August 25th - Removing Supers, Counting & Treating for Mites!

Today was a big day of beekeeping tasks! We had three things to accomplish today:

1) Remove all the honey supers
2) Count mites (so we know if our treatment works)
3) Treat for mites

We only counted two mites on Beeatrice's sample.  Penelobee we saw one blob that I'm not certain was a mite, so we'll say we had 0-1 on her sample.  We spent two hours with the bees today...it was nice that we had cooler temperatures today and the bee suite actually felt good!

The bottom honey supers were pretty empty...they didn't fill those in like we had hoped over the last few weeks.  But, we still will end up with a lot more honey than last year! Dad will take the frames home and store the frames until we are able to extract the honey later this fall, and now the bees will have some time to build up their winter stores.

Me and Dad! Photo credit: my mom, Rollie Brandt!

Here's a video of what we did! I wish you could hear the buzz of the bees this week, but my GoPro waterproof case blocks the mic a bit too much. I put in a little music though this time so you don't get bored, haha!  Enjoy!

Stuff Bees Do: "Washboarding"

Nobody really knows why bees do this, but it's called "washboarding." They gather on the outside of the hive box and move forwards & backwards.

Stuff Bees Do: Sting

Here's a short little clip of what happens to a poor honeybee when they sting you! Rest in peace, bee! (warning: graphic!)

Honeybee face and body painting!

When you have multiple passions in life, they are bound to overlap now and then.

I work as a face and body artist, and often times I mix that with my love of bees! If you pop over to my other Paintertainment business blog, you'll see that this year I've been posting a painting every day, that coincides with whatever national or international day it is.  Well, "International Honeybee day" is coming up on August 19th, so I did this little painting on my leg today for that!

Back in July was "Don't step on a bee day," so I painted a smashed bee on the bottom of my foot!

I also did a honeybee themed design for a spring themed online competition a while back, and won first place! Here's that design on myself...

Here's another little cheek art design I did this year...I love doing cartoony cheek designs!

I also do henna! Below is a honeycomb design I did on myself!

 And no, this is NOT dangerous black henna...just looks dark in this photo in my dark living room with the Instagram filter! ;-)

So, who knows, maybe someday I'll get to do a honeybee themed full bodypainting! Until then, I'll incorporate them into whatever I can!

As for the bees, we're planning to check on them next week.  Hopefully they are busy filling and capping honey in the supers so we can take them off next week, and let them focus on filling up their stores for winter!

August 5th - Just Looking!

Today we checked the bees between 11:30 and 12:00.  It was sunny and 70 degrees. The bees seemed happy and weren't bearding as much as hotter days!

Today we really just looked. It had been a little while as I was out of town on a road trip for 10 days.  We decided not to take out any full frames as there were still some empty frames in the boxes from our last visit, so there is still room for them to build more comb and finish filling & capping other cells.

We're going to leave them "bee" now until late August, when we'll start pulling off full frames, do a mite check and mite treatment, and then give them time to really fill up those deeps for winter food stores!

My Smoker Fuel "Cocktail!"

Last year, which was my first season doing bees, my Dad had his hip replaced, which meant I had to "go it alone" for a while.  Nothing makes you learn how to use enough smoke on your bees like going alone as a newbie! I was so worried about giving them too much smoke...for weeks I'd end up walking around the field when I was done for 30-45 minutes trying to get the bees to stop attacking my veil. (I couldn't just hop in the car in my suit because my two little boys were in the back seat!). Needless to say, I quickly learned how to get my smoker smoking, keep it smoking, and use enough to keep the bees uninterested in me!

Here's my favorite smoker "cocktail!" A mixture of cedar shavings, dried pine needles, and some commercially sold fluffy "smoker fuel" from my dad!  One year we put our Christmas tree on the side of our house on a gravel pad and kindof forgot about it for a while.  It dried out, needles fell, and then when we had a huge rain, all the needles washed nicely into a big pile! Score! So I filled a gallon ice cream pail with dry needles and now use them in my fuel!  The cedar shavings I got cheap at a pet store.  The fluffy stuff is some smoker fuel my dad had purchased previously, and I mix them all together for some awesome smoke!

  

One of the many little tips I learned while taking the beekeeping courses at the University of Minnesota is to set the smoker on it's side, on the bellows, when you're lighting it.  The bellows act as a pedestal, holding the smoker at a great angle to spread out and expose your fuel, allowing you to stick your lighter in there and get it all going!