out of stock at Kelley and I haven't gotten them yet.  Rule of Thumb: Don't expect to get anything in any sort of good time this time of year from a bee supply house.  Everybody has stuff out of stock, even my favorite, Mann Lake Ltd.  Anyway, the bottoms of my hives will be a 10 frame nuc, bottom permanently attached, disc entry, with the main entrance at the top as you see on the right.  I have a number of those upper entrances, and I can use them normal side up like is shown for times when I need an entrance reducer, or the other side up for use as a shade, awning, or fool-proof snow blocker in winter.

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

A New Hive Design, the Doublewide

I got this design for the most part from BWrangler. However, his design is not built like a standard deep box, rather his is built as a whole unit more like a topbar hive. As you can see here, this box is built exactly like a regular deep box, only twice as wide so it will be able to use standard tops and bottoms. You can see my standard migratory top/bottom design with my Parker Shims as landing boards. The only difference is that there are two of them side by side. This great open space leaves room for 22 frames if they are kept free of propolis. If there is too much propolis on the spacer parts of the end bars, it won't fit 22.

Below, you can see approximately how the hive would look during the production season, and indeed any other time of the year. Boxes are stacked up just like normal except they are in tandem. It would be possible to use two of the double wide boxes or more to super the hive, but that would make it nigh on impossible to get to the bottom of the hive because a box with 22 frames should weigh somewhere in the range of 200 lbs.

The benefits if they are what I'm told they are will be quite useful. First, the hive will never be more than three boxes tall which makes it easy to work. Secondly, according to BWrangler, this type of hive is his most productive. I hope that it will support a large broodnest and the ability to draw good brood comb for starting a bunch of new hives. I'm planning on starting around six this year if I can swing it. I can split the four I have into four more, and I have already ordered 2 nucs from FatBeeMan. One idea is to take one or two frames of brood from each hive (from each according to his ability) and be able to spin off one new hive per week during good times.

At this point, I just need to get all the tops/bottoms, shims, boxes, and frames ready to go so I'm not scrambling to catch up with hives that are about to swarm this spring.

Sol Parker